Blog Post 7

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture
       Let me start off by saying that Randy Pauch's Last Lecture was a great motivating video.  I thought it was amazing that he was such a positive person even though his outcome was bleak.  In this video he talked about three main point and they were childhood dreams, enable the dreams of others, and lessons learned.
      In the childhood dreams section of the film he talked about all of his childhood dreams and how he achieved them.  He was born in the 1960's and said being that it was the time of man walking on the moon it was time to dream big.  He made a great point when he was talking about his time playing football.  He said that one of the coaches told him "that when someone is hard on you when you mess up its a good thing.  When they stop being hard on you is when they stop caring".  I think throughout life everyone can relate back to a time that someone was a little more tough on us than we would have liked.  At the same time I am sure that we can all look back on that time and reflect on what we learned from the situation.  I think that can go hand and hand with the comment he made about experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.  When he was talking about this I couldn't help but think about the things that would have not happen or the things that would not have been invented if everyone succeeded the first time at something.
       In the enable the dreams of others section he talked about a class/program called "Building Virtual Words".  In this class he had fifty students and every two weeks teams would be randomly chosen, and they would have to make there own virtual worlds.  The rules for the class was to make whatever you want but it could not have gun violence or pornography.  I think these rules gave the student a free range to use there imagination.  When he got back the first assignment he was blown away with the outcome so he asked for advise on how to handle what to do next.  He was told to not to set a bar.  I really like this comment, because I think once you set that bar and achieve it you stop trying to go beyond it.  Having no bar gives you endless opportunity's to grow.  He said that the thing that he will live on in was a program called ALICE, which is a novel way to teach computer programming.  This is a program that a student writes a book and at the same time is learning to do computer programming.  This is something that will be use at the grade school levels to teach how to do computer programming.  Through this he said millions of kids will learn something new while having fun.
       In the last section, lessons learned, he talks about the roles of his parents, mentors, and students.  He talks about how great his parents were in the way of always being there and encouraging him.  He said his mentors always pushed him, and his students helped him in many different ways as well.  He asked the question to decide if you were a Tigger or an Eeyore?  He is trying to say through this question to always have fun.  I think this makes a great point.  Think about if the world was full of Eeyore teachers, school would be a pretty boring place.  It is like what he said kids can learn while still having fun.  I believe that a student would probably learn more if they are having fun.
       The one thing that he addressed throughout the video was the topic of brick walls.  He talks about how brick walls are there for a reason.  They show us how bad we want something.  It also shows us who doesn't want to keep going for something.  They show us our dedication to what we are trying to achieve.  I think as teachers we are going to hit all kinds of brick walls and it is how we get over them is what truly counts.
       At the end of the video he gives words of wisdom that I think that not only teachers can use but everyone can.  Some of my favorite things he says to "get a feedback loop and listen to it, show gratitude, never give up, apologize when your wrong, you can't get there alone, and don't complain just work harder".  He mentioned the first head fake of this video was to lead your life the right way.  I think that statement sums up what he was trying to get across in this great video.