Blog Post 8

What Can We Learn about Teaching and Learning from Randy Pausch?



In the video Randy Pausch's last lecture, we are able to learn so much from Randy. He is definitely a brilliant guy with a lot of useful information to provide. Randy talks about his childhood dreams and provides us with a list of everything that he wanted to accomplish as a child. Most of those childhood dreams were accomplished or perused in some kind of way. Randy taught us a really good lesson at the beginning of his lecture when he said, "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." This lesson shows us that we should always press on even when things don't go our ways because there is still something that's being taken away from all the attempts and that is experience. Randy also talks about head fake learning. Head fake learning is considered to be learning one thing when really you are learning something else that is way more valuable. He goes on to say that parents should look out for this type of learning and push their children to take part in it.

The part of the video that I found to very educational was when he talked about enabling childhood dreams. A really good way to be able to do that is to become a teacher. As aspiring teachers, we should want to make a difference in a child's life. Randy wanted to change and touch the lives of his students during his time at Carnegie Mellon so much that he started a class where the students were free to create almost anything that they wanted. He put the students into groups and used project based learning to get the students working together collaboratively. He did not put a limit to what the students could do with the projects. When the students came to class with their finished projects, he was truly amazed. It surpassed anything that he thought they could do. Their work was so good until he had to ask what should he do and he was given the instructions to basically tell them that the work was good but also challenge then to do better. With very little instructions, the students were able to explore, learn, and have fun. Those are the main goals of project based learning.

Randy wanted to take the program a step further, so he and Don created the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC). It was a two years program for a master's degree. Randy's approach to this program was learning without using books. That meant that it was all project based learning. Although the ETC was great, Randy wanted more people to be able to be reached so he started working on Alice. Alice is a program where students are able to have fun while learning how to create. It teaches us that students can learn difficult things through fun and entertaining programs. Millions have downloaded this program and it's continuing to spread.

Randy brought us some really useful information as to how students should be taught and he also instructed us never to give up on them. Everyone needs somebody to help them. There is a lot that we can learn from students as well. Randy says, "Brick walls let us show our dedication." We have to keep trying to reach our goals even when it looks like it's a dead end.