Pausch's Last Lecture

Randy Pausch was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, or more commonly known simply as MIT. He died on pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008. In the last months of his life, he gave a stunning lecture giving his last bit of advise to his students. This last lecture entitled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," was not only clever and funny, but full of great advice and lessons on life in general.

Pausch started his last lecture by simply telling the audience a few of his childhood dreams. Some of them involved being a professional football player, an imagine er for Disney, and even being on the Star ship Enterprise as Captain Kirk. Although it seems that he couldn't have possibly attained these early childhood dreams, he actually did achieve some of them. He then went on to say that no dream is unattainable and that they are your dreams, and that you should always try to reach your dreams.

Another thing that he discussed was one of the assignments that he gave one of his classes. It didn't require any books or note books, because he wasn't going to give any lectures and there would be no reading of any text books. He actually split the class in half and gave them a huge group project. One of his ideas was that the best ways of learning was to learn by doing and that hands on projects were in fact the best ways of learning. I thought that this was awesome because I totally agree with that conclusion. He even said that the students met and exceeded the requirements that he gave them. But when one of his student showed him their projects before it was done, he told them that they could do better, so that they would be pushed to do their very best.

It seems that we lost one of the best educators of our time when Randy Pausch die. His last lecture was full of great advice and he really seem to be a truly inspiring individual. The idea that he could give a lecture full of hope and encouragement in the face of death is absolutely amazing.

iPods as a Teaching Tool

It seems that everywhere you look, you see people with headphones in listening to an iPod. The iPod is a MP3 player produced by Apple. It is one of the most popular pieces of technology on the market today. It is widely used by children and adults alike, but can it be used in the classroom? Duke University seems to think it can. In 2005 the Duke Digital Initutive program was introduced. It provided freshmen with an iPod in an effort to enhance the learning process. It contains information about orientation and classes.

This is one of the best examples of technology in the classroom. The introduction of iPods to further the distribution of information in a school is one of the best ways to utilize current technology. I think that this is a great idea on the part of Duke University, and I think that universities around the country should get on board.

Dr. Christie

Dr. Alice Christie's website seems to be an extremely useful resource for incorporating different kinds of technology in the classroom. The website is designed to share some of the insight of Dr. Chrstie's over 40 years of experience in education. On the site you can choose from photography to searching the web and from web design to GPS and Geocaching.

I chose to look into the GPS and Geocaching portion of her website. She states that here in the 21st century, we as educators are obligated to keep up with current technology. We should push our students to use these emerging technologies, such as GPS, and we should teach them practical was to apply these technologies in their lives. I think that it was a very informative website and I really liked her approach to education. http://www.alicechristie.org/geocaching/index.html

Wikipedia

Can you really trust the all knowing Wikipedia? I know that every time I'm curious about something, or my friends ask me a question that I can't answer, I always just look it up on Wikipedia. But is it really reliable. Apparently it isn't. According to NRP, the seemingly center of all knowledge, can not be trusted.

According to the post on NRP, anyone can change the information that is put on the website. There isn't very many restrictions or anything holding people accountable for the information that they put on Wikipedia. Even though Virgil has made it possible for us the public and the government to monitor who changes information on the site, it still isn't that reliable. It's a shame but now we know that Wikipedia is in fact not that reliable and should never be used to do research.

More From The Fischbowl

Professor Barry Bachenheimer of the Caldwell-West Caldwell Public Schools in New Jersey, posed the question ,"how many of the 180 days of school are used for true instruction." One piece of data that he used was a presentation that showed the frequently missed or wasted classes throughout the school year. He concluded that only 120 days are actually used for teaching and instruction by teachers. This was made up mostly of absences and the first and last days of the year. Test days where also some of the day's that students would miss out on instruction from their teachers, which I never really thought about.

Bachenheimer creates makes a really good point and facilitates really good discussions on the topic. I personally haven't ever really thought about how much time is wasted at school. I remember thinking when I was in high school, "man it seems that we have a lot of down time." I think it would be a good idea to find ways to give teachers more time to actually teach in their classrooms. But I don't think kids would like having a shorter summer and a longer school year. As a teacher, I know I wouldn't.

Best of The Fischbowl of September

Karl Fisch is the writer of the blog The Fischbowl. His blog entitled, Is It Okay To Be a Technologically Illiterate Teacher? won the Edublog award for 2007. Despite his great humility on the issue, this is a very impressive award and a great achievement for him. In this blog he explores the very question posed in the title of the blog. Does it really matter if a teacher is technologically iliterate? Does this enhance his or her abiltiy to prepare students or does it inhibit it. Karl Fisch definitly seems to say that it greatly inhibits a teachers abiltiy to affectivly prepare his or her students for a successful fufilling life. He even makes the bold statement that being a teacher who is technologically iliterate today is like being a teacher who was reading or writing iliterate 30 years ago.

Fisch gives a good argument as to why we as teachers have an obligation to stay on top of current technology and to provide our students with the tools they need to succeed in their future jobs. I for one totally agree with this argument possed by Fisch. It is our responsibilty as teachers to provide our students with all of the advantages they need to survive in this technologically growing world. This was a well thought out argument and very diserving of and award like this one.

International Classroom Blogs

This classroom blog comes to us from Nelson Central School in New Zealand. This is a year 2/3 kids class, which would be 6 and 7 year old children and their teacher is Rachel Boyd. Most of the blog entries are videos, and it seems that it is a very interactive site and is very useful to the children and their parents. http://room9nelsoncentral.blogspot.com/

The next classroom blog also comes to us from New Zealand, but this time at Manaia Kindergarten. The blog stated that the school had over 30 families attending this school. This blog also has numerous videos for the children to view. This seems to be a trend with the younger grades. It seems to be very useful for the childern and is also very interactive. http://manaiakindergarten.blogspot.com/