Google Chrome Extensions: One Tab.

Blog post prompt: Your job is to find an app or tool that you’re unfamiliar with (you can choose something from this list if you want) and try it out. Then, in a blog post, provide an overview of the tool as well as a review of the tool, including its strengths, weaknesses, and potential for teachers’ use in the classroom. Where might its usage fall on the SAMR model? 

For this, I really focused on the Google Chrome extensions. Being a university student who is constantly doing projects and essays, I am always using chrome. With using chrome while doing these assignments, I always find that I have around 20-30 tabs open at a time. This can be overwhelming and it is very disorganized when you are trying to find a certain article or webpage. To end this stress, I have downloaded “One Tab” as a chrome extension. This extension allows you to compress all of your open tabs into one singular tab where you can divide them into their own separate “tab groups” with just a click of a button. Overall improving the users experience by having less clutter and being able to easily find what they are looking for. I’ll go step by step to demonstrate how this extension works.

1. Have plenty of tabs open on your google chrome browser.
2. Once downloaded, the button for One Tab will appear in the top right corner of your chrome browsing page like so. 
3. Click on the One Tab icon.
4. All of your tabs will then appear onto one tab just like this. This makes it much more organized and easier to find what you need. 
5. You then can click on the “more…” botton above all of your tabs and create tab groups which can make all of your tabs even more accessible and easier to find. As you can see, I named one group learning centres and the other EDTC 300.

Any time you have more tabs opened and you also want those on the One tab’s tab, all you have to do is go to any opened tabs and click the one tab icon and they will all be automatically added to your one tab.

This extension’s strengths would be that it keeps things organized and is very easy to use. I can honestly say that I can’t think of any weaknesses. I overall find this extension so helpful and life changing for someone who, during the school year, has too many tabs open. With this google extension, there are absolute uses within the classrooms for teachers. As teachers, we want to be integrating technology into the classroom and with that, often comes research, online planning, and using internet based resources. All of these things require multiple tabs at a time to be opened so with One tab, a teacher can easily access what they are looking for so they do not waste precious class or planning time. This extension overall makes a teachers life more organized by having everything that they need in one place. Knowing that everything is in one place allows for some stress to be lifted off a teachers shoulders and everyone knows that is crucial!

Relating to the SAMR model, this google chrome extension would fall under modification. Under this model modification is “tech allowing for significant task redesign.” With using one tab you are simply redesigning how you utilize tabs while doing a task. One tab redesigns this experience by allowing all tabs to be readily available in one place. With this redesign, your task of searching for a specific tab becomes improved because the tab is now easier to find and is more accessible.