Screen Soft Light / Timekeeping / CLASSROOM TIMER

05:00

Space starts or pauses, R resets, F goes fullscreen.

No. 001 · CLASSROOM TIMER

Classroom timer — a big countdown for the projector

  • 01 Readable from the back row
  • 02 Presets from 1 minute to 1 hour
  • 03 Adjust time without restarting

A large, high-contrast countdown built for the front of a classroom. Pick a preset, press Start and go fullscreen on the projector or smartboard; students see exactly how much time is left, and the alarm marks the end of the activity.

Other timers —
1 min2 min3 min5 min10 min15 min20 min30 min1 hourCustomAlarm clockSunrise alarmOK-to-wake
§ 01

Why a visible timer helps a class

When students can see the time left, they pace their own work and transitions get quicker. A countdown on the board replaces repeated time checks, gives quieter students a clear signal for when to finish, and makes activity lengths predictable from one lesson to the next.

§ 02

Teachers often use one to two minutes for transitions and clean-up, five minutes for warm-ups and exit tickets, ten to fifteen minutes for group work and twenty to thirty minutes for independent reading or longer tasks.

Common classroom timings

Teachers often use one to two minutes for transitions and clean-up, five minutes for warm-ups and exit tickets, ten to fifteen minutes for group work and twenty to thirty minutes for independent reading or longer tasks. Every one of those is a single click from the preset list.

§ 03

Made for the projector

The digits scale with the screen and fullscreen removes everything else from view, so the countdown stays readable from the back row on a projector or smartboard. Keyboard shortcuts — Space, R and F — let you run it from the teacher's computer without hunting for buttons.

Procedure

Three moves to peak output

  1. 01

    Pick a time

    Choose a preset from the list above the timer, or type minutes and seconds and press Set.

  2. 02

    Project it fullscreen

    Press F on the classroom computer so the countdown fills the smartboard.

  3. 03

    Give extra time on the fly

    Press +1 min if the class needs it — the countdown keeps running.

Inquiries

Questions worth asking

Q.01 Do I need an account to use it in class?
No. The timer runs in the browser with no sign-up and nothing to install, so it works on school computers with locked-down software.
Q.02 Can students see adverts during the countdown?
Fullscreen mode shows only the timer, so nothing else appears on the projector while the countdown is running.
Q.03 Why does the screen change color?
The timer is a light as well as a clock. It starts as cool 6500K daylight and warms through the color temperatures of a sunset — 4000K, 3000K, 2200K — to an ember red at zero, so you can tell roughly how much time is left from across a room without reading the digits. Turn off Color light for a plain dark timer.
Q.04 Does the timer keep running if I switch tabs?
Yes. The countdown is calculated from the clock rather than counted tick by tick, so it finishes on time even when the browser slows down a background tab. The alarm plays when it ends, as long as the tab is still open and the sound toggle is on.
Q.05 Will my screen turn off while the timer runs?
On browsers that support the Screen Wake Lock API (Chrome, Edge and recent Safari), the timer asks the device to keep the screen on while it runs, and releases that request when you pause or the countdown ends.
Cross-reference

Try adjacent plates