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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