Ministerial Address and 'Engage Me or Enrage Me': Educating Today's 'Digital Native' Learners

Ministerial address

Learning and Teaching Scotland are pleased to announce that Philip Rycroft is to deliver the Ministerial address on behalf of Peter Peacock, which will outline the Minister's ambitions for Scottish education over the next year.

Followed by:

'Engage Me or Enrage Me': Educating Today's 'Digital Native' Learners

All educators are struggling to find ways to get today's kids more involved in their schoolwork. The key, says Prensky, is not curriculum, certification or testing, but rather engagement. He argues forcefully that this generation is not in need of better content, but of more engaging approaches, more understanding, and 21st-century skills.

To best help today's unengaged students learn, says Prensky, we need to provide them with learning that motivates them, and the first place to look for help is where the kids are already involved most - in their games.

 In this talk, through numerous examples, Prensky shows specifically how games engage kids, and how educators can employ and benefit from not only existing games but also the powerful educational principles behind them.

Marc Prensky is an internationally acclaimed speaker, writer, consultant, and designer in the critical areas of education and learning. He is the author of Digital Game-Based Learning, the founder and CEO of Games2train (whose clients include IBM, Nokia, Pfizer, and the US Department of Defense) and creator of the sites DoD Game Developers' Community and Social Impact Games.

Marc has created over 50 software games for learning, including the world's first fast-action videogame-based training tools and worldwide, multi-player, multi-team online competitions. He has also taught at all levels.

His professional focus has been on reinventing the learning process, combining the motivation of video games and other highly engaging activities with the driest content of education and business, and he is considered one of the world's leading experts on the connection between games and learning.
Marc has been featured in articles in The NY Times and The Wall Street Journal, has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, PBS, and the BBC, and was named as one of training's top 10 'visionaries' by Training magazine. He holds graduate degrees from Yale (Teaching) and Harvard (MBA).

This keynote presentation will be interpreted into British Sign Language.