Marc Prensky Research Articles

E-Ethical-Learning: Principles and guidelines for ethical digital learning in higher education

Within higher education, digital learners are confronted with antiquated classifications of digital natives and immigrants, first introduced by Marc Prensky (2001), which make assumptions about their proficiency in digital literacy. This article provides a code of ethics and practical guidelines for critically examining the assumptions presented. The author has coined the term ?e-ethical-learning? to refer to a set of ethical principles and practical guidelines, which is a portmanteau of ?ethical education? and ?e-learning.?

Is “Watching and Copying” the New “Listening and Copying”?

This article examines the role of YouTube in how young popular musicians learn in the twenty-first century. I frame this question within the dual legacies of Lucy Green’s (2001) findings about “listening and copying” among popular musicians and Marc Prensky’s (2001a, 2001b) “digital natives” hypothesis. I present an ethnographic description of a music learning encounter that raises questions as to whether there is a generational change occurring, one which shifts the primary mode of informal music learning from listening and copying to watching and copying via YouTube videos. I argue that learning via YouTube constitutes a form of informal learning, one situated within a longer history of learning strategies based in available technologies and resources. I suggest that in the midst of this continuity, digital videos present at least one new phenomenon within popular music education: the ability to abstract single lines and riffs from their musical contexts.

Challenging the Myth of the Digital Native: A Narrative Review

Nurses are increasingly engaging with digital technologies to enhance safe, evidence-based patient care. Digital literacy is now considered a foundational skill and an integral requirement for lifelong learning, and includes the ability to search efficiently, critique information and recognise the inherent risk of bias in information sources. However, at many universities, digital literacy is assumed. In part, this can be linked to the concept of the Digital Native, a term first coined in 2001 by the US author Marc Prensky to describe young people born after 1980 who have been surrounded by mobile phones, computers, and other digital devices their entire lives. The objective of this paper is to explore the concept of the Digital Native and how it influences undergraduate nursing education. A pragmatic approach was used for this narrative review, working forward from Prensky's definition of the Digital Native and backward from contemporary sources of information extracted from published health, education and nursing literature. The findings from this narrative review will inform further understanding of digital literacy beliefs and how these beliefs influence undergraduate nursing education. Recommendations for enhancing the digital literacy of undergraduate nursing students are also discussed. Digital literacy is an essential requirement for undergraduate nursing students and nurses and is linked with safe, evidence-based patient care. The myth of the Digital Native negates the reality that exposure to digital technologies does not equate digital literacy and has resulted in deficits in nursing education programs. Digital literacy skills should be a part of undergraduate nursing curricula, and National Nursing Digital Literacy competencies for entry into practice as a Registered Nurse should be developed and contextualised to individual jurisdictions.

Ethical Theoretical Reflections on Social Media: Place of the Human Being in the Digital Space

Raises the problem of ethics in interpersonal relations on the Internet. The ontological difference between digital cyberspace from the real world is emphasized and the corresponding conceptual constructions of modern thinkers are derived. Relevant questions of modern philosophy are substantiated - whether there are some specific ethical relations in cyberspace, which arise directly on the Internet, how they are possible, and how they can be regulated. As a theoretical and methodological basis for answering these questions, presents Levinas’ ideas regarding ethical thinking and the principles of “real” meetings on the Internet: for-the-other , face-to-face , and existent-beyond-Being . In this context, Levinas’ conception of interpersonal and ethical relations in digital reality and the role of the Other in these relations are examined. The idea of the Other as a subject being outside, but for whom the user of the Internet is responsible, is disclosed. This type of responsibility, according to Levinas, is an ethical norm. The article shows the phenomenon of augmented reality as a type of hybrid reality, which is formed with the help of digital technology. Augmented reality superimposes virtual images on the real world so that both parties interact with each other. It is emphasized that in modern social science augmented reality technology is seen as blurring the boundaries of virtual and real, as well as true and false. The concepts of Bill Persky, Nicholas Negroponte, and Marc Prensky on digital communication and the impact of cyberspace on humans are considered. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the construction of so-called primordial ethical relationships on the Internet. An important place here is occupied by D. Barney’s theory, aimed at studying the impact of the technical characteristics of network technologies on the social interaction of people. His idea of building qualitatively new interpersonal relationships in the digital environment is emphasized. The characteristic of the virtual environment as a space without response and one-way communication is noted. In this regard, the concept of N. Luhmann about the construction employing mass media of a special illusory, symbolic space, which modern man perceives as objective reality, is substantiated. The problem of obtaining truth and objective knowledge-information is derived.

