What Can We Learn About Teaching and Learning From Randy Pausch?

Randy Pausch was a computer science and human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University. He was diagnosed with cancer and was told he had 3 - 6 months of good health left. During those months he gave his final lecture. Randy Pausch's final lecture was about achieving your dreams. He spoke about how he achieved his dreams and helped enable others to achieve their dreams. His final lecture was recorded and has been viewed more than 16 million times on youtube. 

  

If you had one last lecture to give before you die, what would it be?

Randy Pausch began his lecture by explaining his illness to the audience. The next part of his lecture was about achieving your dreams. He began with how he achieved his dreams. His childhood dreams were being in zero gravity, playing in the NFL, authorizing an article in the World Book encyclopedia, Being Captain Kirk, winning stuffed animals, and becoming a Walt Disney Imagineer. He described how he was able to make all of his dreams come true. He never became Captain Kirk, but he was able to meet him. He also had his stuffed animal collection brought onstage during his lecture. He talked about the obstacles that he faced while he was pursuing his dreams. He called them brick walls. The brick walls let us prove how badly we want something and stop the people who do not want it badly enough. Randy Pausch did not only achieve his dreams, but he also helped enable others to achieve their own dreams. He helped one his students achieve his dream to be a part of making Star Wars films.  

Randy Pausch helped create an educational software that teaches students computer programming. The software was called Alice. He also created a class called building virtual worlds. It was a class of fifty art, design, drama, and, computer science students. They were put into teams and worked on a project of creating a virtual world. Students were only given two weeks to complete their projects. He was blown away by his student's projects. He said that he would have given them A's if they had an entire semester to make them. He asked his mentor what he should tell his students about their projects. His answer was to tell them "this is good, but I know you can do better". The video below is an example of the virtual worlds that they created.