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Randy Pausch'sLast Lecture

Randy Pausch was born in the 1960s and died of Pancreatic Cancer. As a child he had six childhood dreams. These dreams were being in zero gravity, playing in the NFL, authoring an article in the World Book Encyclopedia, meeting Captain Kirk, winning stuffed animals, and being a Disney imagineer. It is very rare for someone to actually achieve their childhood dreams, however Randy Pausch actually achieved all of his childhood dreams. However, he had to go through a few obstacles to achieve these goals. He says"Brick walls are there for a reason:they let us prove how badly we want things." I think this is a great statement because we never know how badly we want something until we see how hard we work to accomplish it.

Randy achieve his first goal: being in zero gravy. He achieved this when he was a college professor and his students won a trip to ride the "vomit commit". The vomit commit allows you to see what it feels like to be in zero gravity for 25 seconds. It took overcoming an obstacle to get to be in zero gravity, but Randy did whatever it took to achieve it. His second goal was playing in the NFL. He never actually played in the NFL, but he did play football for a man that went by Coach Graham. This coach showed up to their first practice with no football because he believed if they practiced without them they would understand the fundamentals of football. During practice coach Graham was hard on Randy. However, the assistant coach told Randy "to be glad he is being hard on him because that means he has not given up on you." Randy says that critics are the ones who care and love you.

Randy graduated from Carnegie Mellon with his PHD. He try to use his PHD to achieve his goal of being a Disney imagineer. However, it did not work and they sent him letter declining him. Then one day when he was giving a lecture on virtual reality he saw Jon Snoody. He went to lunch with him and asked him if he could possibly work with him on their next project. Jon Snoody said it would be difficult but they would work it out. After approving it with his dean, Randy worked with Jon Snoody and the Disney team for six months on their project.

Randy Pausch had a class called Building Virtual Worlds. It had 50 students from all departments of the university. They had two weeks to design their project , which meant they would have five projects for the semester. After the first project, his students did so well that they had a campus wide exhibition. The students bonded throughout this exhibition and a ton of people came to watch it. It was a success. Randy then was granted his own department in the university. He has no dean to report to and he had a project based curriculum. He made the Dream Fulfillment Factory while having his own department. It involved artist and technologists. After going through it the student would receive a two year professional degree.

Randy then taught about lessons learned and said that the only way to achieve your childhood dreams depended on your parents, mentors, and students. I loved listening to Randy Pausch's Last Lecture. He made some very valid points about achieving childhood dreams. He has accomplished so much and has impacted so many peoples lives.

Karl Fisch: Is it okay to be a technoloigcally illiterate teacher?

I enjoyed reading Karl Fisch's post on technologically illiterate teachers. I agree with him in that teachers should be very familiar with technology. We can not teach our students and children about technology if we do not know about it ourselves. We must know how to use it. Karl Fisch made a very good point when he used the example about getting a job in the 20th century without knowing how to read and write. He compared it to today and being able to get a job without being technologically literate. Within the next few years, I do not believe people will be able to get a job unless they know how to use technology.

I also agree that just because you do not think you are good at using technology does not mean you do not need to learn it. I think it is dumb to be proud of not being able to use technology. Eveyrone should know how to use it because our world lives and breathes by technology. It is sad to think that some of our children are smarter at using a ocmputer than we are. I honestly think it is ridiculous. As an upcoming teacher I will make sure I do everything I can to stay up to date on technology so that I can teach the students everything I learn.

Michael Wesch: A Vision of Students Today

The video defiantely caught my attention. I can relate to this video so much as a college student. I understand about buying a $100 or more textbook that I use maybe once throughout the course. It aggrevates me because I could have not bought it and saved that money for something I would use or need. Another point that I can greatly relate to is the point that a lot of students are on their laptop in class twittering or on facebook, while I am listening and trying to learn in class. The part that is aggrevating is that I might come out with a C or B in the class and I paid attention and tried my best, but the person sitting beside me was playing on their laptop or maybe did not hardly ever come to class and they made the same grade or higher than I did. As a student and first time mother, I maybe get 4 or 5 hours of sleep at night. I spend most of the night when my baby is sleeping studying or doing work for my classes, and some of the classes I feel that I don't even need for my profession.

In the classrooms, there are too many students. Some of my classes have maybe 30 people, however some of my other classes range from 50 to 100 people. I am the type of person who needs to be in a smaller class to learn what I need to succeed. It is harder for me to learn in a huge class where you do not receive any individual attention the whole semester. In my classes now, I am happy to say that all of my professors know my name. However, this has not always been the case. Sometimes I will get in a class where my professors act like they do not care if you fail or pass their class. I have been lucky this semester and some past semesters to have professors that really do care if I pass and help me to make sure I succeed. I really enjoyed watching the film and believe that they should not add or take out anything in the video.

Mr. McClung's "What I've Learned This Year"

In Mr. McClung's blog he gave a whole lot of great advice! He gave many points on how to be a more effective and better teacher. Some of advice consisted of listening to your students, communicating with your students and coworkers, Being reasonable with yourself and students, being flexible with your lesson plans, appealing to the crowd, and never stop learning.

By listening to your students, your students will know that you care about them other than just as a teacher. They will feel wanted and I personally believe that will better succeed in the classroom if they know that you as a teacher care about them. Communicating with your fellow coworkers is a huge must in the work area. To be able to work together and communicate will allow everyone to have a happy and beneficial work environment. If you have a problem with another teacher or coworker, you both must sit down and talk about it so the problem can be solved. Being reasonable with your students means that you shoulod not set your expectations too high for the students because you could be setting them up for disappointment. If they feel like they did not meet your expectations they will feel as if they have failed you as a student. Appealing to the crowd is a very important piece of advice because if you as a teacher do not make the lessons relate to the students, they will not comprehend what you are teaching them therefor they willnot learn.

Mr. McClung made all these very helpful points in his post and they will benefit me as an upcoming teacher and allow me to be successful in the workforce.

Practical Principles Epdisode 20

In the podcast, Melinda Miller and Scott Elias dicuss how to become an Apple Distinguished educator. To become an Apple distinguished educator, one must fill out an application. The application must be accepted before continuing on in the process. After having the application submitted, a video must be watched and reviewed. To apply for this one does not have to have a ton of knowledge of Apple software. There are four roles that need to be metbut there is only one role that is actually necessary. It ios the advocate role. However, one does not need to be a technology whiz, they just have to be passionate about hat they are doing.


Anyone can apply to be an Apple distinguished educator that has an educational knowledge. This includes a teacher, a distict technology personnel, or anyone with some involvement in education. People with different types of strengths are brought to the table when in the Apple distinguished educators.Int he conferences many things are discussed. In the most recent conference brands were discussed.They were discussing whether or not to bring branding into the school system. For example school branding, class branding, or personal branding. The podcast was very informative and I enjoyed listening to it.

Podcasting and how to make it better

I watched a podcast from a past EDM 310 class and overall I thought that the students did a pretty good job delivering their information. However, there are a few things that can be improved with the pdcast and their delivery. When some of the students were talking, they were did not sound very personable. The listener could definately tell that they were reading from a piece of paper. If I were making a podcast I would review a few times over what I was going to say and make sure I knew the information quite well so that I would not pause very much and I could make the delivery more personable. This would help keep listeners listening I believe.Also to improve the podcast that I listened to, I would have some of the students delivering talk a little slower.One or two of the students talked a little too fast and as a listener I could not tell what they were saying some of the time.

Overall I believe the podcast that I listened to was veyr well delivered and just need a few minor changes.