Feedly Mini Chrome Extension

Sunday Sit, Sip, and “Sync” ~ June 14, 2015

Over two years ago, I wrote a post introducing Feedly, an RSS Reader that I have come to rely on to keep up with my favorite blogs and authors. The Feedly Mini Chrome Extension has simplified managing posts and sharing information through social networks.

This week, we traveled from upstate Illinois presenting in Quincy and then on to St. Louis, Missouri, adding several new followers to our Facebook page and new subscribers to this blog. I was asked about subscribing to our blog, and I thought about how I manage my subscriptions. We rely heavily on our Twitter Professional Learning Network to collaborate and to share new ideas and ways to use technology in the classroom. Blog posts and informational updates are essential in sharing resources, and we are both motivated and diligent in our attempts to stay as current as possible. Online resources are an invaluable tool, and organization and management of the information is a must.

The Feedly Mini Chrome Extension is free through the Chrome Webstore.

Once you have added it to your Chrome toolbar, you can access your Feedly subscriptions by clicking on the Feedly icon.

You also have the option of “showing” the Feedly mini icon in the lower right corner of your browser.

When you have found a page that you wish to follow, you can quickly add it to your Feedly subscriptions. You can also bookmark it to read later, and share it through email, Twitter, and Facebook. You can also tag it to enable faster access through your Feedly subscription search results.

You can read more about this extension here. In their words…

* Add websites to your feedly
* Save pages for later
* Email pages
* Tweet pages
* Share pages on facebook
* Save pages to Evernote
* Curate and tag pages

Feedly Mini is a Chrome browser extension that keeps you connected to your feedly, allowing you to easily save, tag, share or subscribe to the great content you find each day.

Feedly is the world’s most popular RSS and blog reader with more than 15 millions users. RSS re-invented.

We’re all about keeping it simple…

[Tweet “Use the Feedly Mini Chrome Extension to connect to your feedly,and to easily save, tag, share or subscribe to the relevant content you find each day. “]

Chrome Updates

by recesstec Blog Google tips

Sunday Sit, Sip, and “Sync” ~ May 3, 2015

We highly recommend using the Chrome browser,
especially when working in Google Drive and Google Classroom.
It is important, though, to frequently check for updates to keep Chrome running smoothly and efficiently.
Our tip for this Sunday will help you complete that process in just a few minutes.

On the upper right-hand corner of the Chrome Toolbar, you’ll find a “Customize and Control Google Chrome Icon”.
This is a square made up of three horizontal bars. Click on that and you should see this menu:

If your browser needs updating, you will find the “Update Google Chrome” message.
Clicking on the message will launch this window:

After you click on “Relaunch”, your Chrome browser will close, update, and reopen with the same tabs that you had before you updated.

Once the update has completed (and this takes about a minute), the menu should now look like this:

Click on the “About Google Chrome” bar,
and Chrome will once again check for updates.
With the update that was just completed,
it will only take a few seconds for the update check to run resulting in this message:

We recommend checking for updates on a regular basis to keep Chrome running smoothly for you and your students.

Another beautiful day is promised for Central Illinois,
and we hope the same is in your forecast.
One more tip is to find some outside time with family and friends.

We would also like to highlight last week’s post if you missed it.
We are heading to EIASE once again this summer to host our own workshops.
If you haven’t already registered, we invite you to follow this link to do so online.
We’re featuring Google Classroom, iPad workshops, and general technology integration in your curriculum.
Each session is two hours long, and we promise to jump right in and give you what you need to get excited about next year!

[Tweet “Our tip includes a “how-to” with Google Chrome updates to keep your workflow running smoothly…”]

Google Tasks

by recesstec app email Google iPad tips

Sunday Sit, Sip, and “Sync” ~ 1-4-2015

It’s a new year with plenty of goals and projects ahead.
Have we mentioned that we are presenting at ISTE?
In Philadelphia?
Have we told you we are excited?
And then there’s travel, building a new home, and selling the old family homestead.
They’re all at the top of the list.
How in the world are we going to keep track of the “To-Do’s” involved!?
Let’s talk about Google Tasks.

We’ve shared Google Tasks when we present “Google Apps for Education”.
We first discovered it as a component of the Google Calendar,
and the calendar was our “tip post” two years ago.
Google Tasks can by synced across several platforms.
Starting in the calendar itself, the option to add tasks can be seen by clicking the “pull-down” arrow on the left side of your calendar where you find the option to enable “Tasks”. By clicking on it, your “Tasks” will appear in a “Tasks Bar” on the right side of your calendar.

Watch the instructional Google video below that demonstrates adding tasks through your Gmail account which includes tips to manipulate your tasks in your calendar.

And there’s an app for that.
Our “go-to” iTunes app is “Go Tasks” which is free and has excellent user reviews.

