To have a solid training programme for peak performance in sports, choosing the type of activities for your programme is important. Let us take a look 3 type of activities that can be used to organize a training programme for peak performance in sports.The next principle in FITT is Type of activities that must be conducted and organized for peak performance in sports. Having planned and established the required frequency of training and decided upon the measure of intensity of training, it is important to use the correct type of activities to use in training to promote peak performance in sports. Here, we can classify type of activities used according to the following categories.a. General Fitness ActivitiesThese are activities and exercised that are more fitness related with very little skill related activities.Common activities in this category include weight training, aerobics, interval training, body resistance training, plyrometric training, fartlek, partner resistance training, endurance based activities, body pump, skipping, etc. The examples mentioned here are extremely effective training tools to improve fitness of athletes for peak performance in sports. They are also easily implemented and monitored, which is a good thing for a coach. The down-side of this is that it can be boring to the athletes. Performing monotonous runs, painful weight lifting and repetitive body resistance exercises are not exactly the most fun and inspiring things in the world to do. These form of activities need to form only a minor portion of the total training time for each session. It is recommended that anywhere from 10-20% of the time should be devoted such training activities. Another way to implement such activities is to use them as a form of disincentives. Any sub-standard performances in training can mean more of these general fitness activitiesb. Sports Specific Training ActivitiesAs the name implies, these are activities that are related to the sports been played by the athletes. These activities should form the bulk of all training times. They will include activities, drills, games and any other form of exercises that are related to the sports. Players are involved in their chosen sport because they are passionate about it in the first place. Nothing will motivate them more than to get them to practice what they have signed up for. For example, it will not make sense for water-polo players to spend more time out of the swimming pool than in it. Water-polo players must spend as much time as they can in the water so that they get use to the sports medium as much as possible. It is up to the coach to be resourceful to come up with as many sports specific training activities as possible for peak performance in sports. So if the aim one of the session is to build agility as well as dribbling skills in soccer, perhaps using dribbling skills at high intensity with lots of changes in direction will be the right activity for the session.c. Cross Disciplinary ActivitiesCross disciplinary activities are activities with little familiarity to the chosen sports being played, but they still allow the players to maintain and improve their fitness, conditioning and skills. This form as activities is especially important during breaks from the main sports season. Very often playing too much of the same sport year in year out can be very detrimental to the athletes psychologically as well as physically. Burn out from over exposure to the same sports can occur if too much of the same activities are done. To counter this and get the players a break, engaging in relevant cross disciplinary activities can be very helpful to refresh the players. In most continental European soccer leagues, the leagues have winter breaks lasting between 2 – 4 weeks during the Christmas and New Year period. During this break, the players do not just go on vacation and do nothing. In fact, many teams will bring their players away from cold countries to warmer ones to engage in some other activities other than soccer. These activities keep the players renewed and refreshed. Some team also make use of the wintry cold and snow, by engaging in skiing to keep their players conditions at their peak, so that when they return for the second half of the season, the players are still in good shape to play the remaining games. This form of cross disciplinary activities is extremely useful to recharge player’s batteries.With a good mixture of these three types of activities in the training programme, athletes will find the variety, motivation and usefulness in them to improve their peak performance in sports.
How to Reach Students in the Digital Age With a Certificate in Instructional Technology
The field of education is constantly changing and growing with technology. In this digital era, children grow up with computers from the time they are very young. In order to reach these children, educators need to adapt to technology in education and learn how to teach students using technological tools. It’s nearly impossible to avoid using technology and computers these days, especially when it comes to education. Most students have grown up with computers since birth or childhood and use them to learn too. It’s important to know how to use computers if you want to be an effective educator.Getting a certificate in instructional technology is designed to improve classroom technology and integration skills and inspire teachers interested in improving their classroom instruction through technology integration. Beyond this, completing an instructional technology program also helps build resumes. Teachers interested in learning more about technology or enhancing their technology skills should strongly consider pursuing a certificate in instructional technology as a way to improve their careers and expand their knowledge.It’s important for teachers to know the foundations of educational technology. This will help form a basis for which to build upon. Learning about educational technology usually begins with understanding how a computer works, including hardware, operating systems, and networking for educators. This includes learning how to upgrade, repair, maintain, and troubleshoot computers for the purpose of providing positive learning environments and experiences for a diverse array of end users including teachers themselves. Even for teachers who aren’t interested in teaching technology, learning about the basic foundations of educational technology can be helpful for teachers and students alike.Some courses show teachers everything from the beginning, including how to use a computer, so you don’t need any experience before taking any classes. Classes in the foundations of educational technology will focus on everything involving computers, even the details for beginners including how to use a printer. This can be extremely helpful for educators, especially those who have not had much or any practice and experience with computers. Whether you don’t own one or are not part of the digital generation, you can still learn by starting from scratch. This will advance both your personal and professional lives for the better because whether you teach technology or not, you will definitely need to use it one day if you continue with a career in education.Because technology is so important, you should understand not only the basics, but also how to incorporate it into the classroom setting as well as within lessons and classroom activities. However, before that can be possible it’s necessary to understand the social and historical development of the use of technology in education. Learning about the evolution of technology and its applications to education and having an understanding of the social and historical development of the use of technology within K-12 education will take you much further than merely learning how to use a computer.Computer ethics, etiquette, the digital divide, equity regarding students with special needs, English as a second language, and socio-economic factors are also important themes to explore and discuss. Research can show you a lot about the equity issues concerning access and use of computers and related technologies.Perhaps the best part about expanding your knowledge of instructional technology is the effect it has on learning for students. Project based and collaborative learning with computers are fun and effective ways for students to learn. This learning can be implemented in a regular classroom or in a computer laboratory, but either way, ethics, etiquette, and safety online for students and teachers should be of utmost concern at all times.
