99 Awesome Firefox Add-ons for Educators - Online Courses

They say today’s educators are overworked and underpaid. Luckily, the web offers tools to make your professional life more manageable and less stressful. These add-ons might not change your salary, but we’re sure they’ll ease your workload.

Shortcuts

You probably have enough on your plate to keep you busy through the week, so let these applications make your life at least a little easier.

1. ScrapBook: Helps you organize recently visited sites and create collections based on browsing history.
2. Morning Coffee: This application facilitates your morning routine by displaying the Web sites you visit daily.
3. Quick Restart: Allows you to restart Firefox faster than normal.
4. LastPass: LastPass is a free online password manager and Form Filler that makes your web browsing easier and more secure.
5. Feedly: A magazine-like startpage. A fast and stylish way to read and share the content of your favorite sites and services.
6. Sxipper: Forget your passwords! Sxipper accurately fills in forms, manages passwords and your OpenIDs.
7. Shooter: This browser extension allows you to take a screenshot of a given browser page, or a specific region of it.
8. Speed Dial: Direct access to your most visited Web sites.
9. Wikalong: Embeds a wiki in the Sidebar of your browser, which corresponds to the current page you are viewing.
10. CyberSearch: Adds advanced Google Search capabilities to the Firefox 3 address bar.

Calendars and Timers

Stay focused and on-time with these useful tools.

1. Better GCal: Adds collapsible header and sidebar, event title text wrap, colored weekend days, week numbers, and skins to Google Calendar.
2. GCal Popup: Google Calendar in a nice overlay so that your calendar can be updated without ever leaving the web page.
3. ReminderFox: ReminderFox displays and manages lists of date-based reminders and ToDo’s.
4. TabAlarm: Schedule tabs to open as reminders.
5. Grocery List Generator: This is a helpful little tool to store your recipe-ingredients and other groceries you need regularly. It creates a well-organized grocery list to help make your grocery shopping as easy as possible.
6. Stopwatch: Simple stopwatch you can use to time activities. Adds a "Stopwatch" entry in your Tools menu.
7. TimeTracker: Do you spend too much time on Firefox? Keep track of how much you browse with TimeTracker.
8. Auto Timer: An automatic timer tool including a stopwatch, world clocks, countdown timers and the ability to track years, months, days to a particular date.
9. Toodledo: Quickly add tasks to your Toodledo.com to-do list from anywhere.
10. TodoCue: Puts TodoCue.com todo lists in GMail and Google Calendar sidebars.

Research

Use these apps to help you brainstorm and research topics before assigning projects to your class.

1. Sketcher: A firefox extension that allows you to draw graphic comments over web pages. You can link ’sketches’ to other ’sketches’, webpages or files, organize sketches by topic and add in-line comments.
2. Zotero: This will help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources.
3. Research Word: Search any word on a page via context (right click) menu or from Address Bar shortcuts from a variety of resources, including Wikipedia, dictionaries, and media sites.
4. Net Notes: Store Notes on Websites in your Bookmarks.
5. Evernote: This extension provides a toolbar button and context menus to easily add a selection or an entire page to Evernote.
6. Notefish: Notefish makes internet research simple. Notefish is the easiest way to save, organize and share snippets of internet web pages that you find. You can customize the resulting notes by moving them around and changing their colors.
7. iCyte: Create, share and comment on annotations. The webpages you annotate are saved to the iCyte server. This ensures your content is available forever, regardless of the status of the original site.
8. OutWit Docs: OutWit Docs is a document harvester. Presented in icon or file list view, like your desktop, it allows you to easily search the Web for PDF files, Office documents, and more.
9. RSVP Reader: A rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) tool that some research suggests may allow people to read text on the web up to 3.5 times faster.
10. Reference: Reference information at your fingertips.

Writing

Write with efficiency and expertice with Firefox’s help.

