From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom

An expert perspective on 21st century education

What can you learn on a cell phone? Almost anything! How does that concept fit with our traditional system of education? It doesn′t. Best-selling author and futurist Marc Prensky′s
book of essays challenges educators to "reboot" and make the changes necessary to prepare students for 21st century careers. His "bottom-up" vision is based on interviews with young people and includes their ideas about what they need from teachers, schools, and education. Also featured are easy-to-do, high-impact classroom strategies that help what he calls "digital natives" acquire "digital wisdom." This thought-provoking text is organized into two sections that address:

• Rethinking education
• 21st century learning and technology in the classroom (including games, YouTube, and more)

In addition to valuable knowledge, this compelling collection offers inspiration, new perspectives, and ideas that work. Our educational context has changed, and a new context demands new thinking. This book will broaden your mind, spark new insights regarding how and what you teach, and reshape your vision of 21st century education.

Marc Prensky is an internationally acclaimed speaker, writer, consultant, futurist, visionary, and inventor in the critical areas of education and learning. He is the author of several critically acclaimed books and over 60 articles on education and learning, including multiple articles in Educational Leadership, Educause, Edutopia, and Educational Technology. Marc’s presentations around the world challenge and inspire audiences by opening up their minds to new ideas and approaches to education. One of his critically important perspectives is to look at education through the eyes of the students—during his talks, he interviews hundreds of students every year. Marc’s professional focus has been on reinventing the learning process, combining the motivation of student passion, technology, games, and other highly engaging activities with the driest content of formal education. He is the founder of two companies: Games2train, an e-learning company whose clients include IBM, Bank of America, Microsoft, Pfizer, the U.S. Department of Defense, and Florida’s and Los Angeles’s Virtual Schools; and Spree Learning, an online educational games company. Marc is one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between games and learning, and was called by Strategy+Business magazine “that rare visionary who implements.” He has designed and built over 50 software games in his career, including worldwide,multiuser games and simulations that run on all platforms, from the Internet to cell phones. MoneyU (www.moneyu.com), his latest project, is an innovative, engaging, and effective game for teaching financial literacy to high school and college students. Marc is also the creator of www.spreelearninggames.com and www.socialimpactgames.com.His products and ideas are innovative, provocative, and challenging, and they clearly show the way of the future. The NewYork Times,The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek,TIME, Fortune, and The Economist have all recognized Marc’s work. He has appeared on FOX News, MSNBC, CNBC, PBS’s Computer Currents, the Canadian and Australian Broadcasting Corporations, and the BBC. Marc also writes a column for Educational Technology. He was named as one of training’s top “New Breed of Visionaries” by Training magazine and was cited as a “guiding star of the new parenting movement” by Parental Intelligence Newsletter. Marc’s background includes master’s degrees from Yale, Middlebury, and Harvard Business School (with distinction). He has taught at all levels, from elementary to college. He is a concert musician and has acted on Broadway. He spent six years as a corporate strategist and product development director with the Boston Consulting Group and worked in human resources and technology on Wall Street.