Windows Vista

I have an old PC in which the program stopped responding after I tried to close it. Also, it would be nice if the list could be shuffled only once and then stop (option accessible from settings perhaps) instead of having to click "stop". Those aside, I managed to shuffle all my over 8000 CDs to random order with it, which was nice, as I'm currently started to play them with my newly acquired XTZ CD player, in the order that the shuffling provided.
Oh, I like to do other things randomly shuffling as well. Perhaps this program will help me with those too.

A great tool for the classroom.

I found a link on a forum on the TES website. I am a HLTA and a trainee teacher and I intend to use The hat in my work and on placement. I know that it is going to be really useful for me
Thanks A

I have shown my staff the hat to use for talking partners and they thought it was great. got your website from recently attending a Shirley Clarke conference. Thank you

The kids love it and can hardly wait to see whose name will be next.

it worked great!

Very handy application.

I love The Hat! It's perfect for drawing a winner for the book giveaway I'm having right now. :)

Such a simple piece of software that has made such a difference to my class.
I use an interactive whiteboard and so all the children can see that 'jobs' are given and readers are chosen completely at random. This is particularly useful for the child who can sometimes feel that 'it's not fair'
10 out of 10

We love using the HAT software. It is very simple to use and has many useful applications.

Thanks

I used "The Hat" to demonstrate a new way to randomly select participants using technology. The teacher's loved winning a gift certificate and plan to use it with their students.

My students and I love this application. I link it to my powerpoint slides and RMEasiteach lessons that I project with our LCD projector. When the kids see "The Hat" picture on a slide, they are instantly motivated to pay attention and be ready to respond in case they get picked.

Unfortunately I have a Mac and am unable to use the program.

Haven't used yet, but intend to try in out with my class in September.

just great! just great! what a great hat!

Just awesome, lots of fun and does the trick
Jennifer

Fun little utility! Works very well. It even allows you to import a list of names from a text file, which is very convenient!

We have enjoyed using The Hat! It has worked great for our needs!

Super and user friendly program! Love it!

Great product, my class of 7 and 8 year olds love it.

Worked great...saved a lot of time, exactly what I was looking for.

The tool works great. A+

It put a toolbar in that I didn't want and didn't ask for. I deleted the whole program.

I love it. There are no longer any arguments about the Secret Santa/Gift Swap events I organise on my dating site. Best of all, I can see this being useful in the lessons I teach too. It's a basic idea, but one that saves paper, time and mucking around.

I really enjoy using the hat in my classroom. The students like the fact that they get to see their names come up. It ensures that I am impartial when choosing students to go to the board.

Thanks for a nifty program. I will be using this in class to help choose students for the following: answering questions, working on the SMART Board, selecting student helpers, selecting table groups, etc. This will make various tasks much easier in my classroom.

Gary

This downloaded quickly. Super quick and easy to use. Will use it again and again! Thanks!!

Saves me time from cutting paper all the time.

This is a great way to choose who is going next without leaving anyone out or inadvertently calling on one child more frequently than others.

cool! used in primary classroom to sort the kids into pairs- they do not argue with the hat- works really well!!

I have not had a chance to use the "Hat" yet, but have been encouraged to use it the next time I want to randomize my students for a partnered test situation. We have discussed using partners for some of our tests, but were having difficulty finding just the right combination of fairness when selecting the teams that would test together. One of our teachers used the "Hat" randomizer and suggested it for our use.

Wonderful idea!

does anyone know of a mac version?
it looks like a great resource that i would like to use

Great basic app that does exactly what it claims to - pulls a name out of a hat! Love it!

I could not use it, as I needed to randomize some files for my digital picture frame. Pics come always in the same order, I wanted them to appera mixed.

Therefore I scrapped your programme.

Gregor

Brilliant product, does all it claims.

Program easy to use, the sfx and time it takes is a bit annoying. It seems like the program is trying to be used in some sort of presentation way, but it's tacky interface makes it not really suitable for that and some of its features make it slightl annoying for private use.

Great for simple randomizing for research, etc. The Hat is simple & fun to use.

Worked just as promised with be a little proggy that I will use often.

A very useful little program I can see use for it for many things. Thanks for making it availible to everyone.

I used it to do a free drawing for a couple of things I made. It was easy to use, and did the job! Thanks!

I think the hat is a great tool to use in the classroom. It would be great to have a function whereby the name was replaced back into the hat after being selected!!!

I use The Hat during class after we do a small group speaking activity. After they've completed their small group speaking (in Spanish), I choose two students randomly, using The Hat, who have to do it in front of the class. The kids love The Hat and hate The Hat all at the same time. Thank you for your product. I appreciate having it.

I downloaded The Hat to use to draw names for a Christmas gift exchange. It doesn't do that. It would be great for giveaways or a lottery whe you just need to draw a "winner."
I will keep it in mind for the future.

