Blog Post # 14: Randy Pausch: A Moving & Educational Talk

Everyone can learn something from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. Whether you are a parent, teacher, student, young, or old Dr. Pausch's lecture on achieving childhood dreams is very interesting. He not only wanted to attain his own dreams, but he wanted to help others attain their dreams too. In order to succeed, one must have fundamentals and be willing to work hard. There are many obstacles that stand in the way of reaching our goals. Dr. Pausch refers to these as brick walls. He goes on to explain how these brick walls are there for a reason; they are there for us to overcome.
Dr. Pausch was inspired to go to graduate school while at Brown University by Andy van Dam. Professor van Dam told him: "if you are going to sale something worthwhile it might as well be education." So Dr. Pausch began to wonder how he could enable others' dreams as a professor and began the Building Virtual Worlds. It is comprised of fifty students from all departments working on revolving teams of four to work on five projects a semester with two weeks to complete the project. He was completely surprised and blown away by how outstanding the work of the students was. Dr. Pausch was then advised to encourage his students to do even better and work harder on the next project. They did just that. It was such a hit he had parents coming to class.
Then came ETC, or Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon. This idea is result of Dr. Pausch and Don Mannelli collaborating artists with technologists. It is two programs working together. This project also consisted of students participating in small group projects completed in a certain amount of time. This of course freed the instructors and the students of the confinements of normal institutional learning. They referred to it as "edutainment." ETC has gone worldwide including projects in Australia and Korea.
This led to the ALICE project in which Dr. Pausch refers to himself as the Mad Hatter. This project initiated ways to teach--to show someone how to do something when they think they are learning something else. Kids learn by having fun. It involved video gamish technology for teaching. How cool is that? If most kids are playing a video game, they would not think they could possibly learn anything constructive from them. Dr. Pausch has changed the way teachers teach and students learn. He instructs his fellow educators, students, and parents alike to never give up, listen to feedback, positive and negative, show gratitude, be prepared, and don't complain, only work harder. Great advice from such a great leader, educator, husband, and father.