Whether you involved with Coach Education, Player Development or Grassroots football the likelihood is that the most common social network used by your coaches or players will be Facebook. As of July 2010 Facebook has more than 500 million active users, as Wikipedia points out:
‘Users may create a personal profile, add other users as friends and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common interest user groups, organized by workplace, school, or college, or other characteristics’
So Facebook does provide a space for you to interact with you players or coaches in a safe, secure and private environment. If you don’t create a group page for your players or coaches the likelihood would be that they will do it themselves
- First … if you don’t have a facebook account- get one by registering at www.facebook.com (NB: you must be over 13 years of age)
- Then on your ‘home ‘ page in the left hand column click onto ‘ Create a Group ‘
- View how to create a group on Facebook view below
- You can see on Facebook that a number of soccer associations and clubs that have set up groups
- As an example we have created a ‘Sports Path E-learning ‘group on Facebook
- Ours is open to you but if you wanted to create a group you can alter the settings and make your group ‘Private ‘ where it would be listed but access would be decided by you or ‘Secret’ where the group title would not be listed and only those invited would know of its existence
- What are the benefits of using Facebook?
- Photos and videos can be uploaded
- You can link to upload Power Point Presentations
- Discussions can be initiated and developed
- Messages can be posted
- It can be private
- You may also want to create a Facebook Fan Page. For instructions: Creating Facebook Fan Group
- We have a Sports Path Fan Page here: Sports Path Fan Page
- The major difference differences between a ‘ Group ‘ page and a ‘Fan’ page on Facebook is that a Fan Page is visible to unregistered people and are thus indexed (important for reputation management, for example)
- To read more: Facebook Group or Fan Page ?
2. BLOGGING
You can use a blog to very simply support your coach education and player development programmes.So it requires you not merely to respond to a blog but also to compose one !
Why? What are the benefits of blogging?
- Blogs are free, easy to create and update. They provide simple tools for adding links, photos and videos. The encourage responses .Blog posts can be created ahead of time and scheduled to be uploaded to the web. They provide an excellent medium for previewing tasks, consolidation, revision and reflection. BLOGS CAN BE PASSWORD PROTECTED AND VIEWABLE ONLY TO THOSE PEOPLE PROVIDE WITH ACCESS
- By reflecting on what you have been doing by linking to and/or embedding resources, you can help your players and coaches AND developing a resource which players and coaches can access and use in the future.
- IT’S AN ONGOING RESOURCE
- Photos and videos can be uploaded
- You can link to upload Power Point Presentations
- Discussions can be initiated and developed
- Messages can be posted
- It can be private
- Material can be archived and there is a search function
- You can also Sync your blog with your Twitter, Facebook and other accounts
NB They are easy to start but they do need feeding!
To read more view:
If you develop a blog that involves the use of the web to support coach and player programmes please let us know and –with your permission - we will feature it our blog
Comment below please :
- Was this blog post helpful? Have you any observations?
- Have you tried any of these methods? What were your results?
Our next blog post in this section will focus on the use of ‘ You Tube’ and ‘ Skype’ to support your coach and player development programmes
Here is an example of a blog developed for the Cyprus FA UEFA Pro Licence to allow students to ask questions and clarify aspects. See Cyprus FA Blog Download Blog front page (2)
NB: Sports Path® recommends that the best resource for information on web tools for teachers and coaches is Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies: http://c4lpt.co.uk/