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Teaching Digital Natives
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Teaching Digital Natives
Partnering for Real Learning

Foreword by Stephen Heppell



March 2010 | 224 pages | Corwin

"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.


 
About the Author
 
Introduction: Our Changing World: Technology and Global Society
What Today’s Students Want

 
Partnering and Twenty-first Century Technology

 
REAL, Not Just Relevant

 
Motivation Through Passion

 
Teaching for the Future

 
The Road to a Pedagogy of Partnering

 
 
1. Partnering: a Pedagogy for the New Educational Landscape
Moving Ahead

 
How Partnering Works

 
Establishing Roles and Mutual Respect

 
Getting Motivated to Partner With Your Students

 
 
2. Moving to the Partnership Pedagogy
Seeing Your Students Differently

 
Setting Up Your Classroom to Facilitate Partnering

 
Choosing Your Partnering “Level”: Basic, Directed, Advanced

 
Technology and Partnering: Nouns vs. Verbs

 
Partnering and The Required Curriculum

 
Taking Your First (or Next) Steps into Partnering

 
 
3. Think ”People and Passions” rather than “Classes and Content”
Learn your students’ interests and passions

 
Living Out the Partnering Roles

 
More Ideas

 
 
4. Always be REAL (not Just Relevant)
A New Perspective

 
Making Our Subjects REAL

 
More Ways to Make Things REAL

 
Always Think “Future”

 
 
5. Planning: Content to Questions, Questions to Skills
Using Guiding Questions

 
Focus on the appropriate verbs

 
 
6. Using Technology in Partnering
Technology is the Enabler

 
Technology and Equity: To Each His or Her Own

 
Let the Students Use All Technology

 
Using the Appropriate Nouns (Tools) for the Guiding Questions and Verbs

 
 
7. Understanding the “Nouns,” or Tools
 
8. Let Your Students Create
A real, World Audience

 
Aim High / Raise the bar

 
 
9. Continuous Improvement Through Practice and Sharing
Improving Through Iteration

 
Improving Through Practice

 
Improving Through Sharing

 
More Ways to Help Yourself Improve

 
 
10. Assessment in the Partnership Pedagogy
Useful Assessment: Beyond Summative and Formative

 
Assessing Students’ Progress

 
Assessing Teachers’ Progress

 
Assessing Administrators’ Progress

 
Assessing Parents’ Progress

 
Assessing Schools’ Progress

 
Assessing Our Nation’s Progress, and the World’s

 
 
Conclusion: The (Not Too Distant) Future of Education
What Should A New Curriculum Be?: Essential Twenty-first Century Skills

 
Using the Partnership Pedagogy With New Curricula

 
Creating Schools With Partnering In Mind

 
Toward a Twenty-first Century Education for All

 
 
Index

“Marc Prensky’s understanding of how school-age digital natives learn underpins his prescient ‘pedagogy of partnering.’ He looks to the learner as the first consideration in the educational equation. The insightful advice and gentle guidance Marc provides classroom teachers directly assist them in moving powerful digital tools into the right hands…their students’! Marc’s understanding that the pedagogy of partnering is built on a relationship of co-learning is fundamental to the 21st-century classroom. This book looks to the future with an urgent spirit of possibility and promise!”

David Engle, Superintendent
North Platte Public School District, NE

"In Teaching Digital Natives, Marc Prensky redefines the whole problem of digitally savvy kids being taught by un-digitally-savvy teachers. Rather than bemoaning, as nearly everyone else has, what teachers do not know, he celebrates what they do know and what they can do. He shows how teachers and students together can pool knowledge and engage in collective intelligence to make both teachers and students—and society—smarter in the act.This book is a must-read for anyone interested in school reform and 21st-century learning."

James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of Literacy Studies, Chief Learning Scientist, Center for Games and Impact
Arizona State University, AZ

“Core curriculum, 21st-century skills, rigor, and methodology are outlined in a way all educators can appreciate and implement. Teaching Digital Natives is a must for all educators who strive to meet the emerging demands of our profession.”

Jere Vyverberg, Superintendent
Waverly-Shell Rock Community Schools, IA

“Prensky takes the task of marshalling 21st-century technologies for classroom instruction to a practical level that teachers can both understand and apply immediately. The concept of partnering and allowing both teachers and students to capitalize on their strengths clarifies the issue for educators. The good news: teachers don’t have to be masters of technology to master the 21st-century classroom. Prensky has developed a new map for a new era of teaching and learning that educators will find a breeze to navigate, and well worth the trip!”

Jon Ben-Asher, Principal
Henry and Wrightstown Elementary Schools, Tucson, AZ

“In Teaching Digital Natives, Prensky laments the fact that many educators today think students have short attention spans. He points out that although this may be true in the context of school, most students concentrate just fine on things that interest them. The book then explains to educators how to make school an interesting place for students with a partnering pedagogy.”

Lisa Nielsen, Educator, Speaker, Author
The Innovative Educator Blog

Teaching Digital Natives is a must-read book for those of us who use technology, those who need more details about why we must use technology in our teaching, and for all teachers of teachers to use as a crucial text in their classes.”

Ted Nellen, Teacher
Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School, New York, NY

“Marc Prensky assimilates teaching, learning, and technology into a brilliant how-to for 21st-century teachers and students. This book will set the educational preparation world on its heels with a compelling argument for positive change.”

Lawrence L. Smith, Professor of Elementary Education
Ball State University

“This book is a must-read for any educator who wants to successfully work with the digital generation.”

Ian Jukes, Author of Teaching the Digital Generation

“A truly great and inspiring book. Teaching Digital Natives is required reading for educators who want to reach out and engage students in their classrooms.”

Randon Ruggles, Teacher
FAIR School, Minneapolis, MN

“Marc Prensky’s introduction of the partnering concept for teaching and learning is brilliant in its simplicity. The real power of Teaching Digital Natives is that the author has carefully defined and redefined the roles of teachers, learners, and parents with concrete examples and practical hints. I found myself anticipating each ‘practical tips’ box with excitement. 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
Key features

Features and Benefits:

  • Presents an enduring, researched-based partnership model for learning to ensure ongoing relevancy in the midst of ever-evolving technology tools
  • shows how to implement the partnering pedagogy, including, setting up your classroom differently, leaving the stage, choosing the best type of partnering for you and your students, connecting partnering to the current curriculum, and assessing learning.
  • Shows how to engage students in learning by activating their passions as motivation for learning, by designing lessons based on questions,
  • Shows how to translate academic content into guiding questions that emphasize 21st Century skills such as creating, analyzing, comparing, researching, etc.
  • offers ways to deal with whatever level of technology is, or isn't, available in your school and classroom, discusses when and how teachers should—and shouldn't—be using technology themselves, and emphasizes how maximizing the use of technology by the students will benefit the students most.
  • Provides an annotated listing of over 130 of the technologies available for students to use today as tools for learning.
  • Filled with numerous Partnering Tips, examples, websites, and strategies to help educators make the transition to partnering with their students for learning.
  • Chapter 10 examines the issue of assessment in partnering, including not only summative and formative assessment but also peer assessment, ipsative assessment, self-assessment, and real-world assessment.

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