Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning

"This book is a must-read for any educator who wants to successfully work with the digital generation, because it is so practical and filled with ideas to engage 21st-century students."
―Ian Jukes, Author of Teaching the Digital Generation

"A truly great and inspiring book. My students are a testament that partnering does work."
―Randon Ruggles, Teacher
FAIR School, Minneapolis, MN

"Finally someone has written a book for teachers that goes beyond pedagogy and philosophy, giving teachers something they can use on Monday morning!"
―Sandy Fivecoat, CEO
WeAreTeachers

"The good news: teachers don′t have to be masters of technology to master the 21st-century classroom. Prensky has developed a map for a new era of teaching and learning that educators will find a breeze to navigate, and well worth the trip!"
―Jonathan Ben-Asher, Principal
Henry and Wrightstown Elementary Schools, Tucson, AZ

A new paradigm for teaching and learning in the 21st century!

Students today are growing up in a digital world. These "digital natives" learn in new and different ways, so educators need new approaches to make learning both real and relevant for today′s students.

Marc Prensky, who first coined the terms "digital natives" and "digital immigrants," presents an intuitive yet highly innovative and field-tested partnership model that promotes 21st-century student learning through technology. Partnership pedagogy is a framework in which:

• Digitally literate students specialize in content finding, analysis, and presentation via multiple media
• Teachers specialize in guiding student learning, providing questions and context, designing instruction, and assessing quality
• Administrators support, organize, and facilitate the process schoolwide
• Technology becomes a tool that students use for learning essential skills and "getting things done"

With numerous strategies, how-to′s, partnering tips, and examples, Teaching Digital Natives is a visionary yet practical book for preparing students to live and work in today′s globalized and digitalized world.

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.