Second Coach - app presentation
Physical activity is very important for children. It boosts physical and cognitive development and teaches them about healthy and active lifestyle.
Unfortunately a lot of pre-school and school children are not active enough due to packed schedules and intrusive technologies which occupy their time. Developing a gamification based training app was a good way to help coaches and parents motivate children to be more active and partake in sports activities. Our app is meant as a supporting tool for soccer trainings but can also be used for any other sport. It helps soccer coaches plan and execute trainings and communicate with parents. The basis of the app are gamification oriented activities and tasks. Preliminary tests showed that this type of approach increases kids' motivation at trainings and at home and increases overall success.
Second Coach helps coaches and parents in multiple ways:
Coach:
- Manage attendance.
- Conduct trainings and execute some activities.
- Automatic distribution of trainees into teams (randomization).
- Entry of trainees scores which also enable overview of general level and progress of each child
Parents:
- Overview of child's achievements on training and their general development and progress.
- Calendar of trainings, games and meetings.*
- View coaches notifications and messages.*
- Excuse their child from trainings.
* Feature will be available in next version of parent app.
Features
- Attendance Management - The coach can manage trainees' attendance before and during trainings. Attendance effects team distribution during trainings games.
- Monitoring Child's Development - Parents can monitor their child's development and achievements on trainings. They get a detailed overview of general and per-exercise scores and progress for each training.
- Rewarding – motivating children - Child's attendance and completion of exercises are rewarded with points. This motivates the children through game and rewards their success. Bad discipline on trainings can lead to losing gained points.
What else can you expect in future versions?
Calendar of trainings and tournaments with feedback in case of changes and cancellations through push notifications. It will also enable notifications about upcoming events. The app will also enable communication between parents and coaches.
Planning a training
Trainings are divided into three parts. Intro (warm up), main and final part. The app focuses on two parts of the training, the intro and the final parts. the coach can grade trainees in these parts. By using the app coach makes the trainings more interesting thus motivating the trainees.
1. Intro (warm up) - Examples of exercises we can grade in
the app using the "scoring" function:
- Tag -The coach sets the "chasers" and the time of chasing. If the chasers catch all the other teammates they get 5 points, or none if they fail.
- Ball knockout - All trainees have a ball and move in an enclosed area. They must then try to knock out other players' ball and continue without losing control of their own ball. Points are awarded to the last three players remaining (5, 3 and 1 points).
- Juggling – The coach awards a given number of points to a player who achieves a certain number of juggles. The numbers are chosen by the coach on a per-team basis.
Relay games
The coach sets the number of players per team. The app then arranges them randomly in teams. Points are awarded based on team's position at the end of the game.
2. Final Part:
Game:
- Tournament - Based on the number of players or number of teams the app creates random teams and displays the possible options of game combinations. Points are awarded based on game results.
- Team Play - Similar to tournament but in the end of the game round the app creates totally new teams.
Target Practice
Points are awarded on successful hit goal. Amount of points depends on the distance.
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