Using the GAME Plan with Students

One of the key goals that I have for all of my students is to become more self-directed. Using the GAME Plan strategy, it allows my students to gain the necessary skills to do just that (Laureate, 2009). Since many of my at-risk students bring a lot of baggage and especially bad school experiences with them to my classroom, using the GAME Plan strategy will not only provide them with the opportunity learn how they learn best, but allow me to become more of a facilitator and let my students learn for themselves.

From ISTE, the first concept, or standard, that I think would be great to implement the GAME Plan with my students is standard 6 – “Students demonstrate a sound understanding of technology concepts, systems, and operations” (ISTE, 2010). I think this standard could provide a good stepping stone for my students to progress into other standards and more meaningful uses of technology by allowing them to identify a goal (or in this case a technology in particular that they want to master), brainstorm ideas for learning and using this new technology that they are unfamiliar with, monitor how they are doing through several options like journaling, and then evaluating how well they accomplished their goal perhaps by creating a project with their newly learned technology.

Now that I have had the opportunity to slowly walk myself through the GAME Plan process over the last several weeks, I have found that the learning curve for some items is bigger than I thought and that some things are easier than I thought. If I want to help my students begin to develop proficiency in NETS-S standards, having them complete an achievable goals in the first play by becoming proficient in standard 6, they would have the ability then to believe that they could become proficient in the other student standards knowing that they will have road bumps, yet they can overcome them by breaking down the entire process into smaller portions as well as understand that they have help and can constantly monitor and revise their progress the entire time.

What I think could be so useful with the GAME Plan idea for my students is the idea that the entire process is broken down into very useful and yet feasible steps for students to work towards a goal. In all reality, it could work not only to implement ISTE standards but in all aspects of a student’s education from classwork, grades, relationships, etc.

Resources:

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2009). Program 1. Promoting self-directed learning and technology. [Educational video]. Baltimore: Author.

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). National Education Standards for Students (NETS-S) located at: http://www.iste.org/standards/nets-for-students/nets-student-standards-2007.aspx.