Site of the Day: Read&Write for Google Chrome

Calling it my site of the day is a bit of a misnomer, since it's really a tool. But it leapt to the top of my psyche today when I was talking with another teacher about helping our kiddos out with their ELA skills in the digital world. Read&Write for Google Chrome is a Google Chrome extension that gives you deeper functionality with your Google documents. It is geared towards dyslexic, ELL/ESL, or LD students, but I can certainly see the applicability across the board. One of my favorite aspects is the ability to have a document read aloud to you by the computer. Yes, it is the typical robotic voice. But students of all abilities could use that feature when proofreading their papers since they will often gloss over the mistakes that they make unless they are hearing them.

Here is the rest of the write-up from the Google Chrome store:

Boost reading and writing confidence. Offer support for Google Docs/web to students with learning difficulties, dyslexia or ELL/ESL.

Boost reading and writing confidence. Offer support for Google Docs/web to students with learning difficulties, dyslexia or ELL/ESL.

Read&Write for Google™ offers a range of powerful support tools to help students gain confidence with reading and writing, including:

• Hear words, passages, or whole documents read aloud with easy-to-follow dual color highlighting

• See the meaning of words explained with text and picture dictionaries

• Hear text translated into other languages

• Get suggestions for the current or next word as you type

• Turn words into text as you speak 

• Highlight text in documents or the web and collect for use in other documents

• Simplify and summarize text on web pages

Read&Write for Google™ is a user-friendly chrome extension for use with PCs, Macs and Chromebooks. It works with web pages and common file types in Google Drive, including:

- Google Docs
- PDF
- ePub
- Kes

Install Read&Write for Google™ to access ALL of these features FREE for 30 days!

After 30 days, you can still access Read Aloud and Translator features in Google Docs and web pages. Premium features for Google Docs, web, PDF, ePub, and Kes files are available by purchasing a subscription for single users, groups of users, or domains.

Teachers can get a FREE premium subscription to Read&Write for Google.  To register and activate your subscription, go to rw.texthelp.com/freeforteachers after installing the Read&Write for Google trial.  

Get more information on Read&Write for Google™ features, licensing, and pricing at
http://rw.texthelp.com/drive/Support/premium"

As always, check it out and let me know what you think!