Beginning the year differently! 2013-14

It used to be that at the beginning of the school year I would spend time with my class getting to know them, and getting them to know me. Now that I am in the high school the time I spend with my students is precious and definate.
This year is the first year I am spending less time 'teaching them google mail, docs, calendar' and more time showing them extensions and apps from the google store. Our school is a GAFE, Google Apps For Education. Now that we have our school domain in full swing, I am able to give my technology guru a list of my favorite apps and extensions and he puts them into our own category in the web store. Because our students log into our domain, the domain category shows up in the web store. Once in the web store our students go through the list and select the apps and extensions we have pre-selected for them to use.
All of this is to say that we work at getting our students the tools to access their work. We spend much less time teaching them about the tools. Instead we get right to their homework and using the tools to solve problems, search google images, research in a google doc.
Here are a few of our favorite tools, using Chrome Browser, found in the Google Chrome Web Store

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Readability.
iSpeech
Webpage Screenshot Capture
Chrome Speak
Pic Monkey Extension
Read&Write for Google
Select and Speak
DictaNote

More apps at a later date, but this list will get your students started.