- Paste the class list, one name per line.
- Give it a title, then save the wheel — it stays in this browser.
- Open fullscreen for the projector.
- Spin.
Not the same student twice
Classroom mode turns on “remove winner after spin”, so each name leaves the wheel once it comes up. Start over puts everyone back for the next lesson without touching the saved list.
Quiet by default
Sound off, a muted palette and no celebration animation. All three can be turned on if the room wants them.
Cold calling without putting anyone on the spot
A random name picker can raise participation or raise anxiety, and the difference is almost entirely in how the spin is used. Three habits do most of the work:
- Ask the question, then give thinking time, then spin. Spinning first tells everyone else they are off the hook and leaves one student thinking under an audience.
- Let a pass be a real option, with a return — “come back to me” costs nothing and removes the fear that makes some students stop listening entirely.
- Use it for volunteering as well as answering. Handing out jobs, choosing who reads next, picking whose work goes on the board: the wheel is neutral in a way that a teacher choosing is not.
The advantage over a hand-up is not fairness in the abstract, it is coverage. Most classes have four or five students who answer everything and a quiet group who go weeks without speaking, and a list that removes each name as it comes up fixes that without anybody being singled out.
Use the list for more than questions
The same saved class works for pairing for an activity, allocating classroom jobs for the week, deciding presentation order, and splitting into groups — that last one through the team generator, which shuffles the whole class before dealing it out so the teams are not just the register cut into four.
Presentation order is the one worth spinning publicly. Nobody wants to go first, and a wheel deciding it in front of the room ends the negotiation instantly.
Student names stay on the device
Lists are held in the browser and never uploaded, so there is no account to create for a class and no student names sitting on someone else's server. There is nothing to review for a data protection policy because nothing leaves the room.
The trade-off is real: a list saved on the classroom computer is not on your laptop at home, and clearing your browsing data clears saved wheels with it. If you teach from more than one machine, keep the class list somewhere you already keep it — your register, a document, a note — and paste it in. Rebuilding a class of thirty takes about a minute.
It also means first names are usually enough. There is rarely a reason to put full names on a projector, and two students sharing one can be told apart with an initial.