Blog Post #6

In the video Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams, Dr. Pausch tells the story of how he followed his dreams to unimaginable places. Randy had many dreams as most children do, but unlike others, he chased them until most of them became realities. Along the way to chasing his dreams he had the luxury of meeting various key figures, such as his college professor Andy Van Dam, that challenged him to be unique. There are also other factors that played a role in Randy's life, such as his intense love for football. Though he never achieved his dream of becoming a professional football player, he learned the values of hard work through the game. Randy used the same concept on his way to making amazing advances in his classroom. Randy earned  the title of college professor and now teaches at Carnegie Mellon University, where he continues to adopt and experiment with different ways of teaching.
          I think many of the views expressed in the video will help me to become a better teacher. One of the key aspects of teaching is being able to communicate with your students. As Randy states in the video, it is important to be careful on how you talk to someone because they could take it the wrong way. For example, students are less likely to pay attention to someone  who is being rude or discourteous towards them. Another one of his teaching attributes i learned from the video is he didn't follow the guidelines of "textbook" teaching. In  other words he divided his class into different groups and challenged them to work together to complete assignments. This method of teaching proves to be effective when the students design a mind-blowing virtual world, which is shown in the video.
          Dr. Pausch accomplished something that many teachers spend there entire lives trying to do, make something difficult  enjoyable. He accomplished this task by thinking outside of the box and creating his college course Building Virtual Worlds. At the time, it was the first class to split the students into random groups and assign them different tasks, such as designing virtual worlds through the use of software. This type of teaching was ground-breaking and is now used in colleges throughout the United States. The course became an instant phenomenom in which students were lining up in great numbers to attend. The technology used in his course went on to be a huge success, and was used  in the Spider-Man 3 film.

         Randy and Don Marinelli established the Entertainment Technology Center to offer a Master's degree in Entertainment Technology. This Master's degree is different than any other because it is totally based off of group projects. The Degree comes with a written aggreement from five major companies, such as Electronic Arts, guaranting the student with a job after graduation. Another tool Randy took part in designing was ALICE, which is a system that teaches computer programming. The beauty of this tool is that it makes a game out of learning, making it enjoyable. Dr. Randy Pausch was an amazing man and made many priceless discoveries in the field of teaching, he will be remembered forever. I plan on using many of his views within my own classroom, such as challenging my students to work as a team and most of all,to have fun.