Programming+as+21st+Century+Literacy

=Marc Prensky= //Speaker, Writer, Consultant, Learning Game Designer, New York, NY//

The True 21st Century Literacy is Programming: What We Should Be Teaching Our Kids and How to Do It
[|Marc Prensky] gave three presentations at the conference, all relating to new paradigms for learning. He explained that his focus is 5-10 years out and includes concepts such as cell phone learning, complex games, and student involvement.

In the 15th century if you wanted to write a letter you needed to go to a scribe. Today if you want to create an idea on the web you have to go to a programmer. Thus he began with programming as **//the//** 21st century literacy. By programming he means making a machine do what you want it to do, not writing code.

Digital technology is programmable. You can change it and this is what engages kids. It is their birthright, be it doing a Google search, customizing a cell phone, downloading a song, making a powerpoint, or creating mashups. In a classroom he suggests starting students with PowerPoint in Grades 1-6 and after that moving them up to Flash.

In the 21st century everything requires programming: Our jobs, our communication, our recreation, our homes, and our cars—anything with a microchip. Today’s literate person writes a letter, blog, essay, or book. Tomorrow’s literate person will create a podcast, make a video, create a game, or write a program. He challenged: Should we continue to teach handwriting? Writing? Reading? He is not saying to stop teaching language understanding, but what form will most language take? We should have our kids master oral communication and logical thinking.

Furthermore he said programming is not essentially a technological challenge. It is a communications challenge. Students’ goals are not to learn to pass a test or even understand. Their goal is to be a hero. Gaining skill and understanding is only valuable to them when it helps them reach their goal. They know technology can help them because they can make it do what they want it to do. Games have real feedback. Pre-21st century teaching was solving problems with tools we had. 21st century teaching will be inventing new tools to solve problems that cannot be solved with traditional tools.

He laid out the tools that can help teach the concepts of programming. He acknowledged that it will be absolutely difficult but absolutely necessary. He asked, “Which makes us more comfortable in the 21st century: That everyone can read and write at an 8th grade level or that they can make machines do what they need them to do?”

With the advent of digital technology at the turn of the century, change has become exponential and the idea of rapid change empowers students and threatens us. After all, e-mail is for old people. Technology has moved beyond that. He predicts that in 5-10 years cash will go away and our cell phone will be our wallet and it will be protected by our fingerprints. In 10-15 years there will be cellphone-sized computers with the power of today’s computers. In 15-20 years there will be implanted wearable computers. In 30 years technology will be 1 billion times more powerful than it is today. And in 40-50 years there will be machines that are more powerful than the human brain.

We have to get used to the idea of rapid change even in our schools. We have to talk to students as partners and change learning paradigms.

“Feel the fear and do it anyway!”

“Embrace change and it will embrace you!”