Randy Pausch Last Lecture, is a very inspiring video and his words "We can't control the cards we are dealt but we can control how we play the hand" makes you think about how you are going to play your hand. Though life dealt him a bad hand he played it to the best of his ability, which allowed him to change people's lives. His will to push through the brick walls helped him accomplish many of his own dreams.
Randy Pausch had many childhood dreams and he achieved most of them in his own way. One of his dreams was playing in the NFL, which wasn't a dream he accomplished. However, he learned a lot of life lessons from his former coaches. Coach Graham taught him a very valuable lesson. He rode him hard at one of his practices. The assistant coach came to him to tell him that it was a very good thing that means he hasn't gave up on him yet. Coach Setliff taught him the power of enthusiasm. Randy Paush learned this expression through the electronic arts "Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted." Even though he didn't get to play in the NFL, he learned many wonderful things from people that was placed in his path."
Randy Paush talked about what he calls "the head fake. This is where you learn how to do a task without the even knowing that you are learning this particular task. Your mind is too busy focusing on what is at hand that you do not even realize the other things that you are learning. Randy Pausch also learned many things for many different people, he even learned from his students. His "head fake" award goes to one of his former students Caitlin Keller. She was working with the Alice program, a virtual reality program, that she presented to a group of young girls as a story telling activity. The girls learned computer programming and didn't even know they were doing it because of the approach.
Randy talked about his many life lessons. One of the lessons that stuck out to me was to be self reflective. If each of us were able to be self reflective we will be able to recognize the areas where we need improving. I also think that this lesson will make you humble. Another lesson he talked about was "get in the feedback loop and listen to it." These are two things that I would want to use in my classroom. I would want to learn how to be self reflective and to get in the feedback loop. I would want to learn ways that I could get feedback from my students, to be able to use it to improve my classroom management skills. Each of these techniques would improve my classroom starting with me.
Even though this lecture was addressed to his kids, every educator can take many lessons from it! It looks as if you have done so. Thorough, thoughtful, well done!
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job of explaining all of the lessons that Randy learned and taught throughout his life. After reading this, I could tell that you was really interested in his speech. You gave many important details in this blog and I didn't see one spelling error. The only thing I saw was a " missing after head fake one time but that was it. You did a very good job.
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