Pre-service and in-service English teachers’ outlook in the use of online learning

The advancement of technology by the emergence of various websites and applications in learning English is inevitably becoming phenomena today. However, many educators especially in-service teachers in Asian secondary schools are reluctant to embody them in the process of English Language Teaching (ELT) since this problem has existed in last decade in the English speaking countries which place English as first and second language; one emerging factor might likely be the status of either x-generations or millennial generation attached to some of them in coin with digital native or digital immigrant as proposed by Marc Prensky. Therefore, this paper is supposed to explain an investigation on the view shown by both sides (pre-service and in-service English teacher). In doing so, a qualitative approach is conducted by involving five pre-service teachers and five in-service teachers in South Kalimantan. The expected finding of this research could depict the variety of chosen views towards the insight and knowledge of ELT resources whether it can be useful for the process of pedagogy in the learning process as well as their classroom instruction.

Do fosso às pontes

Este trabalho, de cunho ensaístico, apresenta uma releitura crítica e uma discussão sobre o texto “Digital natives, digital immigrants”, do designer de jogos norte-americano Marc Prensky, publicado em 2001 e mencionado até os dias de hoje, no contexto da pesquisa brasileira em linguística aplicada e em educação. Considera-se relevante repensar as questões ali colocadas, quase duas décadas atrás, e principalmente discutir a noção de um “fosso digital” estabelecido entre os atores que convivem nas escolas: alunos e professores. A fim de estabelecer algum contraste teórico e mesmo epistemológico sobre como pensar as questões de educação relacionadas às tecnologias digitais, recorremos a Néstor García Canclini e à proposta também mais democrática e mais contextualizada da pesquisadora Roxane Rojo.

Didactics and Posthumanism: Spanish as foreign language and Literature teaching in the Digital Age

Since the publication of the article “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” by Marc Prensky, the way in which new technologies and Social Networks determine the educational process has been discussed in the context of the Didactics. This perspective shift has forced to rethink the role played by teachers and educational institutions. Such observations will focus the attention of this paper in order to analyze the main myths, proposals and challenges related to the didactic application of the ICT and the Social Networks in the learning process of Spanish as foreign language and the literary teaching.

Situación del adulto mayor como usuario de Internet, en relación a su red personal primaria, con parientes migrantes en Quindío- Colombia

This article is part of the reflections of the authors` results of the investigation called Internet and Personal Network for the elderly with migrant relatives held in Armenia-Quindio; it brings into the light the situation that the elderly faces in using the Internet as a way to communicate with their migrant relatives. The project identifies the changes in the communication between the elderly and his relatives that the Internet creates in terms of structural features, functions, and personal relationships. Theorists who accompanied the epistemological framework for the interpretation of the data collection were: Garay (2006), Cardenas and Mejia (2006), (Castells, 2009), Marc Prensky (2001), (Machado, 2000) and Tovar Villarraga (2009). The methodology used was; the etnografico- qualitative study, semi-structured interview total of (100), the sampling and for the organization and interpretation of information came to the Grounded Theory of Strauss and Corbin (2002).

Active Methodologies-Blended Learning: From the Complexity to the Sense of Learning Experiences by Means of Significant Learning in Digital Culture Time

