Students can be seen studying on their laptops all over campus.
Image courtesy of Illinois Wesleyan University
A pandemic has forced the inevitable takeover of technology, but instead of A.I.’s it is laptops and online classes.
Yeah, 2020 is wild and it has become pretty clear that no matter what this year throws next, IWU will continue filling your inbox with virtual homework.
Do not fret, though, here we have 15 Google Chrome extensions to make your apocalyptic, virtual class schedule a little less painful.
- Helperbird
Helperbird is an accessibility software that was designed by a dyslexic programer in Ireland.
The goal of the extension is to help all students read and navigate the web with ease.
The software allows students several ways to make reading online easier, including: changing font size on webpages, dyslexic fonts, overlays to increase focus, hide images and gifs and sign language support options.
- Grammarly
It is the bane of every students’ existence: grammar.
Grammarly is an all inclusive tool-kit that is here to help students edit their papers for grammar mistakes.
The extension checks your work in real-time and offers suggestions for edits.
Your essays will, at the very least, have impeccable grammar and your professors can’t help but respect that.
- Weava Highlighter
Reading your assignments via PDF is better for the environment and easier in today’s virtual world but can make it harder to take notes and remember key concepts.
Weava Highlighter is the perfect extension to help students remember key concepts from their reading and organize their notes as they go.
This application allows the user to use customized highlighting tools to edit PDFs as well as sort them into folders and collaborate with fellow students in real time.
- Coffeelings
With all that is going on in the world, it is important for students to take a moment and reflect on how they are feeling.
Coffeelings is a journaling extension with an adorable coffee theme that prompts you to choose the “roast of the day” to describe your mood.
Other features include journaling and an interactive calendar that shows your mood changes over time.
- Scener
Along with schoolwork, the pandemic has caused a lot of our social lives to be moved online as well.
Scener is a great way to get friends together for a movie night.
The extension offers support for Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, Prime Video, HBO Max, Funimation and Vimeo so that you can stream almost anything in your own virtual movie theater.
The software allows participants to chat in real time and even host watch parties for up to a million viewers.
- Clockify
Clockify is a great extension for any student who could use a little extra help with time management.
With Clockify the user to record the amount of time that is spent on certain online tasks and then analyze this time for the entire day, week or month.
You can also set timers that remind you to get back to studying or take a quick break with Clockify.
- Cite this for Me: Web Citer
Cite this for Me assists students in generating citations for their papers in APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard styles.
With the extension the user can cite a webpage by simply visiting it and then clicking on the extension.
Using Cite this for Me is a fantastic way to save time with citations as it allows you to cite as you go.
- Split Tabs
Split tabs is the perfect tool for multitasking.
To go between tabs while writing a paper or completing an assignment can be annoying.
Split Tabs automatically arranges tabs in an organized fashion on your screen and saves you the annoyance of constantly clicking back and forth.
- Bitly
We have all experienced what it’s like to try and copy and share a link and then discovering it is about a page-long of gibberish.
Bitly allows you to shorten links and share them easier.
You can also use it to make it easier to recognize and organize saved links which is perfect for research projects!
- Block & Focus
Block & Focus is the perfect way to force yourself to stay on task during study time.
The extension allows you to select the websites that distract you and block yourself from accessing them during study time.
You can even implement a reward system that will automatically unblock sites for you when you stay focused on studying for a set amount of time.
- Power Thesaurus
Power Thesaurus is exactly what it sounds like.
You can save you time by automatically finding alternative words or phrases that can make your writing better or help you understand what you are reading.
- Spreed
Spreed is a unique way to help you complete your reading assignments faster.
Spreed uses rapid serial visual presentation technology to increase your average reading speed and silence your “inner vocalization.”
- Mercury Reader
Mercury Reader allows you to block all ads, images and popups from articles that you are reading online.
With an easy keyboard shortcut all distractions will be removed from the article making it easier to read.
- Noisli
The goal of Noisli is for each user to create a custom mix of background sounds that help them with focus.
Noisli provides hundreds of different sounds and allows you to experiment with them to discover the perfect study soundtrack.
- PushBullet
PushBullet is the easiest way to move things from your phone to your laptop and vice versa.
The extension allows you to complete tasks from your phone on your laptop and send documents between the two.