Marc Prensky

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Marc Prensky
Marc Prensky.jpg
Born (1946-03-15) March 15, 1946 (age 78)
New York City, New York, United States
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater Oberlin College
Yale University
Harvard Business School
Occupation(s)Author, Speaker

Marc Prensky (born March 15, 1946, New York City, United States) is an American writer and speaker on education. He is best known as the creator of the terms "digital native" and "digital immigrant" [1] which he described in a 2001 article in On the Horizon. [2]

Contents

Prensky holds degrees from Oberlin College (1966), Middlebury College (MA, 1967), Yale University (1968) and the Harvard Business School (1980). He is the author of seven books: Digital Game-Based Learning (McGraw-Hill 2001), Don't Bother Me Mom – I'm Learning (Paragon House 2006), Teaching Digital Natives (Corwin Press 2010), From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Learning (2012), Brain Gain: Technology and the Quest for Digital Wisdom (2012), The World Needs a New Curriculum (The Global Future Education Foundation, 2014), Education To Better Their World: Unleashing the power of 21st century kids (Teachers College Press, 2016) and 100 essays on learning and education. Prensky also designed the first first-person-shooter game for corporate training (Straight Shooter, 1987) and a suite of eight learning game templates (For Corporate Gameware in 1996.) [3]

Prensky began his career as a teacher in Harlem, New York. He has taught in elementary school, (New Haven, Connecticut), high school (New York, New York), and college (Wagner College, Staten Island, New York) and in the mid-1970s he also earned money playing his lute in a classical music restaurant/bar. He worked for six years (1981-1987) as a corporate strategist and product development director with the Boston Consulting Group, and six years (1993-1999) for Bankers Trust on Wall St., where he created game-based training for financial traders, and started an internal division, Corporate Gameware, later spun out as games2train. [3]

Focus and research

Prensky's professional focus is on K-12 education reform. His books address tools (Digital Game-Based Learning), pedagogy (Teaching Digital Natives), curriculum (The World Needs a New Curriculum) and the entire k-12 system (Education to Better Their World.)

Prensky is a strong advocate for listening more carefully to what students say about their own education. In his speaking engagements he has conducted approximately 100 student panels in 40 countries.

He has been named a "guiding star of the new parenting movement" by Parental Intelligence Newsletter. [4]

Criticism

Bax (2011) has written that Prensky's views are simplistic, that his terminology is open to challenge and that his claim that educators should simply alter their approach to suit young people who are 'digital natives' ignores essential elements of the nature of learning and good pedagogy. [5] The Economist (2010) questioned whether the designation of the 'digital native' has any real-world usefulness. [6]

Prensky responds that: ”The distinction between digital natives and digital immigrants is important because it is more cultural than technology-knowledge-based. ‘Digital Immigrants’ grew up in a non-digital, pre-Internet culture before they experienced the digital one. ‘Digital Natives’ know only the digital culture.” [7] Prensky further argues that “the fields of education and pedagogy have today become needlessly and painfully over-complicated, ignoring our students’ (and our world’s) real needs. It is time to reassess what good and effective teaching means in a digital age and how to combine what is important from the past with the tools of the future." Prensky argues that “despite recent influxes of technology into schools, not enough attention is being paid to the full implications of all the important recent changes in our educational environment and context”.

Books

Prensky’s books include:-

Volumes edited

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pedagogy</span> Theory and practice of education

Pedagogy, most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, is the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political, and psychological development of learners. Pedagogy, taken as an academic discipline, is the study of how knowledge and skills are imparted in an educational context, and it considers the interactions that take place during learning. Both the theory and practice of pedagogy vary greatly as they reflect different social, political, and cultural contexts.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Project-based learning</span> Learner centric pedagogy

Project-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy that involves a dynamic classroom approach in which it is believed that students acquire a deeper knowledge through active exploration of real-world challenges and problems. Students learn about a subject by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to a complex question, challenge, or problem. It is a style of active learning and inquiry-based learning. PBL contrasts with paper-based, rote memorization, or teacher-led instruction that presents established facts or portrays a smooth path to knowledge by instead posing questions, problems, or scenarios.

Clark Aldrich is an American author and practitioner in the field of educational simulations and serious games for education and professional skills.

