Split Your Browser Screen into Two with Dualless

 Remote learning has caused educators to rethink the way that we provide instruction to our students. For example, many of our students (and even educators) struggle with needing to juggle multiple screens and windows. Dualless is a Chrome extension, which provides users with the ability to split their browser screen into two either horizontally or vertically! 

This is perfect for students who may need additional supports, need to see additional resources, or who want to increase their efficiency.

The ratio can be adjusted based upon need, which makes this a perfect companion tool for students and teachers who are working with multiple browser windows at the same time. 

Here are some helpful features:

• Split your current browser window into a pair and resize according to a ratio (3:7,4:6,5:5,6:4,7:3)

• Need to merge your split browser windows into a single window? No problem!

Did you need a video tutorial on how to do this? No problem! Check out my video below:

Clean Up Your Chrome Extensions with Extensity

I enjoy connecting with other educators on Google + because it gives you an opportunity to learn from your peers. I learned about Extensify after reading a recent question posed by one of our community members.

What is Extensity? 

Tired of having too many Chrome Extensions at the top of your screen? You may want to consider using the Extensity Chrome Extension to help you manage, enable, and disable all of your favorite Chrome Extensions with just a click of the mouse.

Why would you want to do this? 

• Chrome Extensions may slow down the performance of your browser. Increase performance by shutting down the extensions that you don't need.

• If you like to stay organized, Extensify can be a helpful tool to help clean up your browser. 

Extensity offers some excellent features. 

• Turn off / on individual extensions 

• Easily turn off / on ALL of your extensions with a click of a mouse

• Access Google Apps too! 

• Easily search for any of your apps and extensions

• Use the profiles feature to group extensions by interest, such as shopping, school, etc. 

• Manage or uninstall extensions with a click of a mouse

Save to Google: A New Bookmarking Option

Where do you go to bookmark your favorite sites? Many of us turn to Diigo, Delicious, Pocket, Bookmarks in Chrome, and Pinterest. Have you ever heard of the Save to Google Extension?

Simplicity is what makes the Save to Google Extension extremely useful. After you install the extension, visit your favorite site or image and click on the icon to save. 

You will be prompted to Save to Google and enter in a tag to make it easier to find your favorite sites and images. There is even an option to import your bookmarks from Chrome. 

The best part is that your "saves" are collected and saved at google.com/save and sync to your Google account. Whether you have three saves or three thousand, the Google Save interface is extremely easy to navigate and access your saves from your browser. 

#CoolChromeExtensions: Manage Your Open Tabs with Tabr

If you are like me, you may be prone to having too many open tabs in Chrome, which can lead to slow performance and clutter. Tabr is a great extension to free up RAM, , see a bird's eye-view of all of your open tabs, and keep yourself organized. The best part is that Tabr is extremely easy to use.

Here are some of the key benefits and features:

• You can see a bird's eye-view of open tabs, much like Safari. Visit any open tab by clicking on its thumbnail or even open up a new tab. 

• Too many tabs open? Use the Search box to search through your open tabs for the right one! 

• Archive a series of open tabs to use again later. To make it easier to find, you can rename your session. When you are ready to use your tabs again, just open up Tabr and your tabs will open in a new window.

• Do you want a faster Chrome experience? Tabr increases performance by reducing the amount of RAM Chrome uses through Auto-Suspending for Tabs. Basically, this feature "suspends idle Chrome tabs that take up precious memory." 

Conclusion: 

If you are addicted to open tabs, this could be a great tool for you or your students! Not only does this extension help you keep yourself organized, it also increases Chrome's performance. Who wouldn't want a faster browsing experience? 

Help Students Monitor Progress with Progress Bar Timer

How do you help students learn how to reach their goals? This is an important aspect of self-regulation or how we help students develop important intrinsic, self-assessment, and coping skills. Using a progress bar can be a great strategy to provide our students with a tangible way of measuring their progress.


















The Progress Bar Timer App is an excellent Google App that you could use to help measure student performance on your Chrome Browser. This is the perfect tool for Chromebook schools. After installing the App on your Chrome Browser, you or your students can measure performance in three different ways:

1. Counter

The counter feature is the perfect way to measure performance. Use it to count the number of books read or the number of pounds you shed. Simply add a bar, provide a description, then enter a starting value and ending value. Once your bar is installed, you can manually add or reduce the number.

2. Timer

The timer feature acts like an egg timer and provides a count down. This might be a perfect tool to help students keep track of study time, free time, and even exercise time. Need to take a break? You can pause the timer or reset it so that it can be used again.

3. Clock Feature

The clock feature can be a great study tool to help students visually see how much time they have spent on a task and how much longer they have to go. This is a great tool to keep things in perspective.

Conclusion:

Self-regulation is an important intrinsic, self-assessment, and coping skill that students (and adults) need to learn. Self-regulation can be thought of as "mind over matter." Sometimes changing our perspective or measuring our performance can help in achieving our goals! The Progress Bar Timer can be a great tool to tangibly measure student progress.