Utilities

Random Name Selector

A tool built by teach-ict.com.

This enables you to enter the names of students and then pick one or more at random. Useful for deciding who should answer a question or who should work together in groups.

No hands name picker

This has been a very popular tool with teachers.

Rather than the same students putting up their hands this utility will enable you to select a student randomly to answer the question.

Developed by Tim Hyde

Random name generator

A brilliant way to get even the quieter students to answer questions.

Type all of the names from your different classes onto one worksheet and then use the random name generator to pick a student's name.

You will need to activate macros to enable this tool to work.

Kindly contributed by Laurence James

Magic 8 ball student selector

The magic 8 ball app. chooses a student at random from a list of student names you type in.

You can also turn on weighting so that students who get a question wrong are more likely to get asked another question and conversely students who get questions right are less likely to be asked in future. You can set the weighting limits to whatever you like or simply turn weighting off.

To use:

1. Download a copy of the spreadsheet (exe file)
2. Save it to your area
3. Open the file and select the ‘Vars tab’ (at the bottom)
4. Enter your students names (with a weighting of 1 next to each name) in the shaded area
5. Switch back to the ‘Magic 8 Ball’ tab
6. Test it’s working by clicking the magic 8 ball and it should shake and select a student randomly
7. If you are using weighting when you click the ‘Correct’ button  the students weighting goes down, if you click the ‘Incorrect’ button the students weighting goes up
8. Save the spreadsheet ready for use in the class
9. You need to remember to save the spreadsheet each time you close it so that the weightings are updates

Detention Clock

This superb excel tool can be used to 'add time' to account for time wasted by students.

Author: Joe Nutt

From: Teacher Resource Exchange

Traffic Lights

A really useful Powerpoint that can be displayed on the board to indicate to students what the current noise level in a classroom is like.

Author: Joe Nutt

From: Teacher Resource Exchange

Polster

A brilliantly versatile tool which allows the teacher to take an instant poll on any question in the classroom, and display the results as a graph. Designed to be projected, ideally on an interactive whiteboard.

Author: Joe Nutt

From: Teacher Resource Exchange

Countdown clock

A useful Excel tool that can be displayed onto the whiteboard to give an indication to students of how long they have left to complete a task.

Author: Mohamed Imran Noorgat

From: Teacher Resource Exchange