Back in the day, when I wasn’t on the soccer field, I loved playing Super Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo. Recently I played it again for the first time in 20+ years, and actually almost beat the game in one try!

It got me thinking – how did I get so good at Mario Brothers, and how does that relate to iSoccer?

Edge of Ability: When you die in Mario Brothers, you get to immediately try again on the exact same level. Practicing on the edge of your ability is where you improve. Slowly, something that was very difficult will become easier and easier.

Active Learning: I got better by actively playing more and more, not by watching or being taught. You get better soccer skills by doing, not listening. You don’t need a coach to get outside and touch the ball as much as possible.

Repetition: After passing the same level again and again, that level became easier and easier. So when I played the next day, I would breeze through the first few levels and get to where I was more challenged. If you do the same skill over and over again, it will go from challenging to routine!

Just like Mario Brothers, technique is something any player can master. So instead of trying to get to the next level in your favorite video game this season, spend more time with the ball trying to get to the next iSoccer Level!

Cheers!
Scott Leber (@scottleber)

I sincerely hope this app helps parent coaches out there have a more enjoyable season!

So here is a little peek into the process of creating Easy Practice:

#1 FOCUS
The first part of any project is deciding what the product is going to be and more importantly, what the product is not going to be. We focused on a single aspect of coaching: practice. Not game day, not scheduling, not orange slices – But how to make practice more enjoyable for both the coach and the player. That was our sole focus.

#2 BRAINSTORM
Once we decided what we wanted the app to be, we had to figure out how to bring that to life. How should the coach to interact with the app? What are the drills the coach should do? Will they use it on the field or at home? What should it look like… You get the idea! There is a lot to think about, but this is the fun part of the process. Sometimes getting out of the office and heading to the roof helps us think.

#3 SKETCH AND DESIGN
Once we had a good understanding of the purpose and content, then came the tricky part: How do we design an app that delivers all of this content with an elegant, intuitive design. This took a lot of time and mockups! Gray, our product guy, made sure the app made sense and Aina, our lead designer, made sure the app looked good! Some great teamwork.

#4 BUILD
Our lead engineer, Jonathan, got to work! It is amazing how much code goes into every single app out there…

#5 TEST AND MAKE CHANGES
We finally had our first working version of the app, so we took it to the field to test. We invited a friend of ours, Jeremy, to be the ‘parent coach.’ He got the drill setup correct but, he was having a tough time finding all the information he needed, and was struggling a bit. It clearly needed work, so back to the office…

#6 TEST AGAIN
We went back and forth between the field and the office a few more times, tweaking things along the way. Finally, we had an app everyone was happy with!

#7 CREATE FINAL CONTENT
From the copy, to the diagrams, to the videos, we made our final edits.

#8 SUBMIT TO APPLE
Fingers crossed!

#9 CELEBRATE
The app got approved! As with anything in life, you gotta celebrate the little and big wins, so we all hit the town and had fun night out in San Francisco.

In closing, I want to thank all the parents out there dedicating their time and energy to coaching. We know it’s fun and rewarding, but also a lot of work! Hopefully, this app will help make things a little easier for parent coaches out there, and help teams have more fun on the soccer field.

Sincerely,
Scott Leber, Founder of iSoccer and EasyPractice

In the last year, Trinity has:

Earned 155,000 Player Points, more than anyone else
Logged 340 scores
Improved her Overall iSoccer Level 154%

Awesome work Trinity and keep on raising your level!

The Saga of Tomsan: How an American journeyman revolutionized Japanese soccer—and why it isn’t happening in the U.S.

By Brian Blickenstaff
Posted Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013, at 12:00 AM

Courtesy of Tom Byer

In 2009, Zinedine Zidane, the legendary soccer player, participated in a coaching clinic in Ajinomoto Stadium in Tokyo, Japan. Children and parents filled the stands. The mood was jovial. Zidane was a once-in-a-generation sort of player, a kind of mad genius remembered today as much for his ball skills as for the infamous 2006 World Cup headbutt. The parents in attendance hoped some of those skills, like his signature pirouette (not the headbutt), would rub off on their children. But as Zidane and the gathered coaches began their lessons, something strange happened. The children in the audience began to chant. They weren’t chanting “Zidane,” although people occasionally shouted for his autograph. The children chanted “Tomsan,” the nickname of a 52-year-old retired player from upstate New York who never won a Champions League title, a World Cup Golden Ball, or a FIFA World Player of the Year award: Tom Byer.