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Culturally relevant teaching or responsive teaching is a pedagogy grounded in teachers' practice of cultural competence, or skill at teaching in a cross-cultural or multicultural setting. Teachers using this method encourage each student to relate course content to their cultural context.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital literacy</span> Ones fluency in subjects involving digital matters

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Information and media literacy</span> Overview of information and media literacy

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital native</span> Person who has grown up in the digital age

The term digital native describes a person who has grown up in the information age. The term "digital native" was coined by Marc Prensky, an American writer, speaker and technologist who wrote several articles referencing this subject. This term specifically applied to the generation that grew up in the "digital age," predominantly regarding individuals born after the year 1980, namely Millennials, Generation Z, and Generation Alpha. Individuals from these demographic cohorts can consume digital information quickly and comfortably through electronic devices and platforms such as computers, mobile phones, and social media.

Challenge-based learning (CBL) is a framework for learning while solving real-world Challenges. The framework is collaborative and hands-on, asking all participants to identify Big Ideas, ask good questions, discover and solve Challenges, gain in-depth subject area knowledge, develop 21st-century skills, and share their thoughts with the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Kim (academic)</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open educational practices</span>

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<i>Now You See It</i> (book)

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The Digital Visitor and Resident (V&R) model provides a framework to depict how user preference and habit motivates engagement with technology and the web. V&R is commonly described as a continuum, with two modes of online engagement at either end, making a separation between different approaches to engagement. People operating in Visitor mode have a defined goal or task, and select an appropriate online tool to meet their needs as they arise. For example, using a smartphone to search the internet for directions to a local bookstore, thus finding a particular piece of information online and then going offline to complete the task. There will be little in terms of social visibility or trace when online in Visitor mode. People operating in Resident mode are online to connect to, or to be with, other people. For example, posting to the wall in Facebook, tweeting, blogging, or posting comments on blogs. The web supports the projection of their identity and facilitates relationships. In other words, Residents live a percentage of their lives online. Unlike the Visitor mode, there will be online visibility and presence when in Resident mode. It is very common for individuals to engage online in a mixture of Visitor and Resident modes depending on what they are trying to achieve.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">21st century skills</span> Skills identified as being required for success in the 21st century

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital pedagogy</span>

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Virtual exchange is an instructional approach or practice for language learning. It broadly refers to the "notion of 'connecting' language learners in pedagogically structured interaction and collaboration" through computer-mediated communication for the purpose of improving their language skills, intercultural communicative competence, and digital literacies. Although it proliferated with the advance of the internet and Web 2.0 technologies in the 1990s, its roots can be traced to learning networks pioneered by Célestin Freinet in 1920s and, according to Dooly, even earlier in Jardine's work with collaborative writing at the University of Glasgow at the end of the 17th to the early 18th century.

References

  1. Michaels, Leonard (June 22, 2010). The Essays of Leonard Michaels. Macmillan. pp. 27–28. ISBN   978-0-374-53226-0 . Retrieved April 30, 2011. Marc Prensky wrote a seminal article on the key differences between those folks who learned the Internet and all its facets as adults (Digital Immigrants) and those who grew up immersed in it and ...
  2. Marc Prensky. "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants" (PDF). Marcprensky.com. Retrieved 30 September 2017.
  3. 1 2 "Marc's Resume (CV) - Marc Prensky". Archived from the original on 2016-07-30. Retrieved 2016-06-25.
  4. Collier, Bob (August 2009). How I Parent (PDF). Parental Intelligence Newsletter. pp. 1–34. Archived from the original (PDF) on April 25, 2012. Retrieved July 7, 2011. [marc Prensky is a] guiding star of the new parenting movement…
  5. Bax, S. 'Digital Education: beyond the wow factor' in Digital Education: Opportunities for Social Collaboration. Ed. Michael Thomas. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
  6. "Technology and society: Is it really helpful to talk about a new generation of "digital natives" who have grown up with the internet?". The Economist. March 4, 2010. Retrieved April 22, 2012.
  7. "Teaching the Right Stuff – Not Yesterday's Stuff or Today's, but Tomorrow's (In Educational Technology, MayJune 2012) and Before Bringing in New Tools, You Must First Bring in New Thinking". Marcprensky.com. June 2012. Retrieved 30 September 2017.