Blog Assignment #8

What can we learn from Randy Pausch about teaching?

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture is an inspirational lecture on how to lead your life.  Pausch broke his lecture into three parts; My Childhood Dreams, Enabling the Dreams of Others, and How You Can Achieve Your Dreams and Enable the Dreams of Others.

During "My Childhood Dreams", Pausch gives some words of wisdom on how he was able to accomplish his childhood dreams.

• Inspiration and the ability to dream is huge. 
• It is important to have specific dreams. 
• Have something to bring to the table.  
• You can also learn from dreams you did not accomplish.  
• You have to get the fundamentals down. 
• If you are messing up and no one is saying anything to you, they have given up on you.
• Enthusiasm is important.  
• Most of what we learn, we learn indirectly (indirect learning).  
• Leadership is an important skill set to have.  
• The brick walls are there for a reason.  They are there to show how badly we want something.
• "Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you."- John Snoody  
• Watch how you say something, there is a good way and a bad way.  

While at Carnegie Mellon University, Pausch developed a course to help enabling the dreams of others.  The students in this class were able to created building virtual worlds so they could achieve their childhood dreams.  This course was offered in five different departments.  The course is project based, breaking the molds.  There were no rules to follow,  After the first two week project, work was beyond his imagination.  His reply was to not set the bar for these students, they could always do better.  The students were able to give their teammates feedback on how they worked together.  In order to share the students' work the university had a campus wide exhibition.  Pausch was able to show his students how it feels to get other excited about your students work.  The core of this course was all about the bonding between the students.   When pioneering a new project, you will have those arrows in the back but at the end of the day its all about having fun.  This course is now offered world wide.


The third part is how you can achieve your dreams and enable the dreams of others.  Pausch developed Alice.  Alice teaches programming by playing games and making movies.  Students are having fun by learning something hard.


How do you get people to help you?  You can't get there alone, believe in Karma

• Tell the truth
• Be earnest
• Apologize when you screw up
• Focus on others, not yourself

Pausch's Important Advice:

1. Be good at something, it makes you valuable
2. Work hard
3. Find the best in everyone, no matter how long you have to wait for it
4. Be prepared

Everything we learned from Pausch's Last Lecture can be used in the classroom, from ways he obtained his childhood dreams to ways to get people to help you.  Pausch gave us the ultimate lesson in indirect learning.  He was able to turn a lecture about his lifetime dreams into a lecture that teaches future teachers how to teach their students.