Travels from New York, USA
Marc Prensky's speaking fee falls within range: $25,000 to $30,000
Dedicated to designing a new pedagogy and curriculum for the digital generation, Marc Prensky is a world leader in the application of new technology and the Internet to the future of education. He is a visionary who wants to reinvent the learning process to bring educational and business content into the world with which young people are most engaged.
Holding Master’s degrees from Yale University, Middlebury College and the Harvard Business School, Prensky has real-world experience in teaching right across the educational spectrum from elementary school to college. He believes in the creation of a new compact between teachers and students, believing that both need to be motivated and to work together with new technology.
Strategy+Business magazine describes Prensky as “That rare visionary who implements.” He believes in allowing students to participate in the design of their own curricula and that teachers should discover just what it is that students are passionate about and use that as a motivator. His innovative use of technology within pedagogy is now being recognized and adopted worldwide.
Prensky’s experiences outside education have included performing on Broadway and at the Lincoln Centre, working on Wall Street and as strategist and product development director with the Boston Consulting Group. However, education and learning always remained his passion and he now brings his unique and exciting views to audiences all round the world.
Considered one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between technology and learning, Strategy+Business magazine calls Prensky “That rare visionary who implements.” Prensky looks at education from the perspective of the receivers (i.e. the students) rather than just the providers. He focuses on how to teach and motivate today’s students, and on how to motivate and reinvigorate their teachers as well. Prensky promotes a new form of partnership between teachers and students, and, through his writings and talks, helps teachers learn to change their pedagogy to ways that are far more effective for 21st century students.
Marc also focuses on how to teach future-oriented skills—including problem-solving, partnering, collaborating in online communities, video-making and programming—as an integrated part of all curricula. He is a strong partisan of teachers’ knowing and using students’ individual passions as motivators, and of students’ participation in the design of their own education.
In his talks around the globe, Marc initiates and conducts unique student-educator dialogs about the teaching and learning process. His innovative combination of pedagogy and technology—including game technology, where he was an early pioneer—is becoming increasingly accepted and used by educators worldwide as the wave of the future.
Marc’s background includes Master’s degrees from Yale University, Middlebury College, and The Harvard Business School with distinction. He has taught at all levels, from elementary to college, and ran a prototype charter school in East Harlem, NY.
Marc also performed on Broadway and at Lincoln Center, worked on Wall Street, and spent six years as a corporate strategist and product development director with the prestigious Boston Consulting Group. After all that, he is thrilled to be back working in the field of education and learning.
“I have only one place to start, and that's at the place we all need to start, and end, and that's with the students,” says Marc Prensky, explaining how educators can engage with the new generation of “digital natives.” “We're preparing our students for the 21st-century world, the key is that we do it before the end of the 21st century!”
Marc Prensky offers his insights into the way the digital generation works for both the corporate world and educators alike. He explains how the young “digital natives” have a unique way of working and how many of their employers do not recognize their unique capabilities. He shows how, utilized correctly, this generation can be an enormous asset to their companies and also warns of the dangers of ignoring their new ways of working.
For educators, Prensky has many entertaining and thought-provoking addresses. Covering the whole span of the digital world, he shows that by incorporating games and social media into teaching, what was once thought of as a threat to learning can become central to its enhancement.
What the World Needs from Education In a persuasive and refreshing way, Prensky argues positively for today’s kids. Contrary to the negativity currently in vogue, Prensky believes that the perception that technology harms kids is holding us, and them, back—tremendously. Our most pressing problem everywhere is how to get ready for a quickly arriving technology-filled future that will be very different from what we know from our own experience. Our young people, says Prensky, are already busy preparing themselves for their fast-arriving times—and we need to help them. Prensky, in this inspiring talk, shows us how. "You gave a truly inspiring lecture. The possibilities that lie in empowering our children and changing how we view them are amazing. I think that whenever I write a paper or go to work your words will be in the back of my mind."
The Accomplishment Track: Coming Automation and the Future of Work As our world quickly evolves, the "basics" required for future success are changing. To prepare our kids—fast becoming "symbiotic hybrids" with their increasingly powerful technology—we need to get them off our spoon-fed “pet food curriculum” and, from the very start of their schooling, and start them accomplishing the kinds of continuous, real-world-impact projects that are quickly replacing our traditional long-term jobs. In this talk, Prensky describes an emerging "accomplishment track" springing up around the world as an alternative to traditional academic education, along with numerous examples of what kids have already done. He shows how any teacher or district can offer this new and exciting possibility.
Use Me or Lose Me Deriving Maximum Value from Today’s Younger Workers After years of debating the limitations of hierarchically-run organizations and the merits of democratization, the end of command-and-control management may finally be here, thanks to the people 25 and younger in our midst. Unprecedented changes in electronics and communications over the past 30 years have led to fresh patterns of thinking in these young digital natives—a new generation of people who are collectively harnessing both new technology and new behavioral skills—often to effect dramatic change within the organizations that employ them. Unfortunately, many Digital Immigrant leaders—including many of those who claim to beplugged in—don’t get the fact that digital natives bring unique capabilities to large organizations.
In this talk Prensky highlights these changes and discusses their implications for today’s and tomorrow’s organizational leaders. If consulted, these young employees can be an enormous force for positive change and success in their companies. If ignored, they spend their brain cycles on the job plotting (in ways managers can’t control) how to make their own work lives, not their companies, better.
For educator (and general) audiences:
Feedback from Organizers:
“Once again, thank you for inspiring us. I have heard nothing but positive remarks!! I can assure you your comments will have lasting impressions.” (Conference Organizer, 6/10)
“[Your keynote] was inspirational and thought provoking, and delivered with great energy.” (Conference Organizer, 4/09)
“Thank you so much for the wonderful presentation!” (Conference Organizer / ISD Technology Coordinator 2/09)
“We have heard a lot of wonderful feedback from your presentation.” (Conference Organizer / PD Specialist 1/09)
“I had so many people coming up to me telling me how much they enjoyed your presentation and how it had ′made them think.′” (Conference Organizer 10/07)
“Thanks again for a most stimulating start for our [conference]. “The ‘buzz’ is still buzzing.” (Conference Organizer, 10/07)
Feedback from Audience Members:
“Your presentation this week was truly outstanding! … my sincere compliments to you on both your material and your superb presentation skills.” (Audience Member / Business COO 9/10)
“Wanted to thank you for your presentation at the above event – I was really impressed by the use you made of the 30 minutes both in terms of style and content.” (Audience Member / Business Development manager 9/10)
“I attended your lecture on Monday and found it very interesting. I′ve been talking to my colleagues about it all week and would dearly love to share your slides with them.” (Audience Member / Head Teacher, UK 9/10)
“We attended your presentation today. It was awesome!!!!!!” (Audience Members / College Professors 5/09)
“Your thought-provoking, inspiring, and very entertaining plenary … has echoed in my mind ever since.” (Audience member / College Faculty 4/09)
“I really enjoyed your talk which was interesting, thought-provoking and funny!” (Audience member / College Faculty 4/09)
“Greatly appreciated your talk and student panel discussion here, and it has been the catalyst for some interesting discussion in our ranks.” (Audience Member / College Faculty, 3/09)
“Your presentation was very revealing and expressed exactly where we are at in teaching.” (Audience member / College Faculty 4/09)
“You have certainly twisted my head around—in a good way!” (Audience member / Assistant Professor of Education 2/09)
Client List:
1st Chicago Trust ABN-AMRO American Express Avon Bank of America Bank of Montreal Bankers Trust Blue Cross of Michigan Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Charles Schwab CIBC DARPA Ernst & Young Estee Lauder Fidelity Investments Ford GE IBM JP Morgan Chase Kraft Foods LAUSD Nokia Nortel Palm Pilot Pearson Pfizer Providian Financial Reuters Springhouse Publishing Stern Stewart think3 TIAA-CREF Toronto-Dominion The Harvard Business School U.S Department of Defense
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Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning
Prensky presents a model for 21st-century teaching and learning, in which students become learners and creators of knowledge through technology while teachers guide and assess student learning.
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