First Week of Basketball Practice

The first week of basketball practice went by smooth. The only problem I ran into is, I only have nine players and would like eleven to make practice a little better. The only thing you can do with this many players is a lot of drills which is good for fundamentals, but it hurts when your putting in an offense or defensive play.

This year I have focused a lot on shooting, which is different for me because I'm a defensive person. To me defense wins championships, but the last couple of years we have had very poor shooting habits and form. One of my main focusing areas is foul shooting. This part of the game can either make you or break you. Our goal for the year is to shoot 70% from the line. To tell you the truth I have never had a team shoot that high, but I have a feeling that this is going to be the year. For the first week in practice we shot 45.5% which is not good, but it is the first week of practice and these kids came from football and probably haven't picked up a basketball in months. I read an article by a college coach where he said that there just isn't any good shooters coming out of high school anymore. Hopefully this year we can change that.

I will have to say it is great to coach basketball again last year I took the year off and missed it. It was also great to get out and run up and down the floor again. Man I am out of shape. Hopefully by Christmas I'll have my legs back in shape and go up and practice against the Varsity kids. They keep bugging about it, but I don't want to go up there out of shape they will kick my butt.

Night Before

Here is a picture of me and my wife the night before our wedding.

Assignment 5 Reflection Piece

I decided to write a little reflection piece on this class. Over all this class as been a great experience for me. I learned a lot of new stuff about technology that I never knew before. To be honest I probably would not have tried them either if it wasn't for this class. To begin with I was a little scared to use technology, but now I'm going into with an open mind.

One of the most rewarding things in class has been the use of this blog. I learned a lot about blogs and have a ton more to learn. I even started to try to use it at school with my book club. I have only had one little minor problem at school the kids are not allowed to use it because it is one of the sites that is blocked in school systems, but they can use it at home or in the local library. It has helped because not all the students can attend the meetings and it gives a chance to talk to other students about books on the discussion page. It also gives them a chance to also talk about other books that they have read.

Another thing that I learned a lot about is the use of Wiki pages. Our group created a homework center on a wiki page. Another thing I have never done before this class was chat on line. Our group used the whiteboard chat a couple of times as a source of communication. This is something I never thought I would see myself using, but I was wromg. I now see a use for it especially with my sister now living in Florida. It is a great way to communicate with her without running up my minutes on my cell phone. It was also useful in a group setting where you can communicate with each other living hours apart and get things accomplished.

Another great thing about this class has been the discussion forums. Communicating with other teachers and people and getting their input on certain things has been great. It has givin me a great opportunity to see other peoples philosophy and point of view on many different things as well as getting feedback on questions that I have asked.

Over all, I would recommend this class to anyone who wants to learn a little bit or a lot about technology. Technology is the future one way or another your going to have to learn how to use it sooner or later.