It’s hard to find someone who hasn’t experienced Google in their lives. Google, apart from many of its wonderful features, offers an excellent free tool in the form of Chrome to access various resources on the internet. Being an online educator and not using Google Chrome is like having an apple in hand and not eating it. Even though Chrome in itself is very useful for tutors, Google takes its utility one step ahead with the help of Google Chrome Extensions.

Extensions are tiny programs that work inside the Chrome browser and provide additional functionality, better services, and convenient browsing.

In this article, we will shed some light on Google Chrome Extensions, and also talk about 7 popular extensions that are pretty useful for an online teacher.

What are Chrome extensions?

Google Chrome is always known for its extendibility and flexibility, especially when it comes to Brave vs Chrome comparison. Extensions are something that proves this statement. As defined above, Chrome Extensions are miniature programs that are designed and developed by Google to enhance the browsing experience. 

You can create an extension for every application you use. Google also offers custom-made extensions that are business-specific (for example, online teaching) to make businesses run smoothly and effectively. Using extensions helps to develop your online course and makes things work in an efficient manner. Extensions can be accessed directly from the Chrome Toolbar.

Benefits of using Chrome Extensions

Chrome extensions can be considered as a catalyst that helps in the completion of a project or task more conveniently. If your online academy uses Chrome as its default browser, you can explore more extensions that generate a personalized user experience. On that note, here are two major benefits of using Chrome Extensions –

Improves Productivity

As an online teacher, you will be bombarded with work once your course is launched and you have a sizeable audience. You need to make the best use of time to constantly deliver the quality that you have promised. To help you with it, Chrome Extensions comes in handy through its wide variety of productivity tools. For instance, it helps to maintain a separate to-do list and prioritize your work accordingly.

Related blog: 7 Great Productivity Tips for Online Course Creators

Helps in marketing

At the end of the day, your course needs to be marketed to your audience. A Chrome Extension can be used as an additional marketing tool. For instance, it can help in gathering details about your target audience from various sources to power your marketing efforts.

7 Best Google Chrome Extensions for teachers

Now that you know very well what a chrome extension is and how it impacts businesses positively, it is high time that you start incorporating it into your online academy. Here is a list of 7 best Google Chrome Extensions that are a must-have for your online academy – 

Grammarly

Grammarly is a writing software that is also available as a Chrome Extension. When installed, this tool makes you a better writer by throwing important suggestions and ways to improve your content. By adding and enabling this extension to your Google Document, it starts checking your content for grammatical errors from the moment you start writing. It highlights the errors and even suggests the right word that you can replace them with. The premium version of this tool also lets you check content plagiarism, sentence alternatives, and better vocabulary suggestions.

Google Keep

Did you just find some interesting content on the internet for your course and want to save it for future references? Google Keep can help. It acts as a digital notepad where you can save and organize any information. It could be text, images, or even website URLs. 

For example, you have a course on digital marketing, and you found a piece of news regarding the same on the internet. You can instantly copy the URL and save it on Google Keep and also add reference notes so that you do not forget it. You can share this information with your students during the next class.

Another interesting feature of Keep is that it can be synced across any number of devices so that you can keep on adding information to be used at a later stage.

Smallpdf

This is another amazing extension for an online course tutor. As you keep searching for content and information for your course on the internet, you might come across different pieces of information in non-editable PDF formats. To help you in converting those files to editable formats, the Smallpdf extension comes in handy. Using this extension, you can easily convert any pdf file to an editable format such as doc with a single click. You can then modify the content and share it with the students as course study materials.

Mote Voice Commenting

Grading and giving feedback has now become way easier thanks to the Mote extension. Giving feedback for assignments and projects done by students is an unavoidable but time-consuming task in any online course. This is especially true when you have a large strength of students. Using Mote, you can give audio feedback to students’ assignments, thereby saving a lot of time. Mote works well with Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets.

Classwork Zoom

This extension is completely different from the Zoom Meeting app, except for the name. For an online course instructor using Google Classroom, this extension is the perfect friend. The main feature of this extension is the ability to manage and keep track of students’ work in the classroom. You can monitor their productivity, add or remove assignments to the timeline and your students can view all the open assignments on a single sheet without scrolling through every assignment. Apart from monitoring performance, you can also check for plagiarism. 

Dualless

Dualless extension is an artificial second screen setup that is helpful for online teachers who use Google Meet. In the past, there have been various concerns raised by teachers about the lack of a feature to monitor students during live lectures. This problem is solved using Dualless. It splits the screen into two halves and one window has the course presentation and in the other window, you can see all your students simultaneously. You can consider including this extension to your course platform and have a watchful eye on the students as you present.

Ziteboard

This is a digital whiteboard that you can access instantly from your chrome browser. This extension allows you to write on the screen that is quite helpful, especially in live classes. For example, if you are teaching a math problem, you can easily explain the concepts and the steps by writing on the whiteboard.

These are the 7 best google chrome extensions that are currently trending and are being used at large by online course instructors. 

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