It’s just a little easier to find your apps these days and to discover and connect to new ones.

On Friday Google announced a new feature in its Drive interface.  The Create menu now expands to list a lovely variety of  third-party Drive-connected apps.  These apps may now be conveniently added to your Create menu in a list to the right of the official Google Apps–documents, presentations, spreadsheets, forms, and drawings.

You may either search for the apps you want to list or browse for them in a pull-down menu.  After you connect them, they are loaded directly from your Drive.

The menu offers a growing list of apps, including categories for education, productivity and utilities.  And they all seem to be free.

This new feature makes it easier to discover apps from the Chrome web store and the work of Chrome app developers.

This is going to be a welcome function for Google App schools as we recommend the best apps for learning and creativity and, in general, for teachers and learners in search of web-based strategies for organization, productivity, creativity and collaboration.

My students are already excitedly shopping for apps.