25+ Chrome extensions and Chrome tips for teachers that will save you time

As teachers take on many jobs at a time, I wanted to make sure you can save time on other tasks.

• First time-saver: I looked up and tested over 50 Chrome extensions perfect for teachers. I even made a list of the best 25 Google Chrome add-ons for your classroom.

• Second time-saver: Most of the extensions will save you time in their own way. Whether it’s time while grading or time when you’re creating tutorials or lesson content.

I’ve divided the educational Chrome extensions into 10 categories. Click on the category to jump to it right away.

• Chrome extensions to support the creation of lessons and activities
• Chrome extensions to support direct instruction
• Chrome extensions to support languages
• Chrome extension for math teachers
• Chrome extension to support lesson-sharing
• Chrome extensions for student monitoring
• Grade and review Chrome extensions
• Chrome extensions to boost teacher productivity
• Fun in the classroom Chrome extensions
• More Google Chrome teacher tips that will save you time

Let’s get to it!

Content creation Chrome extensions for teachers

1. BookWidgets - Google Classroom integration

BookWidgets is a content creation tool for teachers where you can create digital exercises (flashcards, crossword riddles, memory games) and automatically graded assignments (with over 30 interactive question types).

This Google Chrome add-on is a Google Classroom extension. Install the Chrome extension, open Google Classroom, create a new assignment, and choose BookWidgets. A whole new world will open for you!

Create your first assignment by choosing a worksheet, add your questions and assign it to your course. When students hand it in, you can review their works by adding comments to the questions and you’ll see that most of the assignment is already graded! So basically, BookWidgets is also a grade and review Chrome extension for teachers.

2. InsertLearning

With InsertLearning, teachers can transform any webpage or interesting online article into a lesson. Teachers can insert questions, discussions, and insight directly into any website.

Students go to the edited website you shared with them. They can respond to your questions and discussions, see that insight, and take their notes.

3. Peardeck

With Peardeck, you can engage every student in your classroom with interactive presentations. You can also keep your students focused on the lesson better, as you’ll guide them through the slides that they immediately on their devices.

The interactive elements make sure every student participates in your lesson, which makes them understand the material better, and they’ll be more interested in your topic. You can give every student a voice.

The extension makes it possible to directly assign Peardeck presentations to your students in Google Classroom.

4. QR-codegenerator

A QR-code generator with just one click. That’s what every teacher needs. Go to an interesting website, or just about anything online that’s interesting for your lesson. Now, click on the QR-codegenerator extension, and there it is: your custom QR code. Show the QR code to your students or print it so you can place it anywhere in your classroom.

Chrome extensions for teachers to support direct instruction

5. Vmaker

Vmaker is a free WebCam and screen recorder. Yes, I know, there are many other screen recorder tools. This one stands out because it’s so easy to use thanks to the Chrome extension button. This way, it’ll cost you no more than a few clicks to start recording. Use this tool to quickly record your screen and voice when explaining something or when creating instructional videos for your students.

6. Web Paint

Use Web Paint to add instructions, draw arrows, shapes, and text to a live webpage. Turn any webpage into a lesson. Via the extension, you get a toolset on top of the webpage you open. You can also take screenshots of the edited webpage to save your instructions.

This one saves you time creating tutorials or simply explaining something in the classroom when you don’t have a smart whiteboard. Just project your screen, start explaining, and give your students some visual support. Now, make a screenshot and send it over to students for when they didn’t understand.

7. Iorad

Iorad is a real lifesaver when it comes to creating tutorials for your students. Use the Iorad extension when you want to explain to students how to use a new tool, website, how to set up an account somewhere, how to download something safely, or how to do their homework.

Just go over all the steps yourself and the extension will save them, turning them into step-by-step tutorials for your students.

Chrome extensions to support languages

8.Grammarly

Grammarly is probably the best tool to prevent you from making spelling mistakes or typos. Add the Grammarly extension to your Chrome browser and the extension will work with almost any webpage, preventing you from making horrible mistakes.

It will indicate mistakes when you’re writing a text in, for example, a BookWidgets lesson, or a Google document. It will make suggestions for vocabulary and grammar.

Another way to use this is as a language teacher. When your students have to write papers, just add their paper to the Grammarly tool. It will immediately point out the mistakes in your students’ work.

9. Read&Write

This Chrome extension is helpful for dyslexic students or students who have a hard time reading. Let your students add the Read & Write Chrome plugin to the browser. They can then mark text and the Read&Write extension will read it out loud for them. The tool also has a dictionary, explaining difficult words in the text.

Pro tip: Enable “Allow text selection” in your BookWidgets worksheet or quiz, and students can use this extension to read the questions out loud for them!

