Week 8

Comments 4 Kids
This week for comments 4 kids, I read Samary's blog about slavery on his class blog. Samary hit the high and low points and did a very good job summing everything up.

Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture
I have to say that this is my favorite video out of all of the videos that I have had to watch for this class. I had not even realized that an hour had gone by until Dr. Pausch finished his presentation. Dr. Pausch was a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon University. His work with technology is amazing but how he taught was even better. Dr. Pausch was sick at his Last Lecture with only a few months left to live according yet he remained witty and upbeat the entire time. In this video, he tells us about how he accomplished his childhood dreams. Through telling us of his dreams, we learn through what he called "head fake." "Head fake" is learning something while you did not even know you were learning. One example of "head fake" that he shows us was through football. While you do learn how to block, dodge, or catch, you also learn teamwork, perseverance, and sportsmanship.

One of the things that you see throughout his speech is a brick wall. He said that brick walls are there only for you to see how badly you want something. If you really want it, you will not let the wall stop you. He showed us, throughout his presentation, that he kept trucking to get where he wanted to be. If he wanted something, he would keep pushing until he got where he wanted to be. For example, when he was not accepted to work at Disney, he kept going until he found another way. This is a great way to teach your children or students perseverance and hard work. He has also said that his childhood idol was Captain Kirk. Thought Kirk was not the smartest character, he showed the best leadership and was very stubborn in doing what he thought needed to be done though he did take advise. (Yes, I do read Star Trek.)

Dr. Pausch had really wanted to help other's achieve their dreams. He was heavily involved in three different technological advances at Carnegie Mellon: Building Virtual World, Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), and Alice in which he hoped to do this. Building Virtual World was a new class that he taught at the University. He had fifty students in the class. The students were split into groups of four and had two week to do a project. After two weeks, the students was shuffle groups. After he had seen the first weeks projects, he was blow away by what the students had done, but he still pushed the students to do better. The course grew in stature on the campus until the students did a show of their group works and all of the departments came to see, completely filling the auditoriums seats and aisles. He made a chart to show how well the students thought each of their classmates was. He said you could tell how well the group was going by looking at how close the student were to each other.

Dr. Pausch really wanted the best out of everything: himself, his life, his students. That is how we all should act. Not only would we be pushing our students but we would be giving them a role model to watch. He wanted his students to achieve their dreams like he had and get every last drop out of life. He will be remembered both by his students whom he helped to grow and persevere and by the works he has done. (Dr. Pausch died July 25, 2008.)