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| photo credit: vial3tt3r via photopin cc |
Tools For Random Selection or Random Grouping
@joe_edtech
Happy New Year! And while 2015 is just getting underway, Semester 1 at Deerfield High School is rapidly coming to a close. For a lot of you that means students will be presenting in class and reviewing for final exams. But how do you choose presentation order? How do you really mix up the study groups? In this post, I'll offer two online tools that will help you select student names truly at random and one downloadable tool that will help you select random student groups.
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| Random Name Picker |
First, for random selection, Random.org and Random Name Picker are two free and easy to use Web 2.0 tools for selecting students at random. Random Name Picker, part of a larger suite of free web apps from classtools.net, adds a visual element to the process of picking names. Simply copy and paste a list of students and then spin the wheel online. If you have a free account, you can save your lists to use again later. Also, this tool is HTML5, which means it works on Chromebooks, iPads, and other mobile devices. Random.org is less visually stimulating, but has many more options. On Random.org, you can pick random names, lists, numbers, or number sequences. (As an aside, you can also generate random passwords for your online accounts.)
If you are comfortable using Excel, you can download a tool created and generously shared by one of my colleagues. Click the link here and download the Excel file called "RandomGroups." When you open the spreadsheet, you will need to enable editing and enable macros (Excel will prompt you to do so.)
Copy and paste your class roster in column B under the "Roster" heading. Then simply enter the number of groups you want to create, click the "reset all" button, and then click "fill all." If you need to, you can still add or remove individual members of any group.
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Have a better way for choosing at random? Please, tell us how in the comment section below.
Randomizer.org is also cool. You can generate as many sets of numbers as you want. You can assign a number to each student and the group by number.
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