Final Reflection

This technology class has been a really big help to me. I really didn't think that computers or software would help at all in teaching or coaching. I will definitely make an effort to use technology more in my teaching. I think the biggest benefit that it has, is that it helps keep me organized. There are so many different programs to use that can help me keep track of specific things. I think the most useful thing that I learned this semester was how to create an easy webpage. That will really be helpful when I coach basketball.

The class was taught really well and had enough projects for use to learn the software and gain basic skills for the tools that we will use. I am really glad that this class was provided. Another thing that was really helpful was the internet safety part. That gave me the awareness to be really careful what I do and to not put my students in bad situations. Overall, this was a good experience and I will definitely use tech to help my students.

Studiocode

This studiocode project really helped me understand what I was doing well and not doing well. I believe that my class management is pretty good. I use my whistle well to signal to the kids to start and stop. They recognize my whistle and it makes it easy for them to know what I want from them. I also did a good job of transitioning from one skill to the next.

My class instruction could use a little bit of work. I don’t think that I had easy cues for the kids to remember or that I demonstrated each cue the way that I should. I use lots of general feedback but not enough specific. Kids like to hear exactly what they are doing well and I feel like I could have done a better job with that.

In the future, I plan to do a couple of things differently. I think the most important thing that I can do is give better specific feedback. I say “good job” or nice try but I need to tell them exactly what they did a good job doing. This will help them learn better. Also, but going back through the video and seeing all of my instances, I know that I need to come up with better cues to help the kids learn the skills better. This studiocode software really helps to analyze teaching.

Computer Software for Coaching

I decided to look up some different software to help organize all the things that coaches need to do. There are lots of different softwares out there. One is called practice planner pro. This allows you to store up to 500 drills and catergorize them based on what they are used for. Then, when you need a drill for a specific purpose, you can search all of the drills that you have saved. That would save so much time from having to try and remember the drills. It also allows you to create practice plans and assign specific time to each drill.

This technology is really great for coaches because it can help to keep things extremely organized. The coach I work for uses a program like this and he loves it.

Excel

I have never really understood Excel or all of the tools that it provides, but my dad is the CFO at his company and swears by it so I thought I would ask him why he likes it so much. One thing that he loves about Excel, is that you are able to put formulas in to spreadsheets so that you do not have to do all of the calculation. One of the things that he has to do is do business projections. So he enters formulas into a spreadsheet and by hitting enter, he can build a 3, 5 or even 10 year projection of growth. By talking to him, I gained a desire to learn Excel better because I believe that it can be a huge help.

web 2.0

Prior to this class I had never even heard the term web 2.0. When I did some research on it, I found that a lot of the sites that I use everyday, are web 2.o sites. Gmail, youtube, blogger are all websites that are coined under web 2.0. There is also a web 2.0 magazine site that lists the top 100 web 2.0 sites. It clearly puts into groups all the different sites so you can easily find what you are looking for. Web 2.0 really is a big difference in the way the web works. Its nice that it allows people to be interactive in the way they use the web.

Linkedin.com is a web 2.0 site that I found interesting. It is like facebook but for serious business professionals that want to keep track of their networking in one place.

Learning IMovie

Before doing the IMovie project, I always thought that editing video was a lot harder than it was. But they have put so many tools on IMovie that really through trial and error you can figure everything out. I had never edited anything before and I felt like I got the hang of it really quickly. I think that it was really fun and something that I will definetely do again. I think I would also use this application to have fun with classes that I will teach.

Editing video will also come in handy in coaching. It is really helpful to have tape of a shooter making a shot and then another of him using bad form so he can see what he is doing right and what he is doing wrong.

IMovie Project