Marc Prensky

Marc Prensky: Profile

Considered one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between technology and learning, Strategy+Business magazine calls Prensky “That rare visionary who implements.” Prensky looks at education from the perspective of the receivers (i.e. the students) rather than just the providers. He focuses on how to teach and motivate today’s students, and on how to motivate and reinvigorate their teachers as well. Prensky promotes a new form of partnership between teachers and students, and, through his writings and talks, helps teachers learn to change their pedagogy to ways that are far more effective for 21st century students.

Marc also focuses on how to teach future-oriented skills—including problem-solving, partnering, collaborating in online communities, video-making and programming—as an integrated part of all curricula. He is a strong partisan of teachers’ knowing and using students’ individual passions as motivators, and of students’ participation in the design of their own education.

In his talks around the globe, Marc initiates and conducts unique student-educator dialogs about the teaching and learning process. His innovative combination of pedagogy and technology—including game technology, where he was an early pioneer—is becoming increasingly accepted and used by educators worldwide as the wave of the future.

Marc’s background includes Master’s degrees from Yale University, Middlebury College, and The Harvard Business School with distinction. He has taught at all levels, from elementary to college, and ran a prototype charter school in East Harlem, NY.

Marc also performed on Broadway and at Lincoln Center, worked on Wall Street, and spent six years as a corporate strategist and product development director with the prestigious Boston Consulting Group. After all that, he is thrilled to be back working in the field of education and learning.