Chrome extension for math teachers

10. Equatio

Adding mathematic symbols and formulas to a digital lesson can be tricky as most of the time, the symbols simply aren’t on your keyboard. That’s why a lot of tools make it possible to write formulas using LaTeX, a kind of digital language for writing formulas.

When you’re just starting, it might be hard to get to know LaTeX. This is where Equatio comes in. Add the Equatio Chrome extension to your browser and a handy formula editor will pop up. When you need a LaTeX notation for a formula, write down the normal formula in Equatio, and it will give you the LaTeX version to put in the other digital tool. This math extension will save you lots of time looking up the right LaTeX notation.

Pro tip: Combine this with BookWidgets! You’ll instantly get the right LaTeX notation to put in your BookWidgets lesson. BookWidgets also has a question type called “Equations” to let students write down formulas as well, without using LaTeX.

Chrome extension for teachers to support lesson-sharing

11. Sendy

This extension lets you share files up to 50GB with a handy link. Upload your files and Sendy will make a link. Now all you have to do is share this link with your students by attaching it to an email in Gmail.

Pro tip: You can also use the webtool Send-Anywhere for this. This is not an extension, but it works well! Here, students download the app “Sendanywhere”. When the teacher sends over a file, he or she will get a code. Students just have to add that exact code in the app to receive that file, and poof… the file’s on their device!

Chrome extensions for student monitoring

12. Live Widgets

Live Widgets is a feature within the BookWidgets - Google Classroom Chrome extension. By installing the BookWidgets Chrome plugin, you can create, share, and review digital assignments right from inside Google Classroom. But, there’s more… You can also monitor students, live, while they’re working on a BookWidgets assignment, at home or in the classroom.

You get a nice overview of the progress of all students in your class. Immediately discover which of your students need extra challenges or help; use it to play live games, take real-time surveys, and much more!

13. Classwork Zoom for Google Classroom

Classwork Zoom helps you answer questions like: “Are my students engaged in the work that I’ve assigned?”, “Are they managing their time?”, “Are they doing their work in individual assignments?”, “Are they contributing evenly enough in group work?”.

Classwork Zoom takes that kind of information from the revision history in Google and visualizes it in a timeline for the teacher. This way, it’ll become a lot easier to interpret the data you gather by monitoring students working on a Google Docs assignment.

Just select the assignments you want to add to the timeline, and you can see all of the work visualized, including a hover preview of comments, suggestions, and text that may have been pasted.

Grade and review Chrome extensions for teachers

14. Talk & Comment

Add comments to students’ assignments in Google documents. Instead of writing everything down over and over again, just give feedback by recording your voice.

The extension will add a comment to your students’ work and they’ll be able to listen to your spoken feedback.

Pro tip: Combine this with BookWidgets! When you’re reviewing student work in BookWidgets, instead of writing down comments, use the Talk & Comment extension. In this case, students will see a link to the audio file in their returned work.

15. Goobric

Goobric is a rubric-based assessment tool. The Goobric Chrome extension works with the Doctopus Add-on for Google Sheets. Goobric allows for a flexible, efficient rubric-based form of grading Google Drive resources (Documents, Presentations, Spreadsheets, Folders, etc.).

Goobric will be displayed in the same browser tab as the Google Drive assignment being evaluated, and it includes a clickable scoring tool tied to any grid-style rubric, written comment, and audio-comment recording.

Email the rubric assessment to students, paste it into the bottom of a Google Document, and automatically transfer it to the Google Sheet that holds your assignment roster.

16. Magical Text Expansion

When you’re grading student work and essays, you often see different students making the same mistakes. Instead of typing your feedback over and over again, use the chrome extension Magical Text Expansion.

In short: there’s a shortcut for that! Magical Text Expansion allows you to save time by creating shortcuts to snippets of text and comments you commonly use. Use the extension, type the programmed shortcut, and your given feedback message will appear. Now copy it and paste it into your students’ work.

Chrome extensions for teachers to boost productivity

17. Citationsy

Even as a teacher, you can’t just “take” everything from the internet or copy text out of books. You’ll also have to reference these websites, papers, and books that you’re using in your lessons.

Use the Citationsy Chrome extension to do this in a few clicks. Cite websites, books, papers, articles, podcasts, songs, and much more. Citationsy supports citations in APA, Harvard, DIN, Chicago, MLA, and thousands of other referencing styles.

Whenever you find a website or link you want to cite, simply click the Citationsy icon in the Chrome toolbar and a little window will pop up to let you choose which one of your Citationsy projects you’d like to add the link to.