This case report is the sharing of teaching practices and theoretical and epistemological reflections that bring together educational and methodological experiments in the Degree in Pedagogy in the field of higher education, the Centro Universitario La Salle-UNILASALLE, Canoas-RS, Brazil. The reported pedagogical proposition is founded on records and epistemological principles of the theory of complexity of Edgar Morin—highlighting the recursive thinking and dialogical perspective. Co-created pedagogical practices by professors and students in 2015, in graduate degrees in Education, in different subjects and distinct themed areas, are a clear intent to promote active methodologies, whose nature allows students and teachers to argue about the role of teaching and learning processes and the attribution of meaning to learning. Significant experiences were presented in this paper bordering on approaches based on logic of blended learning, under the influence of concepts related to digital culture contemplated from Marc Prensky’s ideas. This logic is configured on a methodology aimed at non-disjunction between classroom learning. The areas of knowledge of Pedagogy, Design and Information Technology are directly interrelated in this project. At the dawn of the third millennium, the introduction of educational and pedagogical practices under the logic of new languages becomes a sine qua non for the attribution of meaning and meaning to learning, when the priori new brain structures and cognitions emerge from new experiences and digital stimuli. The construction of knowledge through the prism of active methods is enhanced by the production of learning materials structured from the new languages derived from Digital Culture. It notes that the pedagogical practice based on active methods is not dogmatic and even absolutist, considering the required reading of the classics, philosophical thinking, reflective look about the art and the investigative approach enrolled in all forms of science. Active pedagogical practice must ensure the usefulness of teaching and learning processes that, in complex ways, can expand the possibilities of diverse practices and consequent investigations. Thinking the educational and pedagogical complex in the XXI century is therefore one of the greatest challenges of contemporary times.

Teaching Nineteenth-Century Periodicals Using Digital Resources: Myths and Methods

Teaching Nineteenth-Century Periodicals Using Digital Resources: Myths and Methods Jim Mussell (bio) Back in 2006, VPR published a special issue edited by Teresa Mangum that discussed how periodicals might be studied in university classrooms.1 The essays described innovative and exciting courses that engaged with different aspects of the nineteenth-century press. Each, in its own way, had to engage with a central methodological difficulty: how to provide access to newspapers and periodicals for students. Some managed with photocopies, others with trips to special collections in the library, and many made use of what digital resources were available. Now, with the publication of resources such as Gale Cengage's 19th Century UK Periodicals (2007), Gale Cengage and the British Library's British Newspapers 1800-1900 (2007) (also known as 19th Century British Library Newspapers), Pro-Quest's Historical Newspapers (2001-) and British Periodicals (2007), and Brightsolild's British Newspaper Archive (2011-), as well as the material republished in Google Books (2001-) and the Internet Archive (1996), this key methodological difficulty has largely been overcome. And, as textual transcripts provide access to page images through a searchable index, it has been overcome in such a way that exerts significant bibliographical control over what has long been acknowledged as a recalcitrant and complex print archive. This is not to argue that problems regarding access have been solved. The lack of political will for publicly-funded and accessible digitization programs (in England at least) has meant that the bulk of nineteenth-century newspapers and periodicals have been published by commercial publishers as packages to be sold to (predominantly North American) academic institutions. In some cases, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), under their JISC Collections scheme, has underwritten the cost of subscriptions for British universities, but access elsewhere depends on the wealth of the institution and the ability of academics to make the case [End Page 201] for the expense. Yet for scholars within subscribing institutions, there has been a fundamental transformation in the terms of access to nineteenth-century newspapers and periodicals. This transformation has the potential to return the press to its central place in studies of nineteenth-century culture, but only through the introduction of a new set of mediating forms. Working with periodicals always involves an engagement with mediation as lost print forms are reconstructed from traces in the surviving print archive. When we use digital resources, we introduce a further dimension to this familiar methodological consideration. The gains from using digital resources are so significant that nobody working within nineteenth-century studies can afford to ignore them. My argument here is that both students and scholars must be equipped to understand the constitution of this new digital representation of nineteenth-century print culture. Some Myths about Digital Scholarship The web, at the time of writing, is twenty-one years old—older than most of the undergraduate students on campus. Computers, of course, are much older, and computation has been both a method and object of study for as long as the modern university has existed. The digital humanities traces its roots back to Father Busa's work in the 1940s, and computational methods have long been employed in a number of humanities disciplines.2 Neither digital scholarship, then, nor digital culture, can really be approached as if they were still new. The rhetoric of novelty has political value, for both advocates and critics, but does not provide an intellectual framework through which to approach digital resources. A better approach is to substitute novelty for difference, taking the digital on its own terms while embracing the implicit question, "different from what?" It is this methodological embrace of difference that underpins each of my responses to the four myths below. 1. The next generation knows what it is doing. Marc Prensky's influential paper, "Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants," from 2001, argued that young people, because they have been exposed to digital culture for most of their lives, are intrinsically different learners than those who adapted to it later in life.3 These "digital natives," according to Prensky, "think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors" and so require a learning environment and methodology specially attuned to their needs...

