Read&Write for Chrome

Boost reading and writing confidence for ALL students.  Offer support for Google Docs/web to students with learning difficulties, dyslexia or ESL.

Read&Write for Google Chrome is an extension that provides a range of useful support tools to help students gain confidence with reading, writing, and research.  Once this feature is added to Chrome students will be able to:

• Hear words, passages, or whole documents read aloud with the words highlighted as they are read. 
• Have the meaning of words  explained with text and picture dictionaries.
• Have text  translated into different languages (great for ESL and foreign language teachers).
• Turn words into text as they speak.
• Highlight text in documents or the web and collect for use in other documents. 
• Create and listen to voice notes directly inside of Google Docs.
• Simplify and summarize text on web pages.

The district has purchased this extension, so all staff and students will have full access to this great tool.  To begin using Read&Write you will need to install the extension on your Google Chrome browser. If you need help with adding apps and extensions a video tutorial has been created to guide you through this process [click here to watch].   If you would like to know the difference between Apps, Extensions, and Themes a short article has been put together to help you make sense of it all [click here to read].

The Read&Write extension has already been pushed out to student Google accounts, so it should be available to them once they login with their account to a Chromebook or into a Chrome browser.

Be watching for an opportunity to come see a demonstration of all the features of Read&Write in an upcoming training.  

Customize Google Menu

Learn how to customize the Google Apps Menu to show the apps you use most often at the top of the list.

by Scott Aten on August 10, 2016

This year you will see a lot of Google tips and tricks heading your way.  All Green staff that have network logins, have been setup with Google accounts using your Green email account (lastnamefirstname@greenlocalschools.org).   If you have never signed in to this account, no better time than now to give it a try.  Simply go to Google and click the Sign in button in the upper right corner of the screen.

Once you have signed in to your account you will see your personal App launcher in the upper right corner.   This launcher shows commonly used apps.  Customizing the order of these apps is simple:

• Customize the launcher to put the apps in the order you want.  To do this, drag and drop them within the menu area.
• You can add more apps by going to the bottom and clicking more.  Again drag and drop the apps to the desired location.
• To add an app that is not in the “more” section, go into the app itself and then choose the app launcher.  
• Follow the onscreen instructions to add it as an app. Note - if you don’t see the App launcher on the product page, you might not be able to add that app to the launcher.

If you would like to add a profile photo to your account like I did on mine:

• Click on the circle picture
• Click my account
• At the top in the middle is a blue shield with the same circle picture.  Click on it to add your photo.
• You can drag a picture into the designated area or upload one from your computer.

I have found that having a profile picture helps me when I bounce between my personal Google account and my school account (I use different profile images).  It is also helpful when you have the whole family using Google accounts to select the correct account to use. We have five different accounts at our house. Google will allow us to select the account we want to use from a list.