Randy Pausch Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
What an inspirational video! Randy Pausch had a wonderful outlook on life. It sounds as if he fulfilled his childhood dreams and lived a happy life even in his sickness. His teaching methods seem to reflect his outlook on life.
It’s evident he made learning fun. He demonstrated a virtual game made by students. It was actually pretty cute and amusing. A bunny asked the player to make him a world to live in, for which the player did. Then the player shut the program down with control/alt/delete. The rabbit’s world was virtually blown away while at the same time the rabbit is moaning. These students obviously learned by doing and had fun learning. Another example is a project he calls Alice where students are learning programming and don’t even realize it as they are making movies and games. His comment to this project was, “Millions of kids having fun while learning something hard”. He advised to allow students to be creative and compared this to his own childhood when his parents allowed him to paint pictures on his bedroom wall. I have to agree with his philosophy. I, too, was allowed to paint pictures on my bedroom wall as a young teenager.
He expects more from his students. He spoke of a two week assignment he assigned. The students performed very well. Instead of just giving all A’s he told the students how they could do better, even though they did a very good job. His point was to expect more from your students and they will give more.
He stated that the best gift an educator can give is to teach someone to be self reflective. He also stated we need to learn from our students, share information, show gratitude, help others and find the best in everybody. He gave an example of a student that he personally vouched for when the dean “had it in for him”. The student now is heading the Alice project. He made the point that loyalty was a two way street.
Basically, I saw his methodology on teaching as, make it fun and believe in your students. Learning should be fun and students will be willing to give more in return.
Randy Pausch had some very good ideas. It inspired me, and I'm really looking forward to being in the classroom. I want to help others achieve their childhood dreams. I think that's one of the greatest privileges we can have. I hope teaching is as rewarding as he makes it seem.
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