the last lecture

Randy Pausch's last lecture was a very emotional and inspirational speech on what was at first achieving your childhood dreams. The lecture ended up being a verbal how to on living your life and achieving the goals that you set for yourself no matter what obstacles or "brick walls" you run into through out the adventure of life. The lecture was also very informal and felt like he was just talking with friends in a living room when in actuality he was speaking in front of an absolutely packed auditorium at Carnegie Melon the university where he works.

I contributing factors that helped make the lecture a success where quite obvious throughout the entire video. Randy Paush, as he states in the video, is a great sales men and knows how to talk to people and also how to tell the occasional joke or two. In top of being articulate Randy is also an extremely gifted educator who has been on the cutting edge of his profession since he began. He states that he loves to use what he calls "head fake learning". Head fake learning is explained as teaching a student something valuable through a game or activity that is fun and exciting to the point the student forgets they are in class or studying. The final evident factor is that Randy Paush has cancer and is able to still live his life to the fullest and even though he only has a little time left he is still having fun. I believe that this experience gave randy the necessary hindsight and foresight to make such a pivotal speech.

The lecture was in fact a motivational one. but, at the same time it seemed to be a sort of don't feel sorry for me i achieved all of my goals kind of thing, which is fine. If one can use their life to motivate others to teach, learn, or even create projects they should do it because once you get someone thinking that the possibilities are endless their is no limit to what that person can achieve. Mr. Paush's lecture achieved this goal and more. It moved and motivated everyone in the room and it was visually evident and showed that emotion coupled with experience is a great teaching tool.

This lecture should be passed around to all educators to show how you can motivate your students and maybe get some motivation for yourself too. also the lecture can show you how effective the ability to sell a topic is in the world of education. Lastly, make teaching fun. I think that was randy's main teaching point let the students use their imagination and make efforts to apply head fakes in your lesson plans.