Blog Post #6

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Randy Pausch is a lively and happy man even in the eyes of death. Although Randy did not have long to live, he still gave his lectures to help students and teacher get a better grasp on learning new technology. He was always smiling and seemed to be a very positive person to be around. Randy also makes a good point on the football concept. He said that his football coach had practice with no ball because only 2 maybe 3 players ever touch the ball. With that being said, there are 20 more jobs on the football field that don't require the football that have to be learned. Randy Pausch talks about other skills that are very important to consider in teaching. The next skill that was pointed out was called leadership. He used Captain James T. kirk of the star ship enterprise as a great example of leadership. Kirk had all the cool gadjets that it took to be the leader of the spaceship and the entire crew. There was also a point made about students not really knowing a lot about books. Books are becoming extinct due to all the ways they can be downloaded onto your computer from different web sites. Every thing from the lecture to the students assignments for the entire semester are being posted on sites for your entire classroom to view. By posting assignments on the internet, makes attending class sessions somewhat a thing of the past. Randy also mentioned that if you are mad at someone you just didn't give them enough time yet. He also says that there is a good way and a bad way to answer a question. Most teachers answer the questions the bad way because they don't have a logical answer for there students. Randy built a virtual world using 50 students from art, design, drama, and CS. Lots of schools are talking about turning labs and other class rooms in to virtual rooms. Randy was a great thinker that always had teaching on his mind. He was always trying to in store a better way of learning for students and teachers to get on the same page.