Preparing Digital Natives to Teach: Time to Redesign Teacher Education Programs

Since the emergence of Marc Prensky's concept of Digital Natives being taught by Digital Immigrants, education's challenge has been to find a way to effectively teach those who have grown up in a net generation. Now that the first of these millenniel students are preparing to become teachers themselves, we have the opportunity, perhaps for the first time, to witness true digital natives teaching their own. This article will examine the paradigm shift required of teacher education programs if they are to prepare this digital teaching generation effectively for the educational challenge that lies ahead of them.

Pauline Cerasoli Lecture 2012 Googling and Texting and Browsing, Oh My! Mentoring and Teaching in an Electronic Age

INTRODUCTION The Way We Were . . . A lot has changed over the years since I was a student in physical therapy school, as I began my clinical practice, and since I entered academia. As students, we walked to class (when living in the dorm on campus), attended face-to-face classes, took notes based on the statements made by the sage on the stage, read textbooks, and viewed slides projected on the screen (or wall!). We studied in groups in dorms or in the library or Student Union Building (SUB), and researched for hours in the stacks in the library- using a card catalog to find books. We took tests that were copied on mimeographed paper (and left purple ink on our hands). We registered for classes by going to tables setup in a gymnasium, standing in lines to wait our turn, and paid by check at the last table. A lot has changed over the years since I began my clinical practice. As a young clinician, I wore the dress code of my facility: brown pants and a white zippered top with the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) patch on the sleeve (as a student, I also wore a university pin on my lapel); scrubs were only worn by MDs in surgery. I wrote assessments and progress notes by hand. I communicated with other health care providers by mailed letters and a desk phone. I expanded my knowledge and clinical expertise by watching colleagues and attending continuing education courses. Word-of-mouth and personal testimonies of works were all the proof we needed to change our interventions and techniques. A lot has changed over the years since I entered academia. As a new faculty member, I taught exclusively face-to-face in classrooms, asked questions of individual students in class, posted grades by students' social security number outside my office door to maintain confidentiality. I purchased VHS tapes to show in labs so that students could see a movement pattern or a child with a particular medical condition. I had slides made from pictures in textbooks. I made transparencies for overhead projectors and saved them in a paper file folder so I didn't have to recreate them in future classes. I expected students to attend my class and take notes; classroom interruptions were limited to fire drills or small discussions that might occur among students. I wrote lecture outlines and exams in longhand and gave them to a departmental administrative support person (secretary) to be typed. I did not have a computer in my office to serve as a word processor; none of the faculty did. Do I want to go back to those times? No. So many things have changed and for the most part, they are advances, but life was a bit simpler then, it seems. I want to spend some time looking at some of the changes in the technology used in health care education and how these changes impact our teaching and mentoring of students/clinicians and our patient education, and review what the literature has revealed to us about those technological changes. It seems our vocabulary has changed dramatically since those days: Laptops? Podcasts? Blogs? (Figure). Certainly, students have changed. Today's students are no longer the people that our education system was designed to teach. Another way to think of this might be to sort ourselves into or Immigrants, terms coined by Marc Prensky about 10 years ago.1 Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Digital Natives are today's students, K through college, which represent the first generations to grow up with these new technologies. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Our students today are all native speakers of the digital language of computers, video games, and the Internet. Digital Natives are used to receiving information really fast. They like to parallel process and multi-task. …

Is digital boom spelling cerebral doom?