Another option is to make a “homescreen bookmark” as described in this Google video.

Finally, we encourage everyone to use the Chrome browser when working in Google.
There is an extension made by Google, “Google Tasks” which works well.
In researching and reading the reviews, though, we found another extension called, “Better Google Tasks” developed by Matt Atkins. I have installed it, and it does a great job. One of the features I like about this extension is that you can view all of your task lists at once.

We hope these tips help organize and simplify your crazy life a little.
We are working on ours, too. Enjoy what is for many of you, your last day of the holiday break,
and return with a fresh, revised attitude to make the rest of this year the very best for you and your students!

[Tweet “Simplify your life by syncing Google Tasks across your calendar, Gmail, browser, and your mobile devices.”]

Pinning Tabs

by recesstec tips

Sunday Sit, Sip, and “Sync” ~ 11-30-2014

Six tabs open along the top of my current browser window.
In the toolbar below, I see four browser windows running…
two Firefox windows, two Chrome windows, and yes…
one Explorer window.
Correction: six tabs before we were “pinning tabs”.

Recess TEC pushes our computers to the limit.
“Multi-tasking” is our middle name.
Sometimes, when our computers start running slowly with all of our open programs, windows, and tabs, we just have to shut it all down and start over.

We have one quick tip that will save you some time as you open another browsing session on your computer.
We have posted about Symbaloo in the past, and my personal Symbaloo is set as my “Home Page”.
I can log into Symbaloo on any computer, thus allowing me simple and quick access to all of my sites.
To save even more time, I “pin” the website tabs I use most often, including Symbaloo.
By pinning the tabs, the browser window will open with those frequently used tabs, and it will give me more room to add more tabs as I work and browse.

The image below shows tabs that are open, but not “pinned”.
They take up a lot of room leaving you space for only about six open tabs.

To pin a tab, right click on the tab, and choose the “Pin Tab” option.

What’s left after pinning, is the “favicon” (see image below) associated with your page, and what you gain is more real estate.

One word of caution, though. Choose wisely which tabs you want to “pin”. If your browser has to open with too many tabs, the browser will take longer to respond. We limit ourselves to 3-4 pinned tabs. This works in both Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

We hope this little tip will save you time and make your workflow more efficient.
At this time of year, we can all use a little more of that!

Our “Word of the Day”.

[Tweet “Time-saving tip: pinning tabs in Chrome and Firefox browsers will give you more workspace and more efficient workflow.”]

Spell Up

by recesstec app iPad tips

Sunday Sit, Sip, and “Sync” ~ 10-5-2014

Last spring, Google released a new app and a Chrome web-based game that plays like a “personal spelling-bee”. Using voice recognition, it provides several ways that will help you build a tower of correctly spelled words. I played with this app on Friday night. (I know. No life.) It has a few hiccups in terms of recognizing my responses, but I really think our students will find it fun and won’t be put off by this at all. Make sure that you turn up the sound in your “Audio Mixer” specifically for this game.

It is also a Chrome app, available for download here.

It works well on iPads and other ISO devices when you access the website in your Safari app.
The only difference is that you need to spell each word on a keyboard.

Give it a try, but don’t get “hooked”.
Your kiddos are sure to enjoy it, too!

[Tweet “Google releases “Spell Up”, your personal spelling bee in a game format.”]

Good-bye iGoogle…

by recesstec tips

Sunday Sit, Sip, and “Sync” ~ 7-8-2012

It’s official.

iGoogle will be retired on November 1^st, 2013,
and one of my “homepages” will be gone.

In 16 months, I’ll say “Good-bye” to iGoogle.

Good-bye to All of my iGoogle Apps:

My “Moon Phases App”,
My BIG “Date App”,
“Gmail App”
“Twitter App”
“To-do App”
“Google Calendar App”,
“Facebook App”,
“Now Showing Flixter App”,
“Swimming Koi App”,
AND my “Beach Theme”.

(Make sure you click on that image to get a CLOSE view!)

I have plenty of time to prepare and, in fact, have already started.

Say “Hello” to Chrome.

“If Chrome was a man
…I would marry him.”

Well, not exactly.

At least not me.

It was something I heard at EdCamp-Chicago from an IT person at a high school where they not only use Chrome as their “go-to” browser, but have adopted 1-to-1 Chromebooks for their students and staff.

This piqued my interest,
and after I returned from Chicago,
I downloaded Chrome and began looking at it carefully.

And played.

With each new tab, my “homepage” was designed.

I visited the “Chrome Store” and chose the apps that I most often use.

And I shopped the themes.

Chrome isn’t my only browser,
not at all!

But when I need something a little more “personalized”,
it’s the one I choose.

If you have an iGoogle homepage,
make sure you’re ready when it says, “Good-bye”…

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