My students love it! We use it with my promethean interactive white board. It is really fun and easy to use.

Really easy to use and very random.

We run regular raffles on www.themummysclub.co.uk and wanted something to make it a little easier than physically cutting up bits of paper and popping them in to a hat.

A quick search on the Internet found The Hat - an amazing FREE program that takes all your names - shuffles them around and then picks one out!

Fantastic - I'll be recommending this to all partner sites

Richard Foleher
Administrator
The Mummys Club

It's a great litte device, magic.

I love the software although I have only used it one day. The only thing I would suggest for future versions is the ability to setup different class lists and being able to pull them up. I teach high school and I have 6 classes. It would be a wonderful feature not to have to import a new list every time I wish to use the software.

Thanks.

Our non-profit rewards staff with a monthly prize drawing. The Hat makes drawing winning names a lot of fun, keeps it legit., and takes away the ugh factor of having to do everything manually. It was painless to install and is very easy to update. I found it just in time! Thanks for sharing.

I love the Hat. It works extremely well. I will use it on a regular basis.

The hat is a fantastic way to generate random pairs, the kids at school love it; I can't believe it was free! Would highly recommend it.

Very good program. It would be nice if the chosen names displayed bigger on the screen. Also being able to change the sound file would be nice.

I would love if I could maximize the hat to full screen. Overall I love using it, I use it on my projector - projected on my smart screen but when I use it, it's hard to read the numbers, it's very small - if it could be maximized to full screen it would be much better.

Your program was just what I was looking for , it works great.

I like the idea but the hat graphic is a bit small. Also, a bit more fan fare when a name is pulled from the hat would be nice. I actually like the shuffle function a bit better because of the visual action, and the name that ends up at the top of the list could be the "winner" as easily as the name pulled from the hat. I'm using it to pick a random winner based on homework completion for each chapter in Algebra 2; the students seem to like it.

Thanks for such a great product. This is exactly what I was looking for drawing out a random item from a text file.

I'm not using it for names, rather ideas for my friends and family to experience together.

Again thanks.

I have only tested the program so far. Not put it to actual use, but that is coming.
My testes have been excellent and if it continues to perform like that it will be great.

Wow what a fab hat, I just love it! Can't wait to see what eles there is to download! Can't believe it's free! Thanks.

I was looking for another way to use random selelction in my classroom. Someone emailed the link to me and I tried it out. I love how easy it is to use. I love the sound effect too. If you are really working on improving the Hat then my only suggestion is to make the name bolder and larger so that it can be seen more easily by the class. Maybe one more thing....having the option of adding the name back into the mix would be an additional benefit.

It will be so great to start using The Hat in my middle school computer lab. Do you know how long I have been looking for something like this? Too long... The design is great. My students can't argue when they are paired up by... That Wonderful Hat!!!! Donna

Easy to use and organize. Options for singles and pairs - also good for Christmas gift draws.

This program is awesome despite the fact it lacks a few features, that or I overlooked the software completely. The only thing that I would change would be allowing more than one name in the shuffle. I found a way around it though, and if you type the person name in, then hit space and enter, it goes through. Adding more than one of the same names would be a great benefit. Keep up the great work guys! Love the software. :) Two thumbs up & 5/5

Just what I needed and easy to use!

This is a a rather simple program for forming random teams. I needed it to make teams out of people who wanted to play but didn't have a set team. I preformed exactly as I had hoped. My only complaint, and it is very nit picky, is that the "Pick a Person" function has a rather anoing sound everytime it works. That can easily be rectified by muting the sound. Not something that should deter someone from downloading this great bit of software.

The hat is a very very good program, and it has helped me a ton in my decision making. Dont change a thing.

Great piece of software. Exactly what I was looking for. Allows you to pick one or more random names from a list. Useful for giving out prizes in a lottery-type way. You can type in every entry in the list or load it from a text file. Also, you can save result in a text file. The interface is a little ugly, but hey, it's the functionality we're looking for, isn't it?

It worked great, caused a lot of laughs, easy to install and use, we will be usung this program from now on to randomly choose names, Good job on this.
thank you.
D.Z.

What a great little program. Just right for my random numbers and other issues. Easy to install and use.

I'll be using this to draw names from a hat for a non-profit club. I like the simple UI to add names, but it would be nice to be able to import lists (ie from excel). Different UI's like hat, slot machine and playing cards would be a nice feature. I'll be showing and telling everyone. Thanks.

John

I'm very impressed. This application is just what I needed for my group to randomly assign a covered parking space each month to one person. Here in Tucson where it gets very hot in the summer this is a big perk.

Dave Boskee

excellent program, so easy to use.
The Hat is just what it is, I've used it for work, where we run meat raffles, put all the names in, shuffle the order of winners, and everyone sees it as a totally random selection of names, again, great wee program, thanks heaps guys.

