Classroom name picker
A student chooser for the front of the room. Paste your class list once and it is still there next lesson, on the same computer, without an account and without the names ever leaving it.
Cold calling without the flinch
The reason to randomise who answers is that hands-up questioning consistently samples the same four children. Randomising makes every student a plausible next answer, which changes how the other twenty-nine listen to the question — the attention comes from the possibility of being chosen, not from being chosen.
The research-backed way to run it is to ask the question, leave a real pause so everybody thinks, and only then spin. Spinning first tells twenty-nine children they can stop listening. It is a small ordering change and it is most of the benefit.
Randomising does not remove your judgement, and it should not. If the wheel lands on a child who is having a bad morning, spin again or take the answer to the room. A picker that a teacher cannot override is a worse tool, not a fairer one.
On the projector, at the back of the room
The wheel scales to the width it is given, so full-screening the browser makes it as large as the display allows. Names are drawn at the largest size that fits their slice, which for a class of thirty is legible from the back of a normal classroom on a normal projector.
The winner is also announced in large text below the wheel and read out by screen readers, so the result never depends on distinguishing two similar colours across a room, or on being able to see the pointer at all. Colour on the wheel is decoration; the text is the answer.
If a spinning wheel is a problem — for a student with a vestibular condition, or on a display where motion is distracting — the animation is skipped entirely for anyone whose device asks for reduced motion, and the result appears immediately. That is a system setting on the student's or the room's device, not a checkbox here.
Everyone gets a turn
Switch on "Remove the winner after each spin" at the start of a lesson and the wheel becomes a turn tracker: each child leaves the wheel after answering, so by the end of the round everyone has been asked exactly once and nobody has been asked twice. The list of who has already gone stays on screen, which is also the answer when a child says they have not had a turn.
Between lessons, the simplest way to be fair across a week rather than within one lesson is to give the children who were not picked a heavier slice: add :2 to their names and they are twice as likely to come up next time. It is cruder than a formal rotation and it takes ten seconds.
Common questions
Is my class list stored anywhere?
It is saved in your own browser's local storage on that one computer, so it survives closing the tab. It is never uploaded, there is no account, and we cannot read it. Clearing your browser data or emptying the box removes it.
How do I make sure every student gets picked once?
Turn on "Remove the winner after each spin". Each student leaves the wheel as they are chosen, so a full round covers the class exactly once, and the names already drawn stay listed on screen.
Can I use this on an interactive whiteboard?
Yes. The wheel fills the width it is given, so full-screening the browser makes it as large as the board allows, and the Spin button works with a touch, a click or the keyboard.