Common Clasroom problems

Teaching is one of the most wondeful experiences you can go through, but as in many other things, more than one time we have to face a problem or problems. Some days ago I've been listening to some classmates and they have faced many problems in their classes, but for the good of everything they could overcome all that thanks to the knowledge they have aquired during all these years of studying. There are many problems that we can face in classes; most of them can be solved in an easily way. The most common problems are tardiness; even I have a hard time arriving places on time. But the truth is, tardiness is not only rude, it can be distracting and disruptive of other students. If tardiness becomes a problem for your students, make sure they are disciplined. Set rules about tardiness and penalties for breaking them. Besides that, the persistent use of first-language; when teaching English as a foreign language, this is possibly the most common problem. It's important to encourage students to use English, and only English. However, if students begin conversing in their first language, move closer to the student. Ask them direct questions like "do you have a question?" Another idea is to establish a set of class rules and develop a penalty system for when they use their first-language.

Using Voice Thread in the classroom

There are many instruments and tools we can use as teachers, last time I talked about two that are very useful, Prezi and PowerPoint, but with every day we learn more and more and believe me I was sorprised for another important tool I discovered just one week ago, its name is Voice Thread. To be honest, this was completely new for me, I've never heard anything like that before which is one of the reason why I like a lot. Voice Thread is amazing, you can upload images, music, videos, etc etc, but you will say, dude many other things are exactly the same, and yes you may be right, but anyone is like this. you can even comment her using your webcam or your own voice recording the comment!!! Great isn't it?

I believe this tool it can be very useful in any level of eduaction because it is easy and it has many things to do, you can have fun creating your own voices about whatever you want, your favorite food, tv show, colors, etc. Even though if you want to use Voice Thread in its coolest level you have to pay, there is a free version which is really great. So I defenitely recommend to use this tool if it is possible in the classroom.

Prezi vs PowerPoint

There are many tools you can use to improve the quality of a presentation you want to make, and the one we know for sure is PowerPoint; this is is maybe the most used tool people choose for their presentations, but honestly after some time using PowerPoint you get a little bit bored and tired of the same because even though there are many things you can do with it, like adding images, videos, music, etc, the pattern of all the diapos are the same. On the other hand, Prezi is completely different, but it has also many things in common with PowerPoint. I must say that I haven't used Prezi a lot, but in the few time I have suing it, I have discovered many other things you cannot do with PowerPoint. I personally believe that Prezi is much better than PowerPoint because it makes the work easier and even funnier so you do not get bored and usea many different themes, animations, videos, images and all the stuff Prezi has to give us.