Blog Post Assignment #10

Learning from Randy Pausch



"Anything is possible through dreams." - Dr. Randy Pausch

After watching the video, Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, I felt in awe of what a great teacher would look like. I do not mean his physical appearance, but what he did through out his life to inspire and motivate students who were just like him and had childhood dreams. Dreams are what motivates us as we go along in life achieving our other dreams. I think that Dr. Randy is an amazing example of what it takes to change lives as an educator. In the video he goes on to talk about several of his childhood dreams and how he went about achieving them. Some of them were silly, while others were to pursue further into his career. Throughout his into speech/presentation, he had this picture of a brick wall. He used this picture as a metaphor, and says, "Brick Walls are there to see how badly we want things. It also lets us show our dedication." At first when he kept showing this image, I was confused as to what he was implying. After watching the video I realized that there is always going to be a brick wall standing in front of you, but if you are determined to break that brick wall then you need to keep trying and never give up. Randy went on to teacher for ten years and got to do all these amazing things in his lifetime. But the one achievement that he was most proud of was his creation on the ETC(Entertainment Technology Center) masters program. This was his "baby" so to speak. He was very proud of creating this along with a man named, Don Marinelli. The two were complete opposites, but they meshed well together. He went on to talk about some of the projects that his students did and it became a sensational exhibit when shown on campus.



"Experience is what you get when didn't get what you wanted." - Dr. Randy Pausch

I learned a few things from watching this amazing man talk for a short hour. First, I learned that we as educators cannot be afraid to be different or try new things. If we don't attempt to try new things then how will we as educators learn. If we are afraid of learning and trying new things then how can we expect our students to want to learn as well. Yes we might have our critics, but one thing the Dr. Pausch said was to listen to those critics because believe it or not they are the ones who still care for you. If we are constantly doing things the wrong way and nobody is telling us then we have a serious problem. The next thing that I learned from watching this video is that we need to start teaching with the "Head Fake". Dr. Pausch used this method and he succeeded with it, so why not put that method into our lower level teaching such as High School and Elementary. I think that if you can have your students learn without knowing that they are learning then they will retain more information then taking them through a boring lecture in class.

Are you a Tigger or an Eeyore Teacher?