Writing

Marc has five published books. He is currently writing a book on future curriculum. Marc has also written a large number of essays and reviews (see below), and has written chapters for several anthologies. His books and articles have been translated into numerous languages (see International).
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Click here to inquire about booking Marc Prensky as a speaker (in English, French or Spanish)
or about having him design and conduct a professional development workshop
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Marc’s Books

To order Marc’s books, click on a title below: ………………………………………………………….
Digital Game-Based Learning Don't Bother Me Mom—I'm Learning! Teaching Digital Natives—Partnering for Real Learning
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Marc’s Blog

Click here for shorter pieces and current thoughts.
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Marc’s Essays and Other Writings

READ MARC PRENSKY’S ESSAYS ONLINE: (Note: All the articles below are available for republication. To encourage spread of the ideas, you are also free to download, print, distribute and link to the articles at no cost. However if you do this, I would appreciate your letting me know at marc@games2train.com. Many thanks.)
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CLASSICS

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants — A New Way To Look At Ourselves and Our Kids
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Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part II: Do They REALLY Think Differently? — Neuroscience Says Yes
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The Reformers are Leaving our Schools in the 20th Century: Why most U.S. school reformers are on the wrong track, and how to get our kids’ education right for the future (in SNS Newsletter 2011)
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Digital Wisdom (H. Sapiens Digital) — Moving beyond Natives and Immigrants (in Innovate, Feb-Mar 2009)- for version in Spanish, see International
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Backup Education? — Too many teachers see education as preparing kids for the past, not the future (in Educational Technology, Jan-Feb 2008)
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NEW AND RECENT

Our Brains Extended (in Educational Leadership, March, 2013)
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Time Travel as Punishment: What our kids REALLY hate (in Educational Technology, Jan-Feb 2013)
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What Does It Mean To Be a Digital Native (CNN, Dec. 4 2012)
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Q&A With Marc Prensky (in Lexicon Magazine, Canada, Nov. 2012)
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Why We Need Digital Wisdom (for Qualcomm Spark, Nov 2012)
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What ISN’T Technology Good At? Part II–Passion! (in Educational Technology, Nov-Dec 2012)
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What ISN’T Technology Good At? Part I–Empathy! (in Educational Technology, Sept-Oct 2012)
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Trivia vs. Power: Let’s be clear on exactly how we are using technology in education (in Educational Technology, Jul-Aug 2012)
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Before Bringing in New Tools, You Must First Bring in New Thinking (in Amplify.com, July 2012)
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Teaching the Right Stuff–Not Yesterday’s Stuff or Today’s, but Tomorrow’s (In Educational Technology, MayJune 2012)
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From Digital Natives to Digital Wisdom: Hopeful Essays for 21st Century Learning (Introduction to book from Corwin Press, 2012)
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Eliminating the App Gap (In Educational Technology, Jan-Feb 2012)
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2011

Which College Will Be The First to Go Bookless? (In The Chronicle of Higher Education, November, 2011)
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A Huge Leap for the Classroom (in Educational Technology, Nov-Dec 2011)
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Khan Academy (in Educational Technology, Aug-Sept 2011)
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Guest review of Teaching Digital Natives (from Marc Prensky’s Blog)
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Prensky Interview in Italian newspaper l’Unita (June 2011): Full Interview In English - for version in Italian, see International
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The Reformers are Leaving our Schools in the 20th Century: Why most U.S. school reformers are on the wrong track, and how to get our kids’ education right for the future (in SNS Newsletter 2011)
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2010

Simple Changes in Current Practices May Save Our Schools (in ETC Online Journal , 2010)
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Prensky Interview in Brazilian news magazine Epoca (July 2010): Interview in English - for version in Portuguese, see International
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What I Learned Recently in New York City Classrooms — How to keep all learners busy and engaged all the time (to be published in 2010)
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The iPad is Coming to Schools — Or is It? — To get past the barriers, you need the whole product (in Educational Technology, 2010)
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Blame Our Young? Or Use Their Passion! — We can do better than just laying the responsibility for solving our nation’s problems on the backs of our kids (an unpublished Op-Ed, 2010)
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What a School District CTO Should Know — More than just technology, a CTO needs to know what is going on. (in Educational Technology, 2010)
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The Longer View: Why You Tube Matters — Why it is so important, why we should all be using it, and why blocking it hurts our kids’ education. (in On The Horizon , 2010)
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Technology Turns Disposable — Forget amortizing — buy new every year! (in Educational Technology, 2010)
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2009

