Blog Assignment 6

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture
The Last Lecture is literally the last lecture that Randy Pausch gave before his life ended due to pancreatic cancer.  Watching this video you would never know that he was told by a doctor that he would die within months.  Pausch had such an amazing outlook on life that I hope to grasp as I continue my goal to become an educator.

Everyone has dreams that they want to live out sometime in their lives.  Pausch had several dreams during his childhood that he discussed in his lecture.  The main point being how being a good person and doing the right things can positively effect you and the people around you.  As a future educator, I want to instill this into the minds of my students.  I want them to have dreams that may be difficult to reach.  They may take your entire life to come true, but why stop trying.  There will be obstacles in the way and these are what Pausch called, "brick walls."  These walls are not physical walls, but tough situations that come in the way of allowing your dreams to become reality.  Brick walls let us prove how badly we want things and they let us show our dedication to our dreams.  I want to help my students break through these brick walls.  I want them to fight for what they believe and what they truly want in their lives.  When students break through these walls, they have overcome an obstacle and have a sense of accomplishment that is worth recognizing.  For me, I want to push my students to keep a positive attitude and a good work ethic to help them realize and achieve their goals.

As teachers, we want to provide knowledge and skills to students, but we also want to help them realize their own dreams.  Teachers will get disappointed with their students.  Students may not meet our expectations, but we cannot get discouraged by that.  We need to help them by allowing them to self-reflect.  Allowing students to realize themselves where they succeed and where they struggle can allow them to find the areas in their lives where they can make the proper adjustments in order to succeed.  Pausch mentioned that there is good in everyone, you just have to give yourself time to find it.  This is another thing as teachers that we need to remember.  There will be days where we want to run out of the classroom, but we need to know that behind the bad day of a student is a good person.

Just like this EDM 310 class teaches us, we need to remember that technology is just going to keep expanding and students want fun ways to learn.  Even since Pausch had this lecture, technology has grown so much since then and it is more readily available now in the classroom than ever before.  We need to use the technology to facilitate our students' learning.  Pausch created a program called Alice, which teaches students how to program computers.  Most people wouldn't want to learn to program computers, especially students, because it is very complex.  Pausch realized that if students have fun, they are willing to learn something hard.  Most of the time they don't even realize what they are doing is technically hard.  As teachers, we need to come up with innovative strategies that allow the students to have fun, but are still learning at the same time.  We need to combine learning and creativity to engage our students.

Towards the end of the lecture, Pausch talks about how "fun" needs to be in the classroom.  I 100% agree with him.  There always needs to be that "child-like wonder" in teachers and in students as well.  Am I, as a teacher, going to be Tigger or Eeyore?  To engage my students I can only hope I will be a "Tigger", who is caring, excited to learn, and just an all around fun teacher.  All educators need to ask themselves that same question.

I thoroughly enjoyed watching the Last Lecture and I would recommend it to not just future teachers, but to others who are in college and about to face the "real world."  Anyone can use what Pausch said if they want to better themselves and the people around them.