Epic Reading

Have you heard of Epic? In a nutshell, it's like Netflix for [children's] books, and it's free if you're an educator!

Here's a little more detail:

Features

• Access on the web and via mobile app {iOS / Android}
• 100% free for teachers and school librarians{Parents get 1 month free then pay $5/month}
• Access over 10,000 books for kids age 12 and under
• Register up to 36 students under your name
• Track reading progress of each student, including which books students read and how long they read
• Students can read the book independently or have it read to them
• Students can read an unlimited number of books each month
• Students earn badges to encourage more reading
• No ads or in-app purchases
• Pinch your fingers on any book to zoom in

Tour

The first time I logged in to the app, I was immediately directed toward a "Guest" profile {after I logged in as a teacher}, which I suppose is technically a student. Exploring this student profile, here's what I found:

Hold your device in portrait mode to see one page of the book at a time:

Holding the device in landscape mode allows the reader to see a two-page spread:

Regardless of the view, readers can always see how many pages they have left in the book by viewing the count in the bottom, center of the screen.

Need to leave the app but haven't finished the book yet? No problem. Just stick a virtual bookmark in your spot:

 

You can even bookmark multiple pages, as seen on the top of the screen below with the multiple red dots:

If the child swipes through the book too quickly, he/she gets a notification saying s/he needs to read a little longer. I was worried at first about what this would do for really fast readers, but I swiped through in probably less than a minute when I received the screen on the bottom left... Waiting just an extra minute or so allowed me to move on to the screen on the bottom right and press "finish book!"

 

When the student marks the book as "officially" complete, there's a time stamp of how long it took for the student to read it cover to cover {this information also appears in each child's reading log so the teacher can view it at a later time}.

After finishing the book, the student earn points toward his/her current level and sees suggestions for his/her next read:

Reading also earns the student rewards, such as new avatars {seen below}. The student can choose to add the book to his/her favorites, share the book with others, or rate the book on a 5-star system.

Students also see the total time it took to read the book cover to cover {this information is also displayed on each child's reading log for teachers to review at a later time}.

Finishing books allows the reader to "level up" and work toward earning more badges.

Use the "switch profile" option to switch to another student profile or the teacher's {the teacher profile can only be accessed if the teacher enters his/her password again}. View a student profile to get more information on the child's reading habits and time in Epic. Here's a student profile page:

 

From the app, the teacher can click on each individual student to quickly see how much total time each student has spent reading {and narrow that reading log down to a specific week, month, or year}, as well as which books s/he read along the way:

 

...or the teacher can view all information from the teacher dashboard on the web:

Clicking on a student's profile from the web gives more details about the time spent reading and the number of pages finished:

Finally, Epic provides free teacher resources, which include postcards, ready-made parent flyers, and an introduction video as well as a robust FAQ section that will answer all remaining Epic questions.

Do you use Epic with your students? If so, tell me what details I missed sharing! What do you like or dislike about the tool?

Chrome Extension for the Extension Junkie

Now that you've learned about all kinds of great Chrome extensions, you've probably installed several. In fact, you may have installed so many that your browser is starting to run slowly {because there is such a thing as too many extensions. Strange, I know. It's kind-of like the concept of "too much ice cream"}. Fortunately, there's an extension for that.

I know it seems counter-intuitive to install an extension to control your extensions, but can you expect anything less from a Chrome extension junkie? {How many times can I say "extension" in one sentence? Also: read this article if you're a browser tabaholic.} 

With Extensity, you can disable extensions {instead of uninstalling them completely} until you're ready to use them. I find it much faster to enable an extension than to go to the Google web store, remember the name of/search for the extension I want, and install it!

Install the Extension

Click here to view the Extensity Chrome extension page. To install it, click the blue "add to Chrome" button in the top, right corner of the pop-up box.

To Use

Click the Extensity icon to reveal all the extensions you currently have installed:

The ones that appear grayed out are ones that I disabled. I can enable or disable an extension by clicking on its name in the drop-down list. I can also turn all my enabled extensions off by clicking the light bulb at the very top of the drop down menu.

That's really all there is to it!

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Chrome Extensions: Browser Tabaholics Unite

I'm a big fan of browser tabs because they allow me to run multiple websites simultaneously without having to click back and forth between windows. 

