Blog Assignment #6

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams
When Randy spoke of "The Last Lecture", I was immediately drawn in to listen to more about this video. What really grasped my attention in the beginning of this video was when Randy said, "If you had one lecture to give,what would it be?".This mainly caught my ear because we as people think that we're going to live forever. I know that I rarely think about "the last" anything, other then the last piece of food,So to go in front of a crowd and tell a room full of strangers about his Illness was very brave of him.

Randy also said something that I live by which was,"We can not change the cards that we are dealt,just how we play the hand". This is so true, we do not have to accept things as they are because society or someone says it has to be a certain way. People have the power to do anything they desire to do, and the key to that power is knowledge.

Working with real people and in an actual environment is the best way to learn and see what works and what doesn't. Just because we do what is expected of us does not mean we have to stop there. We can set the bar higher and higher, reaching new goals and having new objective.If we go into things with one goal that is all we will accomplish. What Randy is simply saying is keep setting the bar higher and not to settle for good enough.
Randy's view on the subject of education is that it should be hands on. He liked using "EDUTAINMENT" (video technology)as he called it, to teach people new things. I believe also in Hands on learning, just as Randy does. Books can only teach you so much. It is much better to get some real life experiences rather than to read it in a book. Randy said, "The best gift an Educator can give is to get someone to be self-reflective". I 100% agree with him on this statement, because how else can one grow without learning from their past? Sometimes you have to look back to move forward.

"The best way to teach someone something, is to have them think they are learning something else." This quote is one that I will share with my fellow teachers, just as a means of motivating them to come up with creative ways of teaching a particular subject. Being able to have a scale that shows how much you've grown in a particular subject, over the course of a class, is a great way to motivate students to do better. Randy has taught and proven to the world that, It is possible to learn something hard, while at the same time having fun doing it. In short it takes dreaming to become successful.