Review of the work of writers

a) Marc Prensky

Marc Prensky is an educational speaker, author, blogger, businessman and learning designer who is concerned largely with the future of education and the development of educational tools and ideas. Prensky has published articles that discuss the misdiagnosis of learning dificulties and concludes that it is largely due to boredom that students have these difficulties. The failure of the education system to evolve and adapt to developing technologies is of great concern to him. Prensky encourages the integration of computer and web 2.0 based learning into the classroom in order to engage students and encourage them to participate in their learning. Because this is not happening regularly, if at all, students are becoming bored and enraged at the lack of challenges facing them; consequently they perform poorly or 'tune out at school. These assertions are the focus of his attention in the article Engage Me or Enrage Me. The full text can be found here. 

Prensky is most recognised for having coined the terms 'Digital Native' and 'Digital Immigrant' to describe the two groups that comrise our education system and society in general, today. The Digital Natives are the students of today. They are familiar with technology, up to date with technological developments and highly adept and proficient at using these technologies. On the other hand Digital Immigrants are those that were not born into the digital world; technology evolved around them not with them. At some point in their lives however these people have developed an appreciation and often adopted new technology. They are often the teachers. Consequently a problem has developed where Digital Immigrants are running the classrooms that Digital Natives are learning in. The current education system is no longer catering to the students for whom it was designed and thus a massive restructuring and adaptation is required. Prensky feels that the blame for this dilemma rests solely on the shoulders of the educators, not the students who are simplty frustrated with the lack of interactive learning challenges available to them. These issues are the focus of his article Digital Immigrants, Digital natives available here. 

 A large archive of his work is available on his website http://www.marcprensky.com

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