In the school at which I teach we have eighty minute class periods. Eighty minutes is a long time for anyone, let alone teenagers, to stay in one room and on task. Therefore, I break up the time with varied activities and “break times” during the eighty minutes. One tool that can help to get the students and me to not stretch the “break times” is to use a countdown timer. Online Stopwatch is a free website that gives you the choice of a stopwatch function or a countdown function. You can set the countdown timer for any length of time and an alarm sounds when time is up.

Applications for Education
Display the Online Stopwatch countdown timer on an LCD projector to keep yourself and your students aware of how much time they have left for their “break time.” Make sure you plug-in your speaker so that everyone can hear the alarm when time has expired.