ARTICLES / ESSAYS

RECENT:

• Civilisation-level change in education—From “improving individuals” to “bettering their world” 2017
• The Changing Ends and Paradigm for Education in the World  2017
• Unleashing the Power of 21st Century Kids 2016
• Our New Globally Empowered Kids 2016 
• Education to Better Their World 2016

• Achievement vs. Accomplishment 2015

• Accomplishment-Based Education 2015

• The Goal of Education Is BECOMING 2015

• The World Needs a New Curriculum 2015

• Technology As Mask? 2015

• Do Schools Disappear or Do Classrooms? 2015

•  Innovating With Future Technologies 2015

• VUCA 2014

• Making Videos: Feeling Like a Beginner 2014

• Automating Repetition 2014

• The Real Importance of Facebook 2014

• Doing What We Believe 2014

“CLASSICS”:

• Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants — A New Way To Look At Ourselves and Our Kids

• Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Part II: Do They REALLY Think Differently? — Neuroscience Says Yes

• 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)

• Digital Wisdom (H. Sapiens Digital) — Moving beyond Natives and Immigrants (in Innovate, Feb-Mar 2009)– for version in Spanish, see International

• Backup Education? — Too many teachers see education as preparing kids for the past, not the future (in Educational Technology,Jan-Feb 2008)

• Search Vs. Research — Or, the Fear of The Wikipedia Overcome by New Understanding for a Digital Era

   

  Digital Wisdom

  Our Brains Extended (in Educational Leadership, March, 2013)
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  Why We Need Digital Wisdom (for Qualcomm Spark, Nov 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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  Digital Wisdom (H. Sapiens Digital) — Moving beyond Natives and Immigrants (in Innovate, Feb-Mar 2009)– for version in Spanish, see International
   

  Students / Digital Natives

  What Does It Mean To Be a Digital Native (CNN, Dec. 4 2012)
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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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  To Educate, We Must Listen — Reflections from Travelling the World
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  Listen to the Natives –(in Educational Leadership, December 2005/January 2006 | Vol. 63 No. 4 )
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  Engage Me or Enrage Me — What Today’s Learners Demand ( in Educause Review, Sept./Oct. 2005)
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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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  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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  Capturing the Value of “Generation Tech” Employees — From strategy+business Magazine (note: site requires a brief free registration)
   

  Technology

  Time Travel as Punishment: What our kids REALLY hate (in Educational Technology, Jan-Feb 2013)
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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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  Eliminating the App Gap (In Educational Technology, Jan-Feb 2012)
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  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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  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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  Technology Turns Disposable — Forget amortizing — buy new every year! (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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  Should a 4-year-old have an iPhone? — Absolutely! (on the Handheld Learning site, 2009)
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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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  Adopt and Adapt — School Technology for the 21st Century (in Edutopia, December 2005 )
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  Mobile Phone Imagination– Using Devices Kids Love for Their Education (in Vodaphone Receiver )
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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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  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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  Our Greatest Untapped Resource –Putting Unused Computer Cycles To Work For Education
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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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  New Business Models for Learning –We need them badly…and we have to invent them
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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 Death of Command and Control? — The “Scribe-Tribe” and Bottom-up Transformation

   

• Curriculum

  Teaching the Right Stuff–Not Yesterday’s Stuff or Today’s, but Tomorrow’s (In Educational Technology, MayJune 2012)
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  Khan Academy (in Educational Technology, Aug-Sept 2011)
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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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  Open Letter to the Obama Administration (in Educational TechnologyMar-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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  Who should take the SAT? Why not the educators? (in Greentree Gazette,August 2008)
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  The True Twenty-first Century Literacy Is Programming (In Edutopia, Feb 2008)
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  New College Courses for the 21st Century (in Greentree Gazette,September 2008)
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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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  The Prensky Challenge — Who will be the first to challenge, rather than blame, our kids?
   

  Pedagogy

  Innovation,Experimentation & Courage (In Educational TechnologyJanuary-February 2014)
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  Future-cation:A new way to describe our goal (In Educational TechnologyNovember-December 2013)
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  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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  Simple Changes in Current Practices May Save Our Schools (in ETC Online Journal , 2010)
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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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  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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  Education as Rocket Science — And teachers as rocket scientists–who knew? (in Educational Technology, 2009)
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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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  Make Those You Tubes! — Sharing is now a snap — and sharers learn faster. (in Educational Technology, 2009)
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  Let’s Be “Digital Multipliers” (in Educational Technology Jan-Feb 2009)
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  The Role of Technology in Teaching and the Classroom (in Educational Technology Nov-Dec 2008)
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  Using Cell Phones for Exams (submitted to The Sydney Morning Herald,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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  Turning On The Lights — Will we continue to trap our kids in the past? (in Educational Leadership , March 2008)
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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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  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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  The Rules Of Engagement – Prensky Interview on Sisimo.com (scroll down)
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  On Being Disrespected — (In Educational Leadership )
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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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  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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  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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  Not Only The Lonely — Implications of “Social” Online Activities for Higher Education
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  Evolving Instruction? Seven Challenges
   

  Games and Simulations

  Students as Designers and Creators of Educational Computer Games — Who Else? (pub. online by Microsoft, 2007)
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  In Educational Games COMPLEXITY MATTERS — Mini-Games are Trivial — but “Complex” Games Are Not
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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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  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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  “Modding” – The Newest Authoring Tool
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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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  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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  The Intellectual Arcade– A Great Training Concept
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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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  Video Games and the Attack on America
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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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  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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  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”?