Read & Write for Google updates

Since the last faculty meeting, we've seen an uptick in people using Read & Write for Google, particularly for simplifying pages.  I hope your students are finding this helpful.  One thing to point out is that simplify page doesn't work on all web pages-- it works particularly well for news articles but may not work as well on content that the web designer has intentionally embedded into graphics.

Since the meeting, Read & Write has announced two new updates:

1. Read & Write now works in GMail and Google Sites! See the screenshot below.
2. There is an improved ePub reader (ePub is a standard e-book format).

Please let me know how I can help you and your students use this tool. 

Note for teachers: here are the instructions for getting your account.  

Read and Write for Google

Have you used Read and Write for Google lately?  Were you aware that all students at CVSD have premium accounts and that all teachers can get one, too?

Read and Write for Google is a UDL (Universal Design for Learning) tool.  Here are some features (copied from their web site).

• Hear web pages and documents read aloud to improve reading comprehension, with choice of natural voices
• Understand unfamiliar words with text and picture dictionaries
• Develop writing skills with word prediction and a grammar, spelling and confusable words checker
• Support independent student research with valuable study skills tools
• Offers bilingual support for a growing number of languages and more.

I just used Read and Write myself the other day to listen to a passage I needed to read for a course I'm taking.
Another great feature is vocabulary lists -- Read and Write will take words you've highlighted in a document and generate a vocabulary list, which you can then edit.
Finally, speaking of the highlighting tools, you can highlight in four different colors, then combine your highlights (by color) into a new document.

So, if you haven't used it in a while (or ever), why not give it a try? I'd love to help.

Common Sense Education

I was just reviewing some software that a teacher is investigating for game design and it reminded me of what a valuable resource Common Sense Education is. Common Sense Education is a part of commonsense.org, "... the nation's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of kids and families by providing the trustworthy information, education, and independent voice they need to thrive in the 21st century." These are the same people who bring us Common Sense Media and have excellent resources on digital citizenship that I've written about before.

If you don't have Common Sense bookmarked, I recommend you do so.  It's an invaluable resource. 

Also, a reminder that you don't need to do all the research yourself.  If you're looking for an app, extension, or other software for your classes, please let me help.  And if you've found something already that you'd like to use, a reminder to check for it on the Tech Request Approvals (and submit it if it's not already there).

Print Friendly & PDF extension

I came across the Print Friendly & PDF Chrome extension today,  This extension allows you to print (or save as a PDF) a de-cluttered version of a web site.  Essentially, it strips out ads, navigation buttons and any content that you don't want printed.

For example, here's a page from CNN as it appears on the web:

And here it is after applying the Print Friendly & PDF extension:

Here's a video that explains how to install and use the extension: