Activity 5: Apps, Add-ons, & Extensions, Oh My!

The first app I downloaded is Lucid Chart.  It is a diagramming and flow charting app.  In biology a lot of what we discuss in class are processes.  I think it could be cool to have students use an easy app like this to create a flow chart or diagram like this.

Creating it took me under 5 minutes, so I would anticipate it taking the students about 15 because they would have to think about how they wanted to display the information first.  I also found the add-on Lucid Diagrams which opens up Lucid in your google docs.  That is handy because it automatically shows you all of your diagrams and allows you to drag and drop them in.  I can see this being handing in a google classroom assignment where you ask groups of students or individuals to all post their ideas to one document.  This app unlike some of the other diagramming apps does allow multiple people to edit it at once, just like a google doc.

The only hiccup I had was a lot of extra white space on my images.  That was quickly solved when I found the "crop to content" button.


The other app that I can see using a lot is probably considered very lame, but in the world of science labs and not wanting kids on their cell phones constantly it would be essential.  It is called, Timer Tab.  It is an incredibly easy to use timer and would be great to have easy access to on the chromebooks while students are working on their labs that need to be timed in any way.  It has 3 settings that you can see in the image below (countdown, alarm clock and stopwatch).