1. QuickFox Notes: A multi-tab note taking extension which saves data on bookmarks, so your notes will be synchronized if you have installed Xmarks or Mozilla weave without any new registration.
2. Write Area: Turns textareas into HTML fields enabled by FCKeditor.
3. Live Writerfox: Blog it from Windows Live Writer.
4. Dappad: Dappad notebook lets you write and read notes in the Firefox sidebar.
5. Word Count Plus: Counts number of words in selected text. Can add the count to a running total.
6. Spellbound: Adds spell check to Firefox.
7. Zemanta: Content recommendations while you write. Zemanta helps you enhance your emails and blogs with relevant images, videos, links or tags.
8. ScribeFire: ScribeFire is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.
9. WordPress Helper: The Firefox extension WordPress Helper helps you working with Wordpress by providing useful help and tools.
10. Clipmarks: Clipmarks lets you clip and share specific parts of articles, blog posts or anything else you read on the web.

Lesson Planning

Need help generating interesting, interactive lesson plans? Use these add-ons and teaching aides:

1. PlanbookEdu: PlanbookEdu is great for educators and administrators from any K-12 school.
2. Lessonopoly Gobbler: Lessonopoly Gobbler sidebar lets you drag and drop information you want to save in your lesson plans and projects.
3. Capture Fox: You can capture your screen and record your voice to make screencasts (tutorials, e-lessons, etc.).
4. OpenBerg: Read e-Books from Firefox.
5. QuoteURL Text: Quote URL text will copy selected text to the clipboard including Page Title, Location and copy date.
6. Pluribo: Using artificial intelligence, Pluribo scans all of the reviews on any Amazon webpage and summarizes them into a single paragraph.
7. KidZui: KidZui turns Firefox into fun, kid-safe browser and online playground for kids 3-12 with over a million kids games, YouTube videos, and websites.
8. Yahooligans: Search engine for kids and teens.
9. brOOzi: BrOOzi allows children to discover Internet in a safe and easy way.
10. Read It Later: Save pages of interest to read to your class at a later time. It eliminates cluttering of bookmarks with sites that are merely of a one-time interest.

Calculators

Because even math geniuses need numerical assistance sometimes!

1. Calculator: Calculator offers great features like history, conversions, many functions.
2. Inchfox: Converts pixels to inches and vice versa.
3. Status-bar Scientific Calculator: A tiny expandable calculator at the status bar for quick calculations.
4. Converter: Contextual unit, timezone, and currency converter on any web site; custom conversions for offline text also supported.
5. Graphing Calculator Toolbar: Enter up to 5 equations into this toolbar, then view the graphs using Firefox native SVG support. The toolbar allows rescaling the x and y coordinates and redefining the domain of x.
6. Data Analytics: enables importation, manipulation, analysis and graphing of data. Often websites lock their information in static tables, but this allows you to manipulate how information is listed.
7. FireCal: Body mass index, daily energy requirement, exchange rates, compound interest (calculates principal, interest rate, period, and balance), temperature, wind chill, and contains a high-expression math calculator.
8. AVZ Calculator: A simple calculator that can replace the standard computer calculator.

Video and Images

To keep your students intrigued, keep your lessons and lectures interactive.

1. Picnik: Add a menu options and a toolbar icon to make importing images into Picnik easier.
2. Cooliris 3D Wall: The fastest way to browse photos and videos from the Web or your desktop.
3. YouTube Downloader: Download YouTube Videos in FLV, 3GP, High-Quality MP4 (iPod compatible) and HD (high-definition) MP4.
4. OutWit Images: Browse though images online with just a few clicks: View and collect images from Web sources effortlessly. Display high-resolution photos with their source information.
5. VideoSurf: Get visual video summaries and related videos on Twitter, Google, YouTube, Yahoo! and more. See the contents of a video link before you click to watch the video.
6. Image Assistant: Opens any image in external viewer, thus allowing 4 zooming, rotating, & other rich functionality not available by default.
7. YouTube Toolbar: YouTube Toolbar lets you easily search, browse, share, and download your favorite videos from YouTube! Finally, its the toolbar you’ve been waiting for and it simply works.
8. ThumbnailCopy: An easy way to copy the HTML for an image in a link (like a thumbnail image). Just use the "Copy Image As Link" context menu item. If you’re often posting thumbnail images to blogs, this could be very helpful!
9. FoxFilter: FoxFilter is a personal content filter that helps block inappropriate content. FoxFilter comes with pre-defined filtering rules, but you can also add custom settings to block additional content as needed.
10. Video Download Helper: The easy way to download and convert Web videos from hundreds of YouTube-like sites. This works also for audio and picture galleries.

