Bridges News — GAFE/ Chromebook

Cloud Privacy: Can you turn your Extensions Off? 0

For most extensions, it is a safe bet that they are always working. Even though you are not actually accessing their functionality, they are still doing their work.

For an extension to deliver that almost instant responsiveness that makes you forget the work is being done on a server, thousands of kilometres away, most extensions work not when you click on a specific function like “read-out-loud” or “reformat the page” but as soon as you load up the web page.

If the extension is clicked it feeds it back to you with the added functionality. If it’s not clicked, it doesn’t.

But the vacuuming-up of the information you're viewing in your browser and sending it to an external server, has probably happened regardless.

Extensions — What work is done in the Cloud vs. the local computer 0

Most extensions take data from your computer and send it to their server in the Cloud to do the work. From a developer’s standpoint, that’s the easiest and cheapest way to create and run an extension.

Extensions that look at the text or document you’re looking at — a text-to-speech reader, adblocker, a summarizer etc. — indiscriminately vacuum-up all the information that a user is reading and let the tools on their servers do the processing e.g. turn text into speech or apply algorithms that pull out the important ideas, shutdown ads etc. They then send that processed information back down to the local computer.

Think about what that means. All of what you are browsing, all the pages of all the sites you visit, are sent to a server somewhere and stored.

New accessibility supports in Chrome OS include Screen Reader & Dwell Click 0

On December 10th, Google dramatically improved the accessibility options in the Chromebook operating system, (Chrome OS) settings. Added were a screen reader and improvements for access with a touch screen and pointing devices.

In Flanders Fields – Symbolized! Tips, tricks and discoveries for using symbols for teaching a poem 1

To mark Remembrance Day we’re sharing a symbolized version of the classic poem “In Flanders Fields” by Canadian John McCrae with symbolized vocabulary cards, all created with the new Widgit Online. Widgit Online is the new cloud based symbol material maker for Windows, Chrome, Mac and shares to all of the above and iPads and other tablets too.