Due to COVID-19 students are spending three days a week at home doing virtual learning. This can be stressful and unorganized, but with these seven free Google Chrome extensions the experience will be way more manageable. All of these can be downloaded from the Google Chrome store.
Online learning can be stressful with the overwhelming amount of tabs you have to have open for your assignments. Divider Tabs allows you to organize your tabs by the category of your choice, such as classes. It is similar to what we would do with the papers in our binders, but since so much of the curriculum is online this year it is helpful to have an online version.
Citing sources can be a daunting task, especially when the information isn't clearly there. This extension makes the job so much easier by collecting the citing information for you. All you have to do is select the format you would like it in, and it does the rest. Annotated bibliographies shouldn't be as painful anymore.
One of the most helpful tools to comprehending an article is to annotate, but that can be challenging when we don't have the article in front of us on paper. Weava gives you the ability to highlight and annotate any piece of writing by just right clicking. It even saves all of your annotations which is extremely helpful.
Teachers are always recommending students to read over their essays out loud before submitting to catch any awkward sentences or mistakes. Listening to another person read it out loud can be really beneficial, but can be difficult to do during these times. With Spreed, you are able to highlight your essay and it will read it out loud to you. No more points taken off for silly mistakes!
Sharepass allows you to give you friends access to your account for your desired amount of time without having to share passwords. No private information is shared with the person, just a link that will expire once the time is complete. This year we are watching more movies, videos and documentaries on streaming platforms, so this is helpful when a classmate doesn't have an account for something that can cost money. You can use this on things like Netflix, Spotify, Amazon, Hulu, Quizlet Plus, etc.
Grammarly is an extension that will immensely improve your essays. While Google Docs does correct spelling mistakes Grammarly takes it a step further and helps with grammar issues, affectability, tone, synonyms and much more. Your writing will sound more sophisticated than ever.
In virtual learning teachers can forget to mute themselves when you have to watch a video or listen to an audio. Interrupting them can be awkward and disruptive, but with Volume Master you are able to adjust the volume of each individual tab. This allows you to have complete control over the sound coming out from your device which will increase your focus level to make sure you are fully grasping the content needed to learn.
All seven of these Chrome Extensions are free and easy to use. My virtual learning experience has been improved with these tools, and they even come in handy when attending in-person at school as well.