Byline: T. Sathyanarayana Rao, Vishal. Indla, Indla. Reddy There was a time when we started and ended our day by looking at somebody we love. In today's digital world, for most of us, our day starts and ends with a gadget. Our brains are under the influence of an ever-expanding world of gadgetry: Hi-definition multichannel television, video games, internet, wireless networks, i-pads, Bluetooth links - the list is never ending. The current explosion of digital technology is not only changing the way we live and communicate but is rapidly and immensely altering our brain. Daily exposure to high technology and search engines like Google and Yahoo stimulates alteration of the neurons, gradually strengthening new neural circuits in our brain while weakening old ones. As we rely on the Internet and other forms of technology for almost everything from entertainment to political discussion to even social reform as well as communication with friends and co-workers, our brain are evolving at a speed like never before. Economic experts, though point to technology's positive impact on productivity and standard of living. The efficiency of the Web reduces the cost of transactions needed for producing and distributing many products and services. It's easier for consumers to shop for an item among many vendors, which allows for greater savings, choice, and shopping convenience. Routine transactions, such as making a mortgage payment or transmitting financial information, require less time and expense using Web- based technology. [sup][1] As the brain shifts its focus toward new technological skills, it drifts away from fundamental social skills, such as reading facial expressions during conversation or grasping the emotional context of a subtle gesture. A Stanford University study found that for every hour we spend on our computers, traditional face-to-face interaction time with other people drops by nearly thirty minutes. [sup][2] With the weakening of the brain's neural circuitry controlling human contact, our social interactions may become awkward, and we tend to misinterpret, and even miss subtle, non-verbal messages. In short, the modern digital world could well be altering our human identity. It is also interesting to note that just as evolution has programmed men and women to behave differently, there are differences even in the way they use and respond to technology, and a recent survey from the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that women are more likely to email friends and family to share concerns, forward jokes, or plan events. They value the way the Internet enriches their relationships. Women tend to seek diet and health information on the Web and to worry more about criminal Internet threats. They are also more likely to download online map directions than are men. By contrast, men frequently log on to the Web for news and financial updates, sports scores, and video games. The study also showed that men tend to be more tech-savvy, more confident in using search engines, and more likely to try new gadgets and software. [sup][3] Today's young people in their teens and twenties, who have been dubbed Digital Natives (a term coined by the US writer Marc Prensky), have never known a world without computers, twenty-four-hour TV news, Internet, and cell phones. Many of these natives rarely enter a library, let alone look something up in a traditional encyclopedia; they use Google, Yahoo, and other online search engines. [sup][4] It's almost as if something hasn't really happened until it's been posted on Facebook or YouTube. The neural networks in these brains differ dramatically from those of digital immigrants: people who came to the computer age as adults but whose basic brain wiring was laid down during a time when direct social interaction was the norm. Digital natives tend to have shorter attention spans, and this young high-tech generation often finds television too boring when simply watched on its own. …

Ask, don't tell: can it work for K‐12?

PurposeThis purpose of this paper is to review Marc Prensky's book Teaching Digital Natives: Partnering for Real Learning.Design/methodology/approachPrensky's book takes aim at classroom practices, arguing that there are more effective ways for students to acquire knowledge and skills. Specifically, teachers should move from “tell and explain” pedagogical techniques to those that “ask and challenge”. This paper considers Prensky's approach in light of today's K‐12 educational system, what K‐12 education needs to deliver for the future, and relevant research findings.FindingsOur education system faces two unprecedented challenges: all children must be educated, without exception; and for a future that is unknowable. Marc Prensky provides a simple answer to both: if education can't provide students the answers for negotiating the future, it must provide them the skills to figure it out for themselves. Prensky's advice for teachers is consistent with recent research about the importance of student engagement to learning. The practicality of his prescriptions is questioned, however, especially given the constructs of our educational system and No Child Left Behind.Originality/valueWhile Prensky's book was written primarily for an audience of K‐12 teachers, this paper will be of greatest interest to K‐12 administrators and reformers. The paper suggests that, while Prensky's approach may be valid, it is unrealistic to expect a wholesale change among teaching practices if the structure of school itself does not change to enable and support those new teaching practices.

The Net Generation and Teacher Training

Since the Internet era began, a growing number of innovations have impacted our society, and they are rapidly transforming the way in which people work, study and communicate. Web 2.0, social network and social web are all terms used to indicate a change in the role of ‘networks’ within society, rather than a technological evolution. This development has been widely discussed by the scientific community, especially after the publication of Marc Prensky’s article: “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” (Prensky, 2001), where Prensky suggests that today’s students think and process information in a completely different way from previous generations of students; this difference, according to Prensky, is the direct result of being born in the digital age, and having always used the technologies which surround us, like the computer, video games, digital music players, cell phones and so on.

Teachers Teaching in the New Mediascape: Digital Immigrants or ‘Natural Born Cyborgs’?

