Tag: coaching

Chromebooks, Collaboration, Google, Professional Development

Gatorade, Google, Sweat & Social Media #scms12

Lissa Layman

Day 1 is officially over! Although we didn’t win the Chromebook at the end of the day, it was a decent day. During the keynote by Jaime Casap I found myself nodding along with almost everything he said. To see what people were saying during Jaime’s keynote (and throughout the day), click here.

My session was immediately after the morning keynote. During my 2 years of coaching high school Track & Field, I initiated using social media and google apps with the other coaches, the athletes and the parents. I had a lot of great success! These ideas could also be used for any school group (magnet programs, clubs, after-school programs, etc). I included several links this morning, including one to the ‘fake’ team website. Below is my presentation…enjoy!

 

My husband also did a session about classroom management in a 1:1 environment. I heard it was a must-attend! #proudwife

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Google docs and coaching

Lissa Layman

Just after I was hired, the athletic director approached me and asked if I would be interested in coaching track & field. I was a little wary of the time commitment but ended up saying yes. Last year, in my second year as an assistant coach, I was able to really experiment with using google docs (before my district went to apps for education). This pre-season form was our first experiment…

It worked pretty well for keeping up with athletes’ training routines. Once the season started, I knew the coaches were sick of spending hours together after practice figuring out who would be running what at all of the meets. I was also done with constantly sending different versions of everything back and forth. I convinced the other two coaches to jump on board with google docs (you don’t have to have a gmail account to use gdocs!). We shared spreadsheets to organize meet entries, keep track of top times & varsity letter points and create scouting reports & rosters. We were then able to allow anyone with the link to view these documents so that students and parents could access them on our facebook page and website (social networking with coaching & teaching to come later).

Throughout the season we used two more forms to gather information – one to get contact information from parents and another to collect RSVPs for the end of the year banquet. Throughout the year, google docs saved us countless hours and headaches. We were able to edit the schedule without having to re-send it to parents each time we changed it. We were able to quickly and easily get information to our athletes. In addition, google docs are compatible with most smartphones and other devices so people could access the information wherever & whenever they needed.

Using google docs to make more efficient use of our time as coaches was when I first really started to get obsessed. This year I have been able to use google docs almost primarily in my classroom…more to come later.