What's a Browser Tab?

This picture shows two tabs I have open {my Twitter page and this blog}:

How to Open a New Tab

Make sure you're in a web browser {I prefer Chrome}. Up by where you type in a web address, find and click the small square on the very right, as shown below:

You'll see "New Tab" to the right, like this:

From there, you can type in any web address or go to any bookmarked link you'd like. It's just like having multiple windows open, but it's easier to click back and forth between multiple pages now. 

How to Deal with Multiple Tabs

Once you know the trick for creating multiple browser tabs, you'll probably use it all the time. And then you'll become a tabaholic like I am, and your web browser will look like this on a normal day: 

Having that many tabs open at a time is bound to slow your computer down a bit, but there are a couple tricks you can use to help. 

1. Use the OneTab Chrome Extension. 

This thing is awesome. After you install it, you'll see a funnel-like icon appear with the rest of your extensions:

Whenever you find yourself with too many tabs open, just click the OneTab funnel icon. Every tab you have open will be condensed into one, like this:

Click any of the titles of the webpages to open them again, or click "restore all" at the top of the page to open them all back up again. Rename the collection of tabs for convenience; you can see that I named the one above "Winter Blog Post" because it was a collection of resources for this post. 

Notice there is a menu under the time stamp. One of the options in that menu is the ability to share share all the links in a collection as a web page -- this is really handy for sharing several links with students if you didn't want to use, say, Symbaloo for that. Clicking "share as web page" generates a QR code that anyone can scan from a mobile device. Try it:

In that menu of options is the word "more." Click on it to reveal...well, more options. :) 

I can name the tab group this way {this is how I titled mine "Winter Blog Post"}, lock or star the tab group, and get to the OneTab help section this way. The help section goes into more detail about what each of these options does, but here's a synopsis:

• Naming a tab group helps with organization and productivity -- it also allows you to send specific open tabs directly to that group without collecting all open links at once. 
• Locking a collection helps eliminate the possibility to accidentally deleting it. It also allows you to restore any link and still keep the link in your tab group. 
• Starring a tab group makes that collection always appear at the top of your list {similar to pinning a tweet on Twitter}. 

2. Use The Great Suspender Chrome Extension. 

Maybe you're the type that opens articles or blog posts with the intention of reviewing them...and then you get caught up in other things and delay browsing those pages for a few days. If so, you can at least suspend those pages -- i.e. let your computer run faster -- until you get a chance to deal with them. 

After you install the extension, you should see a tab like this:

You don't have to do anything else, but I like to customize the extension just a bit. Click here {after you install the extension} to customize. Here's a peek at the options and what I use:

Once a tab suspends, it looks like this:

All you have to do to see the actual page content is click anywhere in the blue portion of the screen. {You can also whitelist that particular website by clicking the link at the very top of the screen, which means that it will no longer suspend automatically.} 

While not mandatory, extensions like these can help make your computer run a little faster if you're addicted to browser tabs. 

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Chrome Extension: Page Eraser

Have you ever wanted to show your class a cool picture or article on a web page, but you couldn't because there was something else on that page that you didn't necessarily want them to see? {We could be talking about inappropriate sidebar ads, or we could just be talking about how you want to show the top part of an article before you show the bottom -- this doesn't just have to be ad-related.} There's a handy {and free} Chrome extension that might help solve that problem! 

Install the Extension

1. Make sure you have a Google account. {If you have a Gmail, YouTube, or Blogger account, you have a Google account. It's possible to connect an existing e-mail -- like your school e-mail -- to a Google account; ask me about that if you're interested in learning more! I definitely recommend separating personal from professional, so if you only have a personal Google account, I'd make another one specifically for school.}

2. Launch Google Chrome {download it here if you don't already have it}.

3. Sign in to your Google account on Chrome. {Click the small silhouette of a person in the top, right corner to sign in for the first time.}

4. Click here to view the PageEraser extension page. To install it, click the blue "add to Chrome" button in the top, right corner of the pop-up box.