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TOP SEO Mistakes – Top SEO Website Errors
Are you using the right keywords to optimize your website?
In many cases websites are optimized for the wrong SEO keywords. You need to do the research to find out what SEO keyword phrases people actually use to search for businesses in your particular field. In many cases you will discover that SEO keyword phrases that you thought were important are in fact rarely searched for; the opposite is also true.How well does your website show up well in Google, Yahoo, Ask and Bing?
You should test the effect of searching for your SEO keywords on a regular basis in all the major search engines. Your website position in the search engines will fluctuate and needs regular monitoring.Website Title – The single most important onsite SEO factor.
The web page title is very important. It should be relevant, the correct length and different on every page within the website. It is surprising how often we see inappropriate web page titles, no titles at all or a title that says something stupid like “HOME’ or in the case of really lazy website designers ‘TITLE GOES HERE’. Use a different title for each page within your website. Remember that search engines list pages, not websites, so each page is a fresh SEO opportunity.Website Description.
Tell Google what your page is about. As with the web page title, in many cases the Description is missing or incorrectly used.Website SEO Keywords.
While many search engines no longer use Keyword Meta tags, some still do, and they should accurately reflect page content, but you must be careful not to use too many of them.Broken links will harm your SEO efforts.
This is the number one error that we find when auditing websites. You click on a link within the website and you see an error message telling you that the page cannot be found. This delivers a very unprofessional image to people visiting your website. It is likely that Google will also mark you down in the search engine rankings, as Google expects technically perfect websites. There is no excuse for broken links within a website. Broken image links are also a common error found within websites. Instead of a picture being displayed you will see a broken image logo. Again this is easily checked for by professional website designers and there is no reason for a website to have broken image links.Picture only websites are disastrous for SEO.
Sometimes you will visit a website that appears to be displaying the usual mixture of text and pictures, but on closer inspection, even the text is actually contained within a picture. If there is no real text displayed within a website, Google has no clue what the website is about and the website will feature very poorly in the search engine results. There are ways to partly fix this, using what are called ‘Alt’ tags, used in combination with the website title and description, but as a rule your website should contain lots of relevant text. This is what Google likes!No relevant SEO keywords in a page.
If your website content fails to mention your product or service, it is not surprising that your website ranks poorly within Google. There are lots of tricks relating to where you place your keywords on a page and that is what we excel at. Simply stuffing a page with keywords will not achieve the desired result, and may even hurt your listing within Google, as it may interpret too many keywords as an attempt to spam the search engine listings. Google takes a very dim view of attempts to spam it.Number of back links
A very important SEO factor. Do you know how many other websites link to your website? Google does. The more links to your website, the better. Also the quality and source of the links is important to Google. If you suddenly gain hundreds of links overnight, this can trip the spam alert at the search engines and you can end up in a worse position within the search engines than before you started any SEO activities on your website.Google Page Rank.
Do you know what your Google Page Rank number is? In fact do you know what the Google Page Rank means? Google rates all sites using hundreds of different criteria and comes up with a number for your website. 0 is bad while 10 is the highest value. The higher the Page Rank the more likely that your website will show up higher within the Google search engine results. Many websites we audit have a page rank of 0 or 1, which is not good! Install the Google toolbar to view your website’s PageRank.Alt tags.
