Using the GAME Plan Process with Students

As I have followed the pace of my GAME plan, I had taken time to tweak it here or there. I tried to stay to the original plan, revising only how I might initiate certain elements of the lessons. I tried to consider my peers as well as my students when examining the objectives and content material I wanted to cover. What I have found was the NETS-T standards and the NETS-S standards are really interchangeable. In fact when it really comes down to the nuts and bolts of each, they really are addressing standards students and teachers will share at the end of a good project or lesson. It really doesn’t take a long drawn out project for teachers or students to reach proficiency in integration of technology. As for that matter, the smaller and simpler lessons bracketed around one or two technical objectives really provide both teacher and student with confidence to attack the next step in the process. Originally, my GAME plan was going to be chocked full of different technical areas for me to learn as I was teaching them, then when I realized that in this case, less may be more, I began to think about what I felt like when I was given a daunting task. Why would I place that onus on a student? What I needed to do is search for ways to find simpler forms of technology to match with the problem, or match to a particular lesson, where students could master them very quickly. It was the same with my peers. Why ask them to reinvent the wheel when all I needed to do was find a way to make peak their interest by providing them with push button type lessons that we could do in a small workshop setting so they could master them and adapt to their content material. Technology is so daunting to those who fear it, yet it is so powerful for those who conquer and master it. I suppose it was like that for the same people who put down the slide rule and picked up a calculator. Now look at a slide rule and try to find someone who can use it without fear! Technology is amazing when a person can use it to their capacity, and when you continue to increase your capacity, creativity and imagination have no limits.

I really think it may be fun to have my students set up a GAME plan for each marking period. It might be interesting to see if we could come up with a universal plan, say to learn three new software applications to design a crafty project, or some lesson, or presentation. Perhaps that may be a bit ambitious, but I have found that the only parameters a student will stay in is what we place them in, sometimes it’s that “out of the box” thinking that really generates fun, informative, exciting lessons. Maybe it would be best to have them decide what they would like to work with each marking period from a “technology bank” that we post on our wall, then as we learn them, we get to check the off, sort of like Survivor, Biggest Loser, or American Idol. Really the only “loser” would be me if I didn’t try it.