If you're like me, you often plan lessons down to the minute only to run out of time in the end because you let something run on longer than it should have. Of course, monitoring and adjusting is part of the job, and often we should allow more time for a discussion or activity than we originally planned. Nonetheless, I can think of several times when I wanted students to do something (for instance, share with a partner) for a specific length of time and not a second longer. Then I wanted them to move on to the next time-specific activity. In many of these cases I just simply lost track of time because I was called over to help or got distracted in some other way. Now there's a solution:
NextUp. This site allows you to create agenda items with specific time allotments for each item. This is done on the fly--there's no account sign up and it's very easy and intuitive to use.
First, go to the
site and start adding your agenda items/topics with the amount of time you want to allot for each activity.
Once you've added all your items/topic, select "Create Agenda." That will take you to a new screen that will allow you to "Start the Meeting."
And you're done . . . the clock will wind down and you and students can monitor how much time is left by watching the seconds tick away if you project the site for all to see:
That's it--it really is that simple. Drawbacks? There's no restarting the clock or pausing, so this wouldn't be appropriate for activities that truly depend on you being flexible about time. However, in certain circumstances, I think this tool would have really kept me and my students on track, in particular when students were working in groups and needed to monitor their time. I hate to think about how much time was wasted sometimes because I failed to keep us on track.
What do you think? What is a series of activities (aka "Topics") in your class that you could use this for? Take it for a spin and tell us how it goes.