I needed this for family reunion activities. This is just amazing and the interface is cute and fun. I had guests in my house and had top pick someone to do a task and then I pulled The Hat to pick the person. My daughter exclaimed full of surprise: You got The Hat??? She said her teacher uses it to choose kids to to stuff in class and they hate it but they love it at the same time... hehe. I LOVE IT!!!!!

I was trying to set up a secret santa sort of thing that would send an email to each person telling them whom they were supposed to buy gifts. I wanted to participate as well but this program shows me all the people and who they would be purchasing for so it would ruin the secret for me. I still think the program is nice, but I won't use it often enough for it to take up space on my computer.

I downloaded the new version (1. 6) and have found no differences to the previous version. I could not find the extra effects that were listed on the website.

Also, the program still does not provide the option of just selecting one name randomly rather than the list of names. This would be of greater benefit if it was an option to the already existing great product.

As a teacher, this randomly generated list allows the task of selecting students for oral presentations.

The Hat was useful at first. However, quickly I found I couldn't use it. There was an error that prevented me from running it after just a few minutes.

I'm sure it is a fine project, but I couldn't make it work for me.

It works pretty much exactly as it says it does, could not ask for more!

As a classroom teacher the hat is an excellent resource. I was actually ploughing through the web to find a program that would give me just one random name from a list when I found the hat. I use the program for selecting a pupil to answer a question. Advances that I would like would be for the program to select a single random name then disgard this name for the next selection automatically. Ideally you could chose the number of pupils that you want to select, so upto six random pupils can be choosen at any one time. Another advancement would be perhaps a fancy skin or graphic to go with the program. This would make the Hat perfect as a pupil selection tool.
Many thanks, the program is fantastic as it is.
1ms.

This program is great for randomizing. I'd use it whenever there was a need.

Does anyone know of software that is similar to the hat, but only selects one name from the list rather than supply an ordered list?
Welcome all feedback.

Successfully did the job I needed - to shuffle a Secret Santa list.

I downloaded this to use for our annual family Christmas grab bag. It works great. The only problem I encountered was that some of the matches where the same (same name picked same name) so I had to mix them up a couple of times to get it so everyone had someone different to buy a gift for. But, it works great!!

I think the program is fantastic and extremely easy to use. The only thing I can think of that would make it better, is being able to randomly select just one name from the list (eg. to draw a winner of a raffle), rather than just simply having an ordered list.

Very nice

The Hat helps me to randomly and fairly choose participants for Q&A, quizes and round-robin roleplays. Thanks!

Uninstall the hat got here
http://www.sofotex.com/RegCleaner-download_L4965.html
download regcleaner, run it
erase the hat entry in software and then erase it from the backup
reinstall the hat and it works!

After I installed The Hat and started using it, I was excited. I often need to assign random people to various tasks around my office. Unfortunately I experienced a "run-time error 13". I'm not a programmer so I'm not sure what that meant. I wasn't able to run the program any longer. I un-installed it & then re-installed it, only to find the same problem. Any help would be appreciated.

Daniel

This is very nifty for any event that a drawing of names is needed. I used it to draw seeds for a pool tournament. And I can think of many other uses for it. Great job guys!!

Loved it...great for staff development "give aways" or "door prizes". Also can be used for selecting a student to complete a "special" task. Wonderful and engaging!

I will be able to use this in a variety of ways to organize activities in my classroom.

For someone with long lists of names to work with it can be a easy program. Also easy is the way it reads textfiles.

Excellent Value for price, but Limited features and "wow" effect. Would like to see something like Raffle Bag - where only one number comes up.

The Hat is a nice program. We had the need to do some drawing and this fit the bill nicely. The import/export and print features are what put this in the top for me. I tested the functionality on all the features and found they worked well.

very good program, and text on seperate line can be jumbled up.

I am using it to shuffle words for a monthly bingo game I host for some senior friends and it works great!

We are going to use it as a war-gaming utility for tabletop wargames. often the individual units have to roll initiative. This was formerly done with dice or cards. Now we can just list the units and generate the order in which we want to see them. This is a very simple app, but useful. I wish I could get the source so that I could use it to help learn to code in VB. I would be tweaking this a million different ways.

The Hat does just what you want. Very simple basic program that is easy to use. If you were a intermediate programmer, you could write this code yourself, but since someone else already did, why bother.

I was looking for a program that would randomize a set list of names I have for a raffle drawing that I was planning. I didn't want to go through the hassle of handing out tickets that could be lost, tracking who won what, etc. so I searched around for a name randomizer instead and discovered this gem. The Hat fits my need perfectly and is definitely the right price (free!). If you're looking for an alternative to paper raffle tickets or want to randomize your Secret Santa list (it's not too late!), this is the perfect program for you.

this is a great, easy to use product

The hat is truly a magnificent and magic piece of software for teaching!

Its a good way to impartially choose an order.
The only thing I would add was an option (or mode) where a single name is chosen rather than an order.