We appreciate you working with us to open our meeting in Orlando, FL. You set the stage perfectly to challenge our audience and to expand their expectations in education.
Marc is an internationally acclaimed speaker, author, and "practical visionary" in the field of education. Marc has spoken in over 40 countries, authored seven books, and published over 100 essays; his writing has been translated into a dozen languages. Coiner of the term "Digital Native" in 2001, he today promotes "civilization-level change" in global education, championing an emerging new "empowered to better their world" education paradigm that more directly benefits all students and the world they live in. Marc is the founder of The Global Future Education Foundation and Institute, a not-for-profit organization devoted to promoting Accomplishment-Based Education, and The Global Empowered Kids Alternative Education Network uniting all those in the world offering an "Empowered to Accomplish" education to kids. Marc holds an MBA degree from Harvard (with distinction) and a Masters in Teaching degree from Yale. He has taught at all levels, from elementary to college. Earlier in his career, Marc headed an early prototype charter school, spent six years at the Boston Consulting Group, and founded and ran a learning games company.
A new paradigm for education is emerging in the world, going from the old "learning and personal accomplishment" to the new "becoming and real-world accomplishment." In this New Paradigm, the New Goal is "becoming," the New Pedagogy is "Real-world accomplishment" and the "New Core Curriculum" is Effective Thinking, Effective Action ,Effective Relationships and Effective Accomplishment, combined with strong Situational Awareness about the world, and an underlying foundation of technology..
The era of just “learning” is over — students also have to “become” good, capable, empowered and world improving people. Rather than just "achieve," students now need to accomplish projects that benefit the real world.. They need to learn to think, act, relate and accomplish effectively, expressing their own unique interests and passions. In this talk, Prensky lays out the Emerging New Paradigm for 3rd Millennium K-12 Education, and shows who is already doing this, what their results are, and how we can all get there.
All educators are struggling to find ways to engage and connect students with learning. Marc Prensky is the leading expert on how today’s students (whom he refers to as Digital Natives) learn even when it isn’t apparent to digital immigrants. Join Prensky as he explains and demonstrates not only how today’s students have changed, but how educators can deal with the changes and learn from them. The key, says Prensky, is not curriculum, certification, or testing, but rather engagement. Today’s students are in need of more engaging approaches, more understanding and 21st century skills. The learning that motivates them the most is where students are already involved the most -- in their games.
Based on the new book by Marc Prensky (Paragon House 2006) the talk presents the case – profoundly counter-cultural but true nevertheless – that video and computer game playing, within limits, is actually very beneficial to today's ―Digital Native‖ kids, who are using the games to prepare themselves for life in the 21st century. The reason kids are so attracted to these games, Prensky says, is that they are learning about important ―future‖ things, from collaboration, to prudent risk taking, to strategy formulation and execution, to complex moral and ethical decisions. Prensky’s arguments are backed up by university PhD’s studying not just game violence, but games in their totality, as well as studies of gamers who have become successful corporate workers, entrepreneurs, leaders, doctors, lawyers, scientists and other professionals.
Because most adults (including most critics) can’t play the modern complex games themselves (and discount the opinions of the kids who do play them) they rely on secondhand sources of information, most of whom are sadly misinformed about both the putative harm and the true benefits of game-playing. This talk is the antidote to those misinformed, bombastic sources. Full of common sense and practical information, it provides parents with a large number of techniques approaches they can use – both over time and right away – to improve both their understanding of games and their relationships with their kids.