Education as Rocket Science — And teachers as rocket scientists–who knew? (in Educational Technology, 2009)
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Digital Wisdom (H. Sapiens Digital) — Moving beyond Natives and Immigrants (in Innovate, Feb-Mar 2009)- for version in Spanish, see International
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Should a 4-year-old have an iPhone? — Absolutely! (on the Handheld Learning site, 2009)
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Make Those You Tubes! — Sharing is now a snap — and sharers learn faster. (in Educational Technology, 2009)
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Open Letter to the Obama Administration (in Educational Technology Mar-Apr 2009)
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Prensky’s Five Skills Framework for Problem-Solving (not the 21st century skills you might expect)
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Let’s Be “Digital Multipliers” (in Educational Technology Jan-Feb 2009)
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2008

The Role of Technology in Teaching and the Classroom (in Educational Technology Nov-Dec 2008)
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Looking Back From The Future (in Greentree Gazette, November 2008)
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New College Courses for the 21st Century (in Greentree Gazette, September 2008)
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Using Cell Phones for Exams (submitted to The Sydney Morning Herald, August 2008)
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Who should take the SAT? Why not the educators? (in Greentree Gazette, August 2008)
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Are you lecturing about nouns or facilitating learning with verbs? (in Greentree Gazette, July 2008)
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Young Minds, Fast Times: The Twenty-First-Century Digital Learner – How tech-obsessed iKids would improve our schools. (in Edutopia , June 2008)
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Turning On The Lights — Will we continue to trap our kids in the past? (in Educational Leadership , March 2008)
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The True Twenty-first Century Literacy Is Programming (In Edutopia, Feb 2008)
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2007

Students as Designers and Creators of Educational Computer Games — Who Else? (pub. online by Microsoft, 2007)
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To Educate, We Must Listen — Reflections from Travelling the World
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Changing Paradigms — from “being taught” to “learning on your own with guidance” (In Educational Technology, July-Aug 2007)
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How to Teach With Technology — keeping both teachers and students comfortable in an era of exponential change (from BECTA’s Emerging Technologies for Learning , Vol 2 (2007))
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Who’s in Charge? — Who Should Set and Control IT Policy in Our Schools? (In Educational Technology, May-June 2007)
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New York Times — Prensky quoted in Michelle Slatalla’s first Cyberfamilias Column, May 24, 2007(paragrph 16 – end)
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Simulation Nation — Inventive computer sims can turn dull lessons into hyperreal experiences — If we can get educators to use them. (In Edutopia, March 2007)
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Financial Times: Skills and Learning: How to Train Digital Natives — Prensky quoted in paragraphs 7 and 8
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The Rules Of Engagement – Prensky Interview on Sisimo.com (scroll down)
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Open Letter to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation — There is one lasting impact that ONLY YOU can make
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On Being Disrespected — (In Educational Leadership )
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The Prensky Challenge — Who will be the first to challenge, rather than blame, our kids?
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Listen to the Natives –(in Educational Leadership, December 2005/January 2006 | Vol. 63 No. 4 )
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Adopt and Adapt — School Technology for the 21st Century (in Edutopia, December 2005 )
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Engage Me or Enrage Me — What Today’s Learners Demand ( in Educause Review, Sept./Oct. 2005)
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Mobile Phone Imagination– Using Devices Kids Love for Their Education (in Vodaphone Receiver )
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Search Vs. Research — Or, the Fear of The Wikipedia Overcome by New Understanding for a Digital Era
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A New Business Model for 21st Century Educational Software — Education is a Public Service, Not a Place to Make a Buck
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If We Share, We’re Halfway There — We need to post on the Web everything we do or create that works
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In Educational Games COMPLEXITY MATTERS — Mini-Games are Trivial — but “Complex” Games Are Not
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The Emerging Online Life of the Digital Native — Don’t try to educate kids without knowing about it. (A work in progress – please email me comments and additions.)
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What Can You Learn From A Cell Phone? – Almost Anything! – How to use the 1.5 billion computers already in our students’ and trainees’ pockets to increase learning, at home and around the world
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What Can You Learn From A Cell Phone? – Almost Anything! – Innovate! version
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List of Tools for Building [Learning] Games –Templates, Frames, Game Makers, Simple Engines, Prototyping Tools, Building Tools, Modding Tools, 3D Engines — All on one page (updates appreciated)
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ADDITIONAL WRITINGS ON STUDENTS, GAMES AND LEARNING

