Blog Assignment #8

What can we learn about teaching and learning from Randy Pausch?

I was not too enthused about this assignment after I saw that the video Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams was over an hour in length. After all, I am a busy college student who is currently taking 5 other classes. However, there was no way to avoid watching this video. After I sat down and watched the video, I discovered that it wasn't that painful to watch. I actually enjoyed watching this video, despite it being over an hour long. I highly recommend everyone to watch this video. 

Randy Pausch seemed like an amazing individual. He did not let the discovery of cancer in his body stop him from living his life and being happy. I learned so much from watching this video. I learned the importance of teaching children to have childhood dreams. Even if some of your dreams may be impossible, you will still learn something from the process.

The video begins by Pausch telling everyone that he has been diagnosed with cancer, and that he is dying. However, had he not informed the audience of this, I'm sure no one would have ever known because he was a very energetic, funny, and healthy-looking individual. Pausch said "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." When I become a teacher, I hope that I am able to teach my students not to feel sorry for things that they do not have. Instead, my students need to be happy and find a way to change the situation.

I think that my favorite quote from Pausch's lecture was "When you screw up and no one is saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up." I have never thought about it that way before. Our parents and teachers are constantly correcting us when we do something wrong. They do this because they care so much about us that they want to see us succeed rather than fail. I hope that when I become a teacher that I will have the patience and willingness to constantly push my students to succeed.

Another thing that I learned from Pausch's lecture is that Project Based Learning (PBL) is not a new thing. Pausch and his colleagues were utilizing PBL in the 90's when they created the class Building Virtual Worlds. PBL is not only fun, but it works. Pausch's students were extremely engaged and surpassed his expectations with each project they did. Pausch said "Millions of kids having fun while learning something hard. That's cool." I agree that is is very cool. We need to make learning fun so children will continually have the desire to learn more.