Great for your website’s SEO. Alt tags (short for Alternative tags) are a way of telling Google what a picture is about. As far as Google is concerned a picture is just a picture. Google does not know what a picture is about, unless you specifically tell Google using an Alt tag. It is amazing how few website designers go to the bother of using alt tags, which is a pity, as proper use of alt tags can have a big influence on your listing within the Google search engine results.Ease of Navigation and menu issues.
Many websites are hard to navigate. This means that it may be difficult to move from page to page, or back to the home page. This is such an important aspect for your website visitors and it is a shame that we see so many poorly constructed menu systems. Google may also find it hard to navigate your website and categorize each webpage which can harm your SEO efforts.Spell checking and grammatical issues.
It is vital that you check the spelling within your website. The correct use of grammar is also important. If your website is full of these types of errors, it gives a poor impression. Your company looks unprofessional. Correct spelling is also important for Google.Flash and java issues.
If your website uses flash or java to enable website navigation, make sure that you use the technology carefully as you may find that some search engines are unable to follow the links and as a result will not list most of your website pages within their search engine listings.Google Analytics.
This is a free tool from Google that allows you to analyze visitors to your website and track how they interact with your website. Has your website been enabled to show Google analytics data? If not you are missing out on a vital source of information about your website.Heading tags.
Proper use of heading tags within your HTML code can play a vital role in onsite keyword SEO. Many websites we audit are completely devoid of any heading tags. Try and use 2 or 3 levels of headers.Open Directory Project.
Did you know that a submission to the Open Directory Project is one of the most valuable links you can get in terms of your website’s SEO? They reject most sites and only accept sites that are technically near perfect and contain high quality information, presented through a professionally designed interface that is easy to navigate.How many pages of your website are indexed in Google?
Do you know how to see exactly how many pages that make up your website are listed within Google? You would expect Google to know about your home page, but the more pages within your website that Google knows about, the better. For example a large website promoted by us, has 10,300 pages listed within Google.W3C validation.
W3C is an organization that sets website standards. Do you know if your website passes W3C validation?File names.
The name of a file can be a valuable clue to Google, as to what the file contains. For instance if you have a picture of a motor car and the picture file is called 0001.JPG this does not tell Google anything. On the other hand if the file was called CARS-FOR-SALE-IN-PERTH.JPG, then this can help considerably with your website SEO. The same principle applies to the naming of all files and folders within your website.PDF file size Issues.
If you use PDF files, there are many ways of reducing the size of the final PDF file. The larger the file size the slower the PDF file will load on the screen or download to a hard disk.Do all the major search engines know about your website?
Remember that apart from Google there are a few other search engines that your website should be listed in, such as Yahoo, Bing and Ask.Flash file sizes.
The larger the size of your flash file, the longer it will take to load. Many sites use flash banners that have enormous file sizes. This can be very frustrating for your visitors.Google Places page.
This is a fantastic way of getting your website listed in the local service or products section within the Google results. The majority of websites do not use this feature at all and many of those that do use it do not take full advantage of the SEO opportunities afforded by the Google Places feature.Flash or graphical intro pages.
How often have you visited a website to be greeted by a meter that tells you a flash introduction screen is loading, which often seem to take forever to load and once they do load actually display little relevant information. If you are lucky you can click on a ‘skip intro’ button. Do not use intro pages as they just annoy website visitors and can harm your website SEO.Text used within links (anchor text).
The correct use of keyword text within a hyperlink can play a significant part in your on-page keyword SEO strategy. In many cases this SEO opportunity is wasted when the hyperlink contains words such as ‘click here’.Home page file size.
Do you know the combined file size of your home page? By combined, I mean not just the HTML page itself, but all the associated graphic, CSS and flash files. The longer a page takes to load, the more likely a visitor will click on the Back button and visit a different website.Java issues.
If a visitor to your website has disabled Java in their local browser, how will this affect your website? Will the menu systems still work? If you must use Java, at least have an alternate menus system that visitors can use. Search engines may have difficulty following some types of Java based menu systems.Do not use hidden text to try and trick the search engines.
Everyone knows that having keywords on your web page is important as far as SEO is concerned. A very old trick is to have lists of your keywords repeated over and over at the bottom of the page, formatted to display in white text on a white background. Google hates this type of spamming and is on the lookout for it. Far from improving your website’s position with the Google Search Engines results, you could find that your website gets severely penalized by Google. Do not try spamming Google, they will find out!
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