Blog Post # 7

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

I absolutely loved watching this video! Dr. Pausch made some excellent points on how to achieve your dreams while also entertaining his audience. His lecture was not all about how to achieve your dreams. Through his stories he was able to show us not only how to achieve our dreams, but he also showed us some very good teaching techniques. Furthermore, his lecture was about his legacy and how to live your life.

I definitely agree with him about playing sports at a young age. It helps in teaching children great life lessons. It teaches discipline, hard work, and fundamentals. I think one thing it teaches children that he did not mention is social skills. When the children are playing sports, they do not realize these lessons they are learning, because they are having fun at the same time. They are learning these important lessons of hard work and dedication, but they are just thinking of how much fun they are having, how much they love the sport they are playing, or how much they want to win a trophy or medal. This is a great example of the "head fake" that Dr. Pausch talks about.

Dr. Pausch's "head fake" is roughly defined as a way of learning indirectly. He said that most of what we learn, we learn indirectly. I agree that this is a great way to teach. If you try to tell a child how to do something that is hard and/or is something the child doesn't care about, it is very hard. On the other hand, if you play a game with a child that accomplishes the same goal, it's more than likely that the child will learn what you want him or her to learn. Another thing that he mentioned that I really liked was more about inspiring the students. We should show them what it feels like to make other people get excited and happy. We don't want to just "throw" facts and formulas at children. We want them to be inspired and want to learn more about what we are teaching.

I think a lot of what he talked about had to do with attitude. He mentioned that there is a good and a bad way of saying, "I don't know". He explained this through a story about how he wanted to take a sabbatical and work with Disney's Imagineers. He went to his boss to talk about it, and his boss said, "I don't know!" in a kind of rude manner. He then went to the Dean of Sponsored Research. The Dean said, "I don' know. I don't have any information. All I know is one of my star faculty members is here and he's all excited. I want to know more." They said the same thing, but the latter said it in a way that showed he was interested and not like it was a bother to him.

I think my favorite part of this video was when he was talking about the new course he designed. He said that the students first project just blew him away. He was so blown away that he didn't know where to go from there. So, he called his mentor for help. He told Dr. Pausch that he obviously didn't know where the bar should be for his class, but he would only be doing them a disservice by putting it anywhere. I think this is a very valid point. We have no idea what our students can truly accomplish. If we set the bar somewhere, we are indirectly telling them that this is as high as they can go, and once the students reach "the bar" they may be satisfied with staying there when they could sore way past it.