Schooled in an earlier time, educators are laboring to find meaningful purchase in new media environments, unable to match the fluency and sophistication of their ‘digital native’ students. Yet is Marc Prensky's portrayal of teachers as ‘digital immigrants’ really an accurate rendering of the today's situation? Drawing on phenomenological and posthuman literature, the authors reconsider teachers' everyday involvements with technologies, and explore new ways of conceptualizing teachers and students in today's mediatic situation. They suggest that teachers and students alike are more aptly – and less divisively – visualized as digital migrants or nomadic cyborgs navigating and acclimatizing to a restless twenty-first-century educational scene.

Are digital natives a world-wide phenomenon? An investigation into South African first year students’ use and experience with technology

In 2001 Marc Prensky coined the phrase ‘digital natives’ to refer to the new generation of students who have grown up surrounded by technology. His companion papers spurred large amounts of research, debating changes that are required to curricula and pedagogical models to cater for the changes in the student population. This article reports on a study conducted in 2009 of more than 290 first year students at two South African universities. In this study, students were asked about their access to and use of technology. The results portrayed a heterogeneous student population, with varying levels of access to and use of most technologies. One of Prensky’s key features of a digital native is their excitement with Web 2.0 based technologies. Participants in this study however, appear not to use such technologies, and to not be interested in using them in their studies. One tool that students had high levels of access to (98.1%), and use of is the mobile phone. Out of all uses of technology surveyed, tasks involving the mobile phone were ranked in the top two positions. Also when asked to rank different uses of technology particularly for their studies, three of the top five uses relied on a mobile phone.

H. Sapiens digitale: dagli immigrati digitali e nativi digitali alla saggezza digitale

This is the translation of a paper by Marc Prensky, the originator of the famous metaphor digital natives - digital immigrants. Here, ten years after the birth of that successful metaphor, Prensky outlines that, while the distinction between digital natives and immigrants will progressively become less important, new concepts will be needed to represent the continuous evolution of the relationship between man and digital technologies. In this paper Prensky introduces the concept of digital wisdom, a human quality which develops as a result of the empowerment that the natural human skills can receive through a creative and clever use of digital technologies.

Nativos digitales: ¿ocultamiento de factores generadores de fracaso escolar?

En este artículo se busca aportar a la discusión en torno a las características de los denominados «nativos digitales», expresión extraída del trabajo de Mark Prensky (2001a) titulado Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, cuestionando las narrativas y los mitos construidos en torno a los jóvenes de hoy, los cuales tienden a magnificar sus habilidades para el uso de tecnologías y relegan a un segundo lugar competencias esenciales para el acceso y uso de información. Para lograr este propósito se revisan investigaciones que confirman los riesgos de las generalizaciones sobre los denominados nativos digitales y el impacto que estas pueden tener en el ocultamiento de factores generadores del fracaso escolar. Focalizamos en el texto el análisis de las competencias informacionales de los jóvenes como una exigencia imprescindible de la ciudadanía actual y no solo como requisito instrumental para ingresar a la cultura escolar y al competitivo mundo laboral. Del análisis realizado se concluye que al considerar el fracaso escolar habría que tener en cuenta dos aspectos significativos: el primero lo constituyen las representaciones construidas acríticamente sobre los niños y los jóvenes como usuarios de las tecnologías de la información, representaciones que dificultan la comprensión de su mundo y sus necesidades más allá de aspectos puramente técnicos; el segundo aspecto se vincula con la incapacidad de la escuela y de las políticas sociales para favorecer el desarrollo de competencias informacionales que garanticen la inclusión de los jóvenes en la vida ciudadana.

Iatefl

The 43rd Annual International IATEFL Conference and Exhibition will take place in Cardiff from 31 March to 4 April 2009. The venue is the City Hall and National Museum, which is in the heart of the city, a 20-minute walk from Cardiff Central train and bus station. Associates' Day and Pre-conference events will take place on Tuesday, 31 March, followed by the Conference and Exhibition from Wednesday, 1 April to Saturday, 4 April. The plenary speakers at the 2009 Conference will be Claudia Ferradas (Argentina), Bonny Norton (Canada), Marc Prensky (USA), Fauzia Shamim (Pakistan), and Elana Shohamy (Israel). There will also be over 300 talks, poster presentations, workshops, panel discussions, and symposiums. If you wish to give a presentation, the deadline for speaker proposal submissions is Monday, 22 September 2008, but even if you have missed the deadline, it is still worth sending in your Speaker...