Blog Post #6

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture
     Randy Pausch was a professor of Computer Science, Human Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. From 1988 to 1997, he taught at the University of Virginia. He was an award-winning teacher and researcher, and worked with Adobe, Google, Electronic Arts (EA), and Walt Disney Imagineering, and pioneered the non-profit Alice project. (Alice is an innovative 3-D environment that teaches programming to young people via storytelling and interactive game-playing.) He also co-founded The Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon with Don Marinelli. (ETC is the premier professional graduate program for interactive entertainment as it is applies across a variety of fields.) Randy lost his battle with pancreatic cancer on July 25th, 2008.
     Randy was one of the most amazing speakers that I have ever heard. The Last Lecture was such an inspirational and moving video. I was truly amazed at his positive attitude and upbeat spirit, especially with his condition at the time. The last lecture was actually for Randy's children, but ended up inspiring millions of other people with these main points:

• It is an easy time to dream when we are young (and happy) and we should never lose that spirit.
• Experience is what you get if you don’t get what you wanted.
• When people drive you hard, they care about you.  They want you to be better.  When you are doing a bad job and no one points it out to you, that is when they have given up on you.
• Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things.
• Good parents are instrumental for us to achieve our childhood dreams.
• The importance of people versus things (people come first, always!).
• Never ever underestimate the importance of having fun.  Choose to have fun today, tomorrow, and every day thereafter.
• Work and play well with others: (1) tell the truth, (2) apologize (properly), (3) wait, and people will show their good sides.
• Tell the truth – integrity.
• A good apology has three parts.  (a) I am sorry, (b) it was my fault, (c) how do I make it right.  Most people neglect the third part and fail to demonstrate sincerity.
• Be patience.  No one is pure evil.
• Show gratitude.
• Don’t complain, just work harder.
• If you lead your life the right way, if you live properly, the dreams will come to you

         I could use every method that Randy described in the video, but these are the few that really stood out to me. The first thing was the importance of a "head fake." It is imperative that our children have fun while learning. If they are having fun, they don't realize that they are learning how to do something that's hard. It is easier to learn things if you are actually doing it, and are enjoying doing it. I want learning to be fun. It is also easier to remember things that are fun, therefore more information will be retained and will be easily recalled when needed.
     Secondly, to "get a feed-back loop, and listen to it!" I think that it is very important to know how you are being perceived, or to show your students how they are being perceived. Randy provided a bar graph for his students to see the feedback that they were getting from their piers. I think that if you are working with groups this is very important. Even if it is a short project, you could give a student survey after.
     Creativity is also extremely important! I loved the pictures of Randy's room from when he was a child, he painted it himself. We should let our children be creative. Let them express themselves freely, and show gratitude when they do. Praise them for it, encourage it!
     When you are an educator, especially in the elementary classroom, you have the opportunity to enable other's childhood dreams. You are not there just to teach! You have the ability to change the lives of these children. You can make a huge impact on the outcome of a chid's future if you choose to do more than just teach. As a future educator, it is my goal to have children come back to me when they are grown and tell me that I am the reason they achieved a certain goal, or that I had any impact on their life. That is why I want to be a teacher!