Click Here to Read the Rest

“Where does resilience come from?….It comes from knowing that you never have to be alone… If you feel connected, you will always be able to deal with adversity. The skills we need to deal with adversity begin with a feeling of I can handle this. It is a feeling of No matter what happens, I can find a solution; a feeling of I have dealt with hard times and come out fine before; a feeling of Even when I feel lost, I always have somewhere to turn.” – Dr. Edward Hallowell

Life is full of hard knocks. What makes some people get up the next morning determined to try again, while others give up? Resilience.

There’s a common misconception that Players develop resilience by encountering failure. That’s a myth. Players develop resilience by dealing successfully with failure. When Players have the internal and external supports to get up and try again, they learn they can overcome adversity. When a Player doesn’t have that internal and external support, all he learns from failing is that he’s the kind of person who fails.

And just what are those internal and external supports that help your Player turn failure into the confidence that no matter what happens, she can handle it?

1. Your empathy. The security of knowing that someone is watching out for him is what allows a Player to explore, to risk bumps, disappointment and hurt feelings, and to come out the other side. Empathize when it’s hard. Knowing someone cares, understands, and is there to help him pick up the pieces is the foundation of resilience.

2. The experience of solving problems. Manage your own anxiety so you don’t make a habit of rescuing your Player. Instead, when she gets into a jam, support her in brainstorming possible solutions. If you lecture, teach or solve the problem for her, you’re teaching her that she can’t solve things herself. Your goal isn’t just to solve the problem, but to help your Player feel more capable by having the experience of handling a challenge.

3. Emotional regulation. When kids feel overwhelmed by their emotions, they crumble. By contrast, kids who have better emotional regulation can tolerate the frustration of practicing, or the disappointment of losing. They’re more likely to apply themselves, and to overcome setbacks. So accept your Player’s emotions, and honor them. She learns from experience that she can tolerate any emotion she feels and come out the other end intact, and the sun will come up the next day.

4. The experience of mastery. Developing grit–that quality of pushing through obstacles as we pursue something about which we’re passionate–depends on the Player working hard to accomplish her own goals, whether that’s mastering a jump shot, short story, recipe or camping trip. Make sure your Player gets plenty of time to initiate and pursue her own passions–not always easy in this age of homework and screentime.

You can’t protect your Player from the rain that falls in every life. What you can do is make sure that he knows how to find an umbrella, and has the confidence to make it through the storm. Now’s the time to start practicing. Some day, your Player will look back and remember that he’s dealt with hard times before, and he came out fine. It’s your unwavering love that will get him there.

May you make miracles today, large and small.

Blessings,
Dr. Laura

Click on presentation image below to download as a PDF

San Francisco, CA (January 12, 2013) – This month, through a partnership with Tony DiCicco’s SoccerPlus Goalkeeper School, iSoccer rolled out iSoccer Goalkeeping, the newest addition to their skill-training platform. The San Francisco-based technology company had previously focused on field players, with this being the first goalkeeper-training program of its kind.

“Working with iSoccer to create a goalkeeper assessment and development tool has been a real pleasure and SoccerPlus Goalkeeper School is proud to launch the iSoccer/SoccerPlus Goalkeeper skill challenge. I encourage keepers of ALL ages to test their skills,” says Tony DiCicco, President and Technical Director of SoccerPlus Goalkeeper School

“We were thrilled to partner with Tony and the rest of his team at SoccerPlus to create goalkeeping assessment,” said Scott Leber, founder and CEO of iSoccer. “We combined their expertise in goalkeeping with our technical know-how to produce a set of Goalkeeping Skills that should make keeper training more fun and effective for players of all levels. This is a fantastic first step for us in helping goalkeepers around the country and around the world.”

iSoccer applies gaming psychology to soccer training by adding a scoring system to core soccer exercises, which they call iSoccer Skills. Coaches and players score their team and themselves on the iSoccer Skills, and log those scores via the web or mobile device to earn Skill Levels. Now, goalkeepers can get in on the action.

Working together, Tony and iSoccer created 31 core Goalkeeping Skills organized by specific topics. The goal is collect 10,000 scores on these Skills in order to establish the Goalkeeping Skill Level matrix, just like what iSoccer has done for field players. Players, parents, and coaches can go to http://www.iSoccer.org/GoalKeepers/ to watch the Goalkeeping Skills video guides, and enter scores as often as they like.

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About SoccerPlus
Tony DiCicco is the Founder and Technical Director of SoccerPlus Goalkeeper School and Field Player Academy. SoccerPlus was founded in 1982 and runs camps nationwide. For information on SoccerPlus programs go to http://www.soccerplus.org .

About iSoccer
Founded in 2008 by Scott Leber, iSoccer impacts over 500,000 players across the US and around the world. iSoccer is a soccer technology company that uses motivational psychology and gaming mechanics to create healthy competition around skill training, which makes technical development more fun and effective for players and teams of all levels. Visit http://www.iSoccer.org.