18. Infinity new tab

Create a browser starting page with a collection of your most-used tabs. The Infinity new tab extension allows you to gather all the webpages and links you need every day on one collective starting page.

It has some built-in tabs that are worth adding to your main page. Create a to-do list, keep an overview of all your Chrome extensions, write down things in the “notes” tab, and much more.

19. Mailist

This free Chrome extension will actually make you read articles or other interesting web pages you’ve bookmarked in the past. Most of the time you’ll never look at it again, or you just forget about your bookmarks. Well, Mailist will send you a weekly mail with 5 random links you bookmarked but haven’t read yet.

20. Super simple highlighter

The name says it all. This extension is a super simple highlighter for all your web pages. Whenever you’re reading an article, blog, or webpage, and you find something interesting, just highlight it with this extension.

Simply select some text, click right, and choose a highlight style to apply. Applied highlights normally reappear when the page is reloaded. All your highlights are gathered and shown in a popup window.

21. Dualless

The Dualless Chrome extension enables you to split your screens with a click. So, if you need to attend an online meeting and meanwhile work in another window, it’s always handy to see them both on your screen at the same time.

The screen ratio can be adjusted according to your needs. You may have a browser window showing on the right that occupies 30% of your screen. Then, leave the rest of the space for your presentation.

22. Timer

There’s not much to say here. This is basically the most simple timer extension you’ll ever encounter. Set a timer and let it run until the alarm goes. No more words are needed.

Fun in the classroom Chrome extensions

23. Custom cursor for Chrome

Add some extra flavor to your lessons and change your average arrow cursor into a fun one. This extension does just that. From a Ninja Turtles cursor to a Tom and Jerry cursor, your lessons won’t be the same anymore without them. You can also enlarge your cursor so students can follow it more easily when you’re pointing out something on your screen.

24. Bitmoji

Speaking about fun and engaging lessons: I created a whole speech on my sisters’ wedding with Bitmojis about the bride and groom. It was hilarious! So why don’t you create your very own teacher Bitmoji? You’ll see that a lot of scenes are typical teacher scenes that will make your students smile when opening an assignment, reading your classroom rules, and more.

The extension allows you to quickly find a suitable Bitmoji, representing yourself. Copy the Bitmoji and paste it anywhere you want. Yes, even in your email signature!

25. Random student generator

Select a random student from your Google Classroom to keep the entire class engaged in learning. It’ll be exciting for the students, too. Many of them will hold their breaths while you’re using this extension. And all but one will sigh in relief when their name isn’t picked.

The random student generator extension uses your classes that are set up in Google Classroom. Quicky pick a student of the classroom, whether it be for answering questions in the classroom, prize draws, or a tool, to ensure that all students are engaged.

More Google Chrome teacher tips that will save you time

26. Groups

This ultimate Chrome browser tip is pretty new. Whenever you have tabs open in your Chrome browser, you can group them to keep an overview of all the tabs that are open at that point. Just select one tab, hold ctrl (or cmd), and add the other tabs to the selection. When you’ve selected all your tabs, click right, choose to add the tabs into a group, name the group and choose a color.

You’ll now see that you can fold your tabs belonging to that group, so you just see the name. Click on the group name again to unfold the group with the tabs. That’s it! Now, while you might have 50 tabs open, you’ll still know where to find every single one of them.

27. Bookmarks

I work with bookmarks all the time. You probably do too. As teachers, we make use of dozens of different tools and websites. And every time you start up your computer, you need to open every single website again, one by one, time and time again.

There’s a chrome tip for that. When you bookmark a website (by clicking on the star icon), you can save your bookmark in a folder. Create folders with the most important bookmarks that belong together.

For example: which 5 websites you open first when starting a lesson? Or start grading? Or,…? Create folders with names like “Start”, “Administration”, “Grading”, …

When you’ve done that, go to your bookmarks, and right-click the folder name. Now select “open all”, and watch the magic happen. All your saved bookmarks in that folder will immediately open at once.

28. Sync Chrome to your Google account

Let’s say you’ve made some folders out of your most-used Bookmarks, but you now have to switch computers in school? Do you have to start all over?

Good thing that Chrome allows you to sync your settings, passwords, and bookmarks to your Google account. Now you can access all your bookmarks and account settings from any device. Adjust your sync settings by logging in to your Google account, and go to “Settings” under the Google Chrome menu icon (3 dots).

Wrap up

Which Chrome extension are you going to install first? I hope I gave you some new Chrome extension ideas to make you even more productive as a teacher. I also hope it will take away some tedious tasks and free up time to do what actually matters: teaching students, inspiring and engaging them. And most of all… enjoying every moment of your teacher life.