To Use

1. Go to the web page of your choice. For the purposes of this demonstration, I'll use this CNN article about pizza wars. :) When I first visit it, the page looks like this:

2. Let's say that I don't want students to see the title because I want them to create their own title for this piece. I need to click on the PageEraser icon, which typically appears in the top, right of the browser and looks like this:

After I click the PageEraser icon, there's a green "on" button that appears on top of the icon so I know it's ready to use. I can click the title(s) of the article to make them disappear and then click the PageEraser icon to turn the eraser off so I can function normally on the page again. My new page looks like this:

The eraser doesn't work on videos, but it does work on text, pictures, and links. Here's what the page looks like after I erased the sidebars:

The most recent update of this extension allows it to remember what you erased, even when you refresh the page or restart your browser, which means you can plan ahead by erasing unwanted parts of the page before the day of your lesson.

To Restore a Page

To get rid of "erasings" {is that a word? I'm making it a word.} right-click on the Page Eraser icon and click "options." Select the check mark next to the page you just erased, and click "remove selected erasers," as shown below:

Then just go back to the original link and refresh the page.

Other Options

There are a couple of other options you can customize in Page Eraser. To get to them, right-click on the Page Eraser icon and click "options." Customize these features how you wish:

and click "save settings."

Ideas for Use

• Hide unwanted ads or flash banners that AdBlockPlus doesn't catch.
• Erase titles for an article so students can create their own title.
• Hide captions of a photograph so students can create their own caption.
• Erase photos in an article so students can tell you what they visualize as they read the article.
• Find an online activity that isn't quite perfect for your students? Hide the parts you need students to skip. 
• Don't want students to skip ahead in a web activity? Only show the first couple of steps. 
• Want to show a photo or video from a popular Facebook page, but don't like all the commentary? Hide it! 
• Want to show a YouTube clip but the top comment is inappropriate? Erase it! 

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Chrome Extension: Link Shortener & QR Code Creator

By now, I'm sure we've all heard of link shortening services like Bitly, TinyURL, and Google's Link Shortener. We've also all heard about QR codes {check out my blog articles about QR codes by clicking here}. ...But what you may not know is that there's a free Chrome extension that will help you shorten a URL and create a QR code for it all with one click! It's called goo.gl URL Shortener.

Install the Extension

1. Make sure you have a Google account. {If you have a Gmail, YouTube, or Blogger account, you have a Google account. It's possible to connect an existing e-mail -- like your school e-mail -- to a Google account; ask me about that if you're interested in learning more! I definitely recommend separating personal from professional, so if you only have a personal Google account, I'd make another one specifically for school.}

2. Launch Google Chrome {download it here if you don't already have it}.

3. Sign in to your Google account on Chrome. {Click the small silhouette of a person in the top, right corner to sign in for the first time.}

4. Click here to view the goo.gl URL Shortener extension page. To install it, click the blue "add to Chrome" button in the top, right corner of the pop-up box.

To Use

1. Go to the web page of your choice. For the purposes of this demonstration, I'll use the contact page of this blog. :)

2. Click the goo.gl URL Shortener icon. It's typically in the top, right of your Chrome browser, and it looks like this:

3. A pop-up box will appear that says "shortening." Then you'll see a pop-up right under the shortener icon that looks something like this: 

4. If you'd like to copy the link, just click the word "copy." Similarly, if you'd like the QR code, click "QR code." The code will appear like this:

Right-click on the code and click "save image as..." to save it somewhere on your computer. The code saves as an image file, so you can insert it into almost any other file or poster you want. {You probably won't use this feature, but the "details" button gives you analytics about the link.}

From there, you can insert the QR code into a flipchart or PowerPoint or just display the link on the board for students to enter on their devices. {Click here to read about 8 ways to share links with students.}

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Chrome Extension: Print Friendly & PDF

Do any of these situations apply to you?

• You're given the task of reading an article online. You prefer physical paper, so you print the article before reading. 
• You print web articles for your students to read and/or analyze. 
• You share article links with students and/or parents. 
• You want to read an article online but find the font too small or large. 
• You have a student with a vision impairment who needs text enlarged.

If so, you'll enjoy today's post about a free Chrome extension called Print Friendly & PDF. 

