You spend a lot of time at school. Why not have a little fun! Here are 5 tricks and funny things that you can do with your students, staff, or administrator. Most of them will require briefly accessing someone’s Chromebook (without them knowing). You can also make friends with your IT director and apply some of these tricks through the Google Admin Console.

Whether it’s April Fools Day or you just need a laugh, these Chromebooks pranks are harmless and highly entertaining!

1. Google Gravity

Google Gravity is a spoof Google homepage that “falls to pieces” as soon as you move the mouse. Set up this prank by going to Chrome Settings > Appearance > and changing the default home page to this link.

Even after Google falls to pieces, the search box still works! 

2.  Fun with Wallpaper

The Google Admin Console has the ability to push out wall paper to the Chromebooks managed by your district. This provides all sorts of entertaining possibilities!

Broken Screen – find an image of a shattered computer screen and push it out to all of your students. They will freak out when they think (for a second) that their screen has shattered!

iPad – Turn your Chromebooks into iPads. Push out a wallpaper that looks like the home screen of an ipad.

Teachers  – take a series of funny pictures featuring teachers and staff members and use them as student wallpaper.

3.  Word Replace

Type in a word you want to find and another word you want to replace it with. I recommend using an emoji symbol (This one? ?) as the replacement. You can get WordReplace from the Chrome Webstore.

Replace a friends  name with an emoji character they remind you of.

 

4.  Prank ‘em

I will wrap up this prank post with the ultimate prank extension: Prank ‘em. This one is super sneaky because you can adjust the frequency to make it unpredictable. Options include turning images upside down, hiding the mouse cursor, making text blurry, or rendering everything in black and white.

I installed it on my own computer, forgot to disable it, and couldn’t figure out why my screen was in black-and-white. ?

Have some fun, but don’t get yourself in trouble! As with any prank, make sure it is in good taste and won’t cause harm. When in doubt, err on the side of caution.