Dictionaries and Translators

Stay on top of your diction and language skills by utilizing the great add-ons below.

1. Dictionary 2.1.5: Comes in handy when you quickly want to find the meaning of a word.
2. Dictionary Switcher: Toggle between open dictionaries.
3. US English Dictionary: English United States (en-US) spellchecking dictionary.
4. Thesaurus: Thesaurus suggestions at your fingertips.
5. QuickWiki: Quick lookup in Wiktionary and Wikipedia, without the need to open a new tab. Just right-click a word while shift/ctrl/alt is pressed.
6. SnappyWords: English Dictionary and Thesaurus that allows you to find meaning of words and other associated words in a visually interactive display.
7. ImTranslator: ImTranslator includes Online Translator in 1640 language combinations.
8. FoxLingo: Translate web pages and text, learn languages, auto translate, and much more. Supports 53 languages and 36 free online translators.
9. SpanishTrans: Allows you to highlight an English word on the page that you’re visiting and get immediately the Spanish translation.
10. Spanish Dictionary (Spain): Dictionary of Spain-Spanish words and phrases.

Games

Both you and your students need a break from time to time, and the games below will provide just the hiatus you need.

1. BEEweb: Beeweb.org is portal to a series of multiplayer educational games. Spellbee.org is about literacy, Moneybee is financial literacy and algebra, Patternbee regards spatial reasoning, etc.
2. Kibagames: Kibagames Search add-on for Firefox.
3. ChessGames: Search & replay chess games.
4. WordLearner: Teach words in any language, including English, Spanish, French, German, or Italian – while you surf the web! Students can practice vocabulary with online games, mobile phone software and printable puzzles & flashcards.
5. Mines: The classic game of Minesweeper recreated for Firefox. Includes several interesting variations, such as games with hexagonal rather than square tiles, games with multiple mines in some tiles.
6. Gamespot Menu: Navigate the Gamespot website and forums through a drop down menu in FireFox, with added customization for user pages.
7. Ping Pong: A simple game extension.
8. Numpad Typing Drills: Teach touch typing of the numpad keys.
9. Typing Lessons: Use this to help teach keyboard typing.

Miscellaneous

Here are 12 final Firefox applications that will make your classroom your favorite place.

1. Panic Button: Quickly hide all browser windows with a click of a button.
2. CustomizeGoogle: CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhance Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam).
3. AutoCopy: Select text and it’s automatically copied to the clipboard.
4. FireShot: Creates screenshots of web pages (entirely or just visible part). Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations.
5. Wolfram Alpha Google: Display Wolfram Alpha results in Google searches. No need to switch search engines when you can use both at once.
6. 1-Click Weather: View current weather conditions including regional Doppler radar maps and/or international satellite maps and up to 5 days of forecast information within the browser and allows for instant access to detailed and customized weather content.
7. ColorfulTabs: Colors each tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish.
8. MultiLink: Allows you open, copy or bookmark multiple links at the same time rather than having to do them all individually.
9. Personas: Personas are free, easy-to-install “skins” for Firefox that make changing the look of the browser as easy as changing your shirt. With Personas, you can individualize your browser with hundreds of artist-created designs or create your own design.
10. Too Many Tabs: TooManyTabs allows you to store as many tabs as you like by adding extra rows in the Firefox! It saves your browser’s space and memory as idle tabs are put aside.
11. Shrunked: Resizes attached images in email before you send them, so your email gets sent faster.
12. Tutit: Bookmark your tutorials, access tutorials of other users.

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