Install the Extension

1. Make sure you have a Google account. {If you have a Gmail, YouTube, or Blogger account, you have a Google account. It's possible to connect an existing e-mail -- like your school e-mail -- to a Google account; ask me about that if you're interested in learning more! I definitely recommend separating personal from professional, so if you only have a personal Google account, I'd make another one specifically for school.}

2. Launch Google Chrome {download it here if you don't already have it}.

3. Sign in to your Google account on Chrome. {Click the small silhouette of a person in the top, right corner to sign in for the first time.}

4. Click here to view the Print Friendly extension page. To install it, click the blue "add to Chrome" button in the top, right corner of the pop-up box.

The Print Friendly icon will appear in the upper, right portion of your Google Chrome browser and, n most cases, will look like the first option in the list below:

You can change your icon to any of the options seen in the screenshot below by right-clicking the icon in your browser and clicking "options."

To Use

1. Open the article of your choice in Google Chrome. For demonstration purposes, I'm using this CNN article about pizza wars. :) 

2. Click the Print Friendly icon. When I clicked it while viewing the above-mentioned pizza article, I got a pop-up that looks like this:

3. Remove all images from the article in one click by using the "remove images" button at the top of the pop-up. {This is particularly useful if you're trying to conserve ink and/or if you're doing some type of project that requires the students not see the images.}

4. Increase or decrease the text size from 70% to 130% if needed:

text size is at 70%

text size is at 130%

 5. Print, turn the page into a PDF, or e-mail the article as-is:

For those with a vision impairment, it's easy to enlarge the text and either print or e-mail to the student as a PDF. I also love the idea of removing images from an article, and then asking students to draw the images they see in their brain while reading. 

If you're trying to go paperless with your class, don't worry about the printing part. You could always doctor the article however you want it, save it as a PDF, upload it to a cloud service like Dropbox or Google Drive, and use a service like Symbaloo to share the link {click here to read about 8 ways to share links with students}. 

It's a great way to save some paper or just remove unwanted portions before sharing an article with students. 

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Chrome Extension: Tab Scissors and Tab Glue

Have you ever been working on the Internet and needed to view two pages simultaneously? {The most obvious teacher situation that comes to mind would be when you have students submit work via a paperless channel such as Seesaw, Google Drive, or Dropbox, and then you need to transfer their grades over to the digital grade book, but there are lots of other instances where this might come in handy!} It can be annoying to keep clicking back and forth! You could open a new window and spend precious time trying to size them exactly right... or you could let free Chrome extensions {Tab Scissors and Tab Glue} do the work for you.

Install the Extensions

1. Make sure you have a Google account. {If you have a Gmail, YouTube, or Blogger account, you have a Google account. It's possible to connect an existing e-mail -- like your school e-mail -- to a Google account; ask me about that if you're interested in learning more! I definitely recommend separating personal from professional, so if you only have a personal Google account, I'd make another one specifically for school.}

2. Launch Google Chrome {download it here if you don't already have it}.

3. Sign in to your Google account on Chrome. {Click the small silhouette of a person in the top, right corner to sign in for the first time.}

4. Click here to view the Tab Scissors extension page. To install it, click the blue "add to Chrome" button in the top, right corner of the pop-up box.

5. Important: you must add the Glue extension, too! Click here to view the Tab Glue extension page. Install it the same way you installed the Tab Scissors extension.

To Use

1. You can have more, but you must have at least two tabs open in Chrome, as shown below:

{One tab is automatically opened when you launch your Chrome browser. To open a new tab right next to it, click the small square on the very right, as shown below.}

2. Click any tab except the first one. In the screenshots above, I knew that my second tab was selected because it a) was lighter than the other tab, b) appeared in front of the other tab, and c) I could see this technology blog on the screen. :)

3. Click the Tab Scissors to make a "cut" between the tabs:

{Your scissors and glue icons should appear somewhere in the top, right of your Chrome browser.}

4. The screen will split automatically, like this:

By default, it will split your screen right down the middle. If you want to change the size of either window, just hover in the middle until you get a double-sized arrow pointer. Then click and drag the window size to whatever you need.

If I'd had more than 2 tabs open, the split would occur right before the tab I had selected. For instance, let's say I had my Twitter page, technology blog, and Pinterest page all open in different tabs. If my technology blog was selected and showing on the screen when I clicked the Tab Scissors, my screen would be split with my Twitter page on the left and my tech blog and Pinterest page on the right.

5. When you're ready to go back to multiple tabs in one screen again, click the Tab Glue to paste them back together:

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