There are many great ways to reach students today, so choosing the right avenue can be difficult. I will be the first to say that you must take advantage of what your school provides. This post will outline how I take advantage of the tool we have to coach my athletes to the best of everyone's ability. All of these ideas are fairly advanced so please do not try to do them all! Take one or two and make them your own, when your ready, you can expand. 

What We Have:
  • 1 to 1 iPads
  • Schoology LMS
  • Google Apps for Education
  • HUDL
What I Do:
  • 1 to 1 iPads
    • iBooks 
      • Each week I create an iBook for our opponent. I use the pages app on a mac to create the book, then I exported it as an ePub. This conversion allows the file to be opened in iBooks on any iPad. This iBook contains screen castings of me going over film for the week. This helps my athletes to be coached outside of our meeting times. 
    • AppSheet
      •  I used this to create a customized app that I use to push out my tests to my athletes. This program lets me create an app using a spreadsheet. From there, I create text and links to match that creates a universal platform for my athletes to complete their homework.
  • Schoology
    • Discussions 
      • Each week, a discussion tab is created on our schoology group which allows my athletes to ask me questions anytime of the day. They use this while working on homework, watching film, or simply for basic questions.
    • Resources
      • Schoology has a resource bank that can hold a lot of information. I use this section to hold my iBook and any other supplementary materials. Altheltes can then log into the group and download these materials to complete homework, game plan, or just learn more about their opponent. 
  • Google Apps for Education
    • Testing
      • All of my tests are run through Google Forms. This provides me a digital, paperless assessment that measures their understanding of the opponent we will face. I love to include screenshots of the film to help athletes understand overall schemes better. 
    • Flubaroo
      • I chose to use this for one reason. It does the work for me! Flubaroo is an automatic grading system the integrates with Google Forms. Setting this up correctly can send an automatic response to athletes after they complete the test with their score and the answer key. 
  • HUDL
    • Communication
      • I always make sure to include a message when I send a playlist to my athletes to help build a communication line, but also be very clear about what I would like them to see. It cannot be overlooked that our athletes know how to watch film, most of them don't. Explicitly walking them through what to look for is an irreplaceable action.