Blog Post # 7

Randy Pausch Last Lecture:

In Randy Pausch's last lecture he talks about a lot of different teaching methods and techniques. He talks about one particular moment when he gave his first project and the students did very well. He wanted to give them all A's but instead he got advice from friend and told his students he knows they can do better than that.  That is exactly what they did. Mr. Pausch set the bar as high as he could to make his students more successful than they thought they could be. When someone sets the bar above your limits; it makes you want to achieve that goal because you want to prove that you can do it. It's a great way to push students without them exactly knowing they are being pushed. I think it is a great method! He also did project based classes. It was a class based on 5 projects done within a group. There weren't books to learn from. It was based on hands on activity and learning within your group to learn. Mr. Pausch did his class this way because he thought his students should have already read all the books they needed too already!


Mr. Pausch would do edutainment; which was learning information through a virtual world. This would help people learn useful things. This was used on the FDNY to do networked simulation for them to learn how to react to chemical spills and terrorist attacks. He also talks about "Alice". This is a project he uses to teach students how to do computer programming. This is when he uses his "head fake" method. This method is to teach someone something while teaching them something else. This makes them think they are learning something fun, such as, creating a virtual world but this is also computer programming.


I could use all of Mr. Pausch's "tips" on life. I think brick walls do show dedication. I can teach children that when there is a problem and you can not figure out a solution; always step back and look at it another way because you will eventually knock the brick wall down. I can use the feedback method to make sure I am providing my students with knowledge in the best way I can. This is very important because sometimes the way I want to do something is not the best way for my students to learn. Another tip, "Don't complain, just work harder." is a great way to get students to take what they got, as in grades, and the next time around fix it. There will always be a grade you think you do not deserve; but you can always try harder next time and make the grade better.

This was a great lecture and the head fakes taught me a lot more about chasing my own dreams and helping my students chase theirs, as well. I hope I can instill all of Mr. Pausch's ideas and methods into my students and make them into well-rounded dream chasers.