How to Use Helperbird with Google Classroom Work

Your teacher posts the work in Google Classroom.

Helperbird works on that work once you install one add-on.

Install the Helperbird Add-on

There is one Helperbird add-on for Google Workspace. There is no separate Classroom add-on, and you do not need one.

Installing the Helperbird add-on adds Helperbird to Google Docs, Google Slides and Google Sheets. That is where Classroom assignments open, so that is where the reading tools live.

Install the Helperbird add-on once and it is there in all three.

On a school account, an admin may need to approve the add-on before you can install it.

Assignments in Docs, Slides and Sheets

Open the assignment from Classroom. A document opens in Google Docs, a presentation in Google Slides, a spreadsheet in Google Sheets.

Click Extensions, choose Helperbird, then Open Helperbird. The sidebar opens beside your work.

Dyslexia sets the text in the file to Lexend Deca.

Readable changes text size and line spacing. In Sheets it changes text size, column width, row height and text wrap instead.

Listen, Translate and Immersive all work on the text you have selected in the file. Listen reads it aloud, Translate translates it, and Immersive opens it in Immersive Reader.

On the free plan the add-on sends up to 1,200 characters to Immersive Reader at a time. Sheets has no Immersive tile.

Statistics counts words, characters, sentences and reading time. A11Y checks a document for accessibility problems and is in Google Docs only.

PDFs Posted in Classroom

Classroom shows PDFs in Google's own viewer, which the add-on cannot reach. Download the file first.

1. Download the PDF from Classroom to your computer.
2. In the Helperbird popup, open All Features, find PDF Reader, then click the open icon at the end of its row. It is labelled Open PDF Reader for screen readers.
3. Select Open PDF and pick the file.

The file stays on your computer. Nothing is uploaded to open it.

For the longer version, read how to open PDFs from Drive, Classroom or Gmail.

On the Classroom Page Itself

The Helperbird browser extension runs on Classroom pages the same way it runs on any website. Open the Helperbird popup and turn on the tools you want.

Right-click a page or some selected text and the Helperbird menu gives you play, stop, dictionary, Immersive Reader and translate. That menu is in Chrome, Edge and Firefox, not Safari.

What This Does Not Do

• Installing Helperbird adds nothing to Google Classroom itself. There is no Open in Helperbird in Classroom's Open with menu, and none when you right-click a file.
• The add-on can only see the file you have open. The rest of your Drive stays out of reach.
• The add-on does not open PDFs. It works inside Google Docs, Slides and Sheets only.
• The browser extension cannot change the font inside docs.google.com, so use the sidebar's Dyslexia tile in those files instead.
• Your add-on settings do not carry over to the Helperbird browser extension.

Video Tutorial

Need Additional Help?

Ran into a snag while getting started? No worries at all. Reach out to our friendly Helperbird support team, and we'll help you smooth things out in no time.