Best Productivity Apps for Students
INTERESTING INFOGRAPHIC OF "CORE STUDENT APPS", HOWEVER, THIS WEBSITE FOCUSES ON FREE APPS.
HACK THE APPS!
"If innovation in any school or school division is solely dependent upon one person, it will continue to happen in pockets. In contrast, when we focus on empowering learners to become leaders, they help spread ideas.”
(George Couros)
By dedicating your time toward exploring the exponentially evolving goldmine of productivity and creativity Apps, Extensions and Add-ons in Google, you are preparing to become a "connected" 21st Century learner and global citizen, while increasing your productivity, workflow, and streamlining your learning.
By sharing what you learn with other students through your social media platforms, you will contribute to the vision of creating a synergistic "butterfly effect" of positive change.
Note: In order to comply with Google privacy laws, before you begin your research, you will have to set up your own Google gmail account and if you are under 13, this must be approved by your parents.
"If innovation in any school or school division is solely dependent upon one person, it will continue to happen in pockets. In contrast, when we focus on empowering learners to become leaders, they help spread ideas.”
(George Couros)
By dedicating your time toward exploring the exponentially evolving goldmine of productivity and creativity Apps, Extensions and Add-ons in Google, you are preparing to become a "connected" 21st Century learner and global citizen, while increasing your productivity, workflow, and streamlining your learning.
By sharing what you learn with other students through your social media platforms, you will contribute to the vision of creating a synergistic "butterfly effect" of positive change.
Note: In order to comply with Google privacy laws, before you begin your research, you will have to set up your own Google gmail account and if you are under 13, this must be approved by your parents.
MASSIVE CURATED RESOURCE FOR STUDENTS, TEACHERS AND FAMILIES
POWER MY LEARNING: Over 7000 Resources for Teachers, Students and Families, designed to enhance mastery for all students. Resources are arranged by content, and include games, and other helpful tools. This website allows both teachers and families to create playlists. As reported in The New York Times, "Family Playlists™ transform the learning relationships between students, families, and teachers and provide a groundbreaking new way to drive student mastery and social-emotional learning." https://powermylearning.org/ |
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RESEARCH TOOLS
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GOOGLE SCHOLAR:
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"GOOGLE EXPLORE": GOOGLE RESEARCH TOOL BUILT INSIDE OF DOCS, SLIDES AND SHEETS:
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CAREER AND COLLEGE READINESS
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SELF EDITING TOOLS
SAS Writing Reviser is an ADD ON inside of Google Docs.
SAS Writing internet explanation. https://goo.gl/Fmntp7 |
SAS WRITING REVISER is one of many self editing tools that include: four main areas when writing in Google Docs. They are:
See link below to: See step-by-step installation instructions and instructions on how to use these powerful tools: Speech-to-Text through a Google feature called “Voice Typing”, “Text-to-Speech” through an Add-On called “Read & Write for Google Chrome”, Grammar Checkers: WriQ add-on, SAS Writing Reviser Add-On, Hemingway App Website, Slick Write Website, Thesaurus Tools: Explains how to use the “Define” feature in Google Docs, Writefull Thesaurus as an Add-on. http://www.controlaltachieve.com/2017/06/docs-self-editing.html#more OTHER SELF EDITING TOOLS NOT LISTED IN THE BLOG ABOVE: ProWriting Aide: Full featured, like SASWriting Reviser. Also, does grammar check. Grammarly.com: Is only FREE if downloaded as a Chrome Extension. Currently it works on many products, however, not Google Docs ¥ET. |
NOTETAKING AND CURATING APPS
Evernote: a free Google extension and one of the most popular note-taking Apps. You can take notes inside of notebooks, make to-do lists, set reminders, attach files, create agendas and all this will sync between two devices. (unfortunately accessing through multiple devices is now a "paid feature", but worth the money). It even has optical character recognition.
In a large research project, like the "senior project", students can create digital note cards, "tags" create bibliography cards, then put topic notes for each book in folders, then search topics or tags, and all those similar topics will pull from all the books and students can fuse together information and organize into a paper. Evernote doesn't have a storage limit, but free users are limited to an upload limit of 60 MB per month. The camera feature is especially helpful, letting you save any photo, document, Post-it note or business card. The Webclipper extension allows you to throw notes and webpages up to the tool bar and save. |
GOOGLE KEEP
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SEE STEP-BY-STEP
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VALUABLE GOOGLE EXTENSIONS
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Top APPs, Extensions, and Add-ons to Maximize Efficiency And Enhance Student Learning
APPLICATIONS
1. Pic Monkey (Free) This is an online photo shop like tool.
2. Photo Mania: https://photomania.net/
3. Desmos Graphing Calculator (Free) Excellent graphing calculator for upper level math classes. Bill Gates Foundation voted as top ten apps for students
4. 3D Function Plotter (Free) Online Application for plotting real functions and integral and derivates calculations
5. Alternative Geography (Free) Abundant information on all things Geography.
6. WeVideo (Free) Video Editor and Creator App!
7. Loupe Collage Create Photo Collages
8. MindMap (Free) Create Mind Maps and creative outlines!
9. BioDigital Human (Free) Incredible interactive breakdown of the human body.
10.Online Audio Cutter ( Free ) Edit and clip audio files
List of Chrome Extensions:
1. One Tab – With one click, reduce all open tabs into a list in One Tab and retrieve 95% of memory. Eliminate tabs you don't want, or share the list as a webpage. If collaborating with another person, easily name your list as a folder, and share.
2. shorten me (Free) Shortens URLs and can turn them into QR Codes
3. Save as PDF (Free) Saves full webpages as PDF Files. Excellent if you do not have the internet at home!!
4. Eye Dropper (Free) Pick colors from web pages in order to get that perfect color you need!
5. Select and Speak (Free) Lets you select text from almost any website and make it talk
6. Word Cloud Website Preview Summarize and share the content of websites or articles into word clouds
7. WolframAlpha Large information database this extension allows you to search right from your browser
8.Webpage Screenshot Take all or part of a website and save it to your drive!
9. ScreenCastify (Free) Allow users to record was is on their screens and post to YouTube
10. BarDeCo (Free) QR Code reader and Encoder extension!
11. Clearly (Free) Cleans up webpages by removing ads and sidebar distractions. If you connect to Evernote, then you can highlight, add annotations and save the page with your notes to a designated Evernote notebook.
12. Pocket (Free) Saves articles to a folder for you to view later
13. Announcify: (Free) Reads the website to the viewer. It converts web articles into speech, blurring out text not being read. Excellent if you have focus and attention problems. You can adjust speech volume, pitch and rate.
14. Select and Speak (Free) Allows the user to highlight text and have it read to them
15. TLDR (Free) Summarizes Articles on the web for readers. One of the extensions mentioned above.
16. Ginger – Contextual spelling and grammar checking program. Like Grammarly. Fremium
17. Grammarly- Contextual spelling and grammar checking program. Only "Free" inside of Chrome browser. Free version very helpful. Paid version, "Freemium", offers many benefits, especially "plagiarism" checker, critical for high school and college students. Not only will it identify plagiarism, it will offer a citation that matches the plagiarism, so you can modify your text and put quotations around it so it is legal.
18. Checker Plus for Google Calendar – Puts calendar on bookmark bar. Add items with highlight and right click. Excellent for organization, assignments, and other customizations.
19. Add to Drive –Quickly save links, images, and pages directly to drive, making curation faster when gathering elements for projects.
20. Google Dictionary – Click on any word displayed within the Chrome browser and instantly open a dictionary as well as hear a pronunciation. Not only will this produce full definitions, you can translate foreign words. This is extremely useful tool if you are struggling to decode words or comprehend complex passages.
21. LastPass –Free and secure cross-platform password management site.
22. Diigo – Bookmarking extension. Instantly allows you to bookmark, highlight and annotate webpages. All notes save to Diigo and can be accessed through any device. Also, quickly annotate a screen capture for custom projects.
23. Print Friendly – Based off of the web service available at printfriendly.com, using this extension within Chrome not only creates printer-friendly versions of online resources, but also generates images and PDF files to share. For teachers, this is especially powerful when working in mobile classrooms where students need to annotate digital texts. Print Friendly saves time and streamlines the process of providing digital content to students.
24. Adblock Plus (Free) Blocks ads on webpages.
25. Reading Rocket:
26. Mercury Reader: Perfect to prevent reading distractions. Once you install this, then when you click it and go to a website, this extension will remove all adds and visuals and only present text to read.
List of Google Drive Add-Ons:
1. Charts (Docs) Insert charts from Sheets data right into a document
2. EasyBib (Docs) An automatic bibliography and citation generator in Google Docs
3. MindMeister (Docs) Turn bulletted lists into a mind map
4. Table of Contents (Docs) Generates a table of contents in the side bar of your document for navigation
5. Texthelp Study Skills (Docs) Allows you to highlight your document, and then group the highlights together inside of a new Google Doc.
6. Thesaurus (Docs) An imbedded thesaurus in the Google Doc
7. Track Changes (Docs) Allows for the owner of the document to accept edits that they approve and deny edits they do not
8. Equatio (Docs, sheets) Formerly G-Math. Allows the user to create math expressions and graphs. This is now a paid app, but valuable for students who want to record complex equations using the computer.
GOOGLE DRIVE SPECIAL FEATURES: Review of above.
1. RESEARCH: GOOGLE EXPLORE: (See above) Click on small compass rose at the bottom of your document. This will allow you to do research and cite a document in one click. Citations show at the bottom of your paper.
2. Voice Typing: Excellent voice recognition. Easily dictate notes or papers. You verbally add punctuation. Not perfect, but one of the best programs with no added software.
3. Sync to Keep: Under Tools. Student can drag and drop notes into Docs.
LEARNING WITHOUT WALLS
MOOC'S: MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES
Now with the internet, any student can experience unlimited learning without walls. These MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES (MOOC’s) are “free Web-based distance learning programs designed for the participation of large numbers of geographically dispersed students”. ‘
Many, like Coursera, (https://www.coursera.org/)will offer a certificate from the college (not credit) which can be used towards employment or other forms of career advancement.
Students can learn subjects which might not offered in their high schools, like Python Coding, advanced Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, cyber security etc.
Links: http://mooc.org/
https://www.mooc-list.com/
Many, like Coursera, (https://www.coursera.org/)will offer a certificate from the college (not credit) which can be used towards employment or other forms of career advancement.
Students can learn subjects which might not offered in their high schools, like Python Coding, advanced Microsoft Word, Excel, Power Point, cyber security etc.
Links: http://mooc.org/
https://www.mooc-list.com/