By Daniel Burrus

Anyone who has kids — or who has been around them for any length of time — knows they are attracted to video games like moths to light. You might be tempted to think these young-uns are using their time idly.

In reality, they’re pioneering the future of business training and education.

This is part of a trend I call gameification, which I first identified in the early ’80s and is today reaching its tipping point.

Gameification represents part of a predictable sequence. Many of the greatest technological advances in business have come originally from the world of kids and their games. Here’s how the sequence flows:

First, an innovative concept or new technology often starts out in the world of games for children. Sometimes it’s the military (or in times past, the space program) that serves as the launch point. But it’s amazing how often it’s kids’ games.

From there it sooner or later gains the attention of the adults in the business community as they learn how to adapt and apply it to their needs.

Finally, it creeps into the education sector.

Just look at the evolution of social media.

When new social-media sites such as FaceBook and Twitter first launched, who were the first to get on board? Young people. Adults didn’t see the value. (Who really cares what you had for lunch or what outfit someone wore to the dance?) Eventually adults in the business world started seeing how social media could be used for tasks like brand management, marketing, and collaboration, and began embracing the tools their teenage kids had long mastered.

New Thresholds of Interactivity

Social media and video games are very different technologies, but the migration pattern is the same. And with game-controller systems like the Wii and Xbox Kinect giving us radical new ways of interacting with technology, the business world is finally on the threshold of becoming gameified.

In the past, gaming meant sitting passively in front of a computer or television screen and using a game pad, joystick, or keyboard to play against the computer or online opponent. No more. With Nintendo’s interactive Wii, players began standing up and getting physically involved in their games. Microsoft’s Kinect eliminated the need for a hand-held controller entirely, with players using movements of their hands and bodies to manipulate the game.

Thanks to Microsoft’s software development kit for the Kinect, university students are writing software that lets users control business software using hand motions alone — no keyboard or mouse. You want to go to the next page? Just sweep your hand in the air, past your screen. Sweep left, sweep right, scroll up, scroll down… Remember in Minority Report how Tom Cruise could maneuver data in the air without touching anything? Science fiction to science fact. Interactive gaming like this will transform the nature of training and education.

Five Core Elements

Based on 25 years of research, I’ve identified five core elements that can dramatically accelerate learning when applied together.

1) Self-Diagnostic. In the world of gaming, the more feats you accomplish, the greater challenges the game gives you. Power down and the game remembers where you left off, so when you return to the game, you don’t have to start over from scratch.

How much time have you wasted sitting through business trainings that mostly covered things you already knew, just to learn those few key items you didn’t? Why not give your business training a self-diagnostic component, like advanced video games?

2) Interactivity. For centuries education and training have been mostly passive experiences: someone stands in front of the group and talks, and the trainees sit and listen. You might get some hands-on practice in a lab, but that’s comparatively rare.

In advanced video games you move things around and manipulate items. You interact with the information. You are engaged and immersed — and learning is far more effective when you interact with the material. Why not create an interactive module for your business training?

3) Immersion . With early 3D technology (including today’s 3D movies and 3D televisions) you have to wear special glasses to make the images pop out at you. With newer technology the 3D is interspatial: instead of images popping out at you, you enter them. You become immersed in the information.

When you’re training salespeople on, say, a particular manufacturing tool they’re going to sell, why not have them see the tool in 3D and get to manipulate the tool (virtually) rather than have them read spec sheets about it?

4) Competition. Humans are naturally competitive. We want to sell more, be more productive, and innovate faster and better than the next person. When you sit in class learning, there’s little competitive value. Whether you learn the materials in one hour or three, no one advances until the class is over.

When you compete in a game, there’s an adrenaline rush that keeps you engaged and focused on the task at hand. In an effort to win, people master concepts faster so they can be first.

5) Focus. When you play a game, you’re forced to focus. You have to do A before B can occur. If you don’t focus on doing A, you don’t get very far. Focus is enhanced by interactivity, competition, immersion, and self-diagnosis. And when you can focus, you can learn virtually anything — fast.

Accelerate Learning

When you model your company’s training to include these five elements, your employees will learn more in less time and have better results.

Using all five core elements is the key to accelerating learning. With more and more to learn, it will be increasingly important to gamily both business and education to create better results faster. Since businesses spend large sums of money on training and education, any tool that can accelerate or enhance learning will save both time and dollars. Those companies and school districts that adopt early will be the long-term winners.

So here’s your homework assignment: Get together with a kid and play one of their games. While you’re playing, think about and how you could reinvent learning with tools like these.

Daniel Burrus is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and business strategists, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous untapped opportunities. He is the author of Flash Foresight (CLICK HERE to get your copy now).