The+Death+of+the+Classroom

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

**The Death of the Classroom and the Rebirth of Learning in the 21st Century: How Technology Changes the Meaning of Teaching**
In his second of three presentations [|Marc Prensky] talked about the future of school. He asserted that schools are dying as a result of education splitting into school vs. after school.

He used this metaphor:

//Kids used to grow up in the dark until they went to school and school started opening up their window. If they stayed in school we would show them the entire world. Educators showed kids the light.//

//Today’s kids grow up in the light. They are connected to the world. If we were smart we would build on that. Instead we tell them to shut all that stuff off when they get to school and put them back into the dark. We are pulling students out of the light and into the darkness.//

School (old technology) is disrupted by new technologies (after school). Almost always new technology wins. We are vulnerable to that disruptive technology. Our students are living in the 21st century but schools are not. He said "It is the educator’s job to prepare kids for 21st century success—before the end of the 21st century."

We make the mistake of thinking that kids are the always the same but in reality today’s kids are different due in large part to technology. Digital technology is their birthright. He quoted a student as saying, “Teachers look at technology as a tool. We look at technology as a foundation—it’s totally integrated into what we do.”

On his website you can read Marc’s article on [|The Emerging Online Life of the Digital Native]. The font of knowledge for our students is no longer their teacher. It is the Internet. Their community is the world and we have a digital immigrant accent to them.

So how do we engage today’s students? We have to engage WITH them. In the past education was always top down. Today’s students prefer bottoms up: “Tell me where you want me to go and let me figure out how to get there.” We are going to need to balance the two and involve our students in redesigning their own education. Unfortunately, the concept of classroom as it exists today is holding us back.

Further he said students are not engaged because we are not teaching them the right stuff for them to succeed in their 21st century world and we are not teaching them in the right way. We need to make engagement our #1 goal. Engagement is no longer what we do to students, rather was we do with them. Until we move from tell/test paradigm to engagement paradigm, technology actually hurts us. It is required for the new paradigm. The kids have already found the new paradigm for learning after school. We should be going from kids being taught and being bored to kids teaching themselves with our guidance. Is technology the answer? Not if it is not engaging.

Today tools come so fast (mososo—mobile social software). Teachers need to know that they cannot possible learn all the new tools and should not waste their time trying. Teachers just need to have a basic understanding of the tools and let the students do the work of figuring out how they actually work. It is the teacher’s job to help students evaluate content.

Mr. Prensky summed it all up by saying we have to involve students in everything they do and we can do this by allowing our students to get seriously involved in redesigning their own education.