Randy Pausch passed away today. Death pisses me off, especially when the dead people are fairly young and were exceptional human beings. (Apparently that means I don’t care if old a**holes die). Anyway, Randy Pausch was a Carnegie Mellon professor who taught and researched computer science, human-computer interaction and design, and was considered one of the pioneers of virtual reality research.

He was best known to the non-tech world for the Last Lecture he gave at Carnegie Mellon after being diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer, entitled Achieving Your Childhood Dreams. The book he co-wrote with Wall Street Journal writer Jeffrey Zaslow (via cell phone dictation), The Last Lecture, has been on the best-seller list for months.

He was smart, funny, straightforward, and a pretty happy guy both before and after his diagnosis. His students loved him, and as soon as the rest of the world met him via YouTube, they loved him as well.

I think what made the most profound impression on me was the fact that he didn’t do some sappy-ass tear-jerking farewell lecture. He used his final lecture as a way to tell his wife and kids what his childhood dreams had been, how he had gone about trying to realize those dreams, and what he learned from the achievement (or sometimes not quite) of each item on his list.

His lecture was certainly moving, but I wasn’t watching it and thinking words like heartbreaking, bittersweet and poetic. I was thinking, “This guy has always paid attention to what other people had to teach him.” The priceless bits of knowledge he gleaned while moving through life and working his way down his list of childhood dreams are uncomplicated and perfect. If you haven’t already, I would highly recommend watching his lecture.

Further Reading:

Associated Press: Prof whose ‘last lecture’ became a sensation dies

The Legacy of Randy Pausch

Randy Pausch: The