On March 15th, I was privileged to see Marc Prensky speak at the ECIS Technology Conference. If you’ve never heard of Marc Prensky, he is the author of the
Marc Prensky is also a wonderful speaker who kept us all very engaged. He spoke about the importance of using technology to connect with our students, and about teaching students to use technology to connect with each other. He was nice enough to share some of his slides with me, so I’ll share them with you here.
One of the biggest thing I hear from teachers is that technology is an engagement tool. However, Marc Prensky says that technology should be more about connecting than engaging.
He also said that the idea of grouping children by age is not the way to reach the needs of our children.
He reminded us that our students have a completely different viewpoint of technology.
One of my favorite parts was when Marc talked about how technology is not about the cool new tool, but rather about the thinking that goes into using – and creating – new tools. He also mentioned that most of the time the time spent planning the creation of a technology project provides more learning than the time spent creating a new technology project.
The most important thing that I took from Marc Prensky’s presentation was that teaching students to use technology is equal to teaching kids to read in today’s world.
Finally, Marc talked about video and the sharing of short videos on YouTube to increasing the connection process. He says you should try to post one per week.
Have you ever seen Marc Prensky speak or read one of his books? If you haven’t I’d definitely recommend it.
Here is his keynote from the conference:
Please leave me a comment about your thoughts on Marc Prensky’s ideas and feel free to stop by next Sunday for more information the other presentations from the ECIS Conference.
Heidi,
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for sharing. I was not aware of Marc Prensky before. I love his philosophy on all things technology.....it's not about the technology tools but the connections it opens up. I also believe his statement about how technology is as foundational as reading. I wish everyone thought that way. My new goal will be to have my firsties start creating little videos. I love it. It's really is a fantastic medium. I just wish I could attend a conference where he was speaking. I checked his web site out and will have to check out some of his books.
Thanks so much for sharing. You certainly have made a connections with me today.
Claire
Claire,
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad that this inspired you. Marc's talk was very inspirational to me. Good luck with your videos, they'll be great, I'm sure!
Heidi Raki
www.rakisradresources.com