Beyond the Lemonade Stand — Economics and Business Lessons for a 10-year-old From a Computer Game
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The Seven Games of Highly Effective People — How Game Playing Helps You Succeed in School, Work and Life
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How Kids Learn To Cooperate In Video Games — A Guide for Parents and Teachers
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Our Greatest Untapped Resource –Putting Unused Computer Cycles To Work For Education
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SLIDE SHOW : Marc Prensky: “Give Us 21st Centry Tools”- Talk delivered at the Dept of Education’s NCLB eLearning Summit, July, 2004
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Capturing the Value of “Generation Tech” Employees — From strategy+business Magazine (note: site requires a brief free registration)
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The Death of Command and Control? — The “Scribe-Tribe” and Bottom-up Transformation
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“Modding” – The Newest Authoring Tool
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WEB SITE: Social Impact Games — A Catalog of “Serious” Computer Games with Non-Entertainment Goals
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Games Parents Teachers: a resource — A Resource for Parents and Teachers
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WEB SITE: GamesParentsTeachers — “Dedicated to improving parents’ and teachers’ understanding of the positive things kids are learning from their video and computer games.”
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Proposal for Educational Software Development Sites — An Open Source Tool To Create The Learning Software We Need
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ONLINE DISCUSSION: What Can Education Learn from the Video Game Industry? — Jim Gee, Chris Dede, Marc Prensky and a high school student
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New Business Models for Learning –We need them badly…and we have to invent them
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Really Good News About Your Children’s Video Games –They’re the best learning tools we have
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What Kids Learn That’s POSITIVE From Playing Video Games — Quite a bit, as it turns out…
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Escape from Planet Jar-Gon. Or, What Video Games Have To Teach Academics About Teaching and Writing : A Review of James Paul Gee’s “What Videogames Have To Teach Us About Learning and Literacy”
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“e-Nough!” (An Essay on Learning) For any teaching to reliably and consistently produce the results we want, we still have a lot to learn about learning. (In On The Horizon)
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Twitch Speed –Reaching Younger Workers Who Think Differently
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Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants — a New Way To Look At Ourselves and Our Kids
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Do They REALLY Think Differently? — Neuroscience Says Yes
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Digital Immigrant Remedial Vocabulary– How Many Do You Know?
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Overcoming Educators’ Digital Immigrant Accents: A Rebuttal to an Online Critic
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Why Games Engage Us– 12 Reasons
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The Motivation of Gameplay– or, the REAL 21st Century Learning Revolution
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Types of Learning And Possible Game Styles–A Useful Chart
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Fun, Play and Games: What Makes Games Engaging? — Digital Game-Based Learning Chapter 5
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Not Only The Lonely — Implications of “Social” Online Activities for Higher Education
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But The Screen Is Too Small — No It Isn’t. Why Cell Phones – Not Computers – Should Be The Future of Educational Technology
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Open Collaboration — A Better Way to Develop Educational Software
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The Intellectual Arcade– A Great Training Concept
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Digital Game-Based Learning Chapter 1: The Digital Game-Based Learning Revolution
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Digital Game-Based Learning Chapter 2: The Games Generations: How Learners Have Changed
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Digital Game-Based Learning Chapter 3: Why Education and Training Have NOT Changed
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Video Games and the Attack on America
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Evolving Instruction? Seven Challenges
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SIMULATION-RELATED

Simulation Nation — Inventive computer sims can turn dull lessons into hyperreal experiences — If we can get educators to use them. (In Edutopia, March 2007)
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Interactive Pretending –An Overview of Simulation
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Simulations : Are They Games?
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Why NOT Simulation
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MILITARY-RELATED

Has Growing Up Digital and Extensive Video Game Playing Affected Younger Military Personnel’s Skill Sets? — A Paper Delivered at I/ITSEC 2003.
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True Believers: Digital Game-Based Learning in the Military — Digital Game-Based Learning Chapter 10
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DCSO: Incorporating Cyber-Gaming — A Paper Delivered at I/ITSEC 2002
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A Field Game Developer Corps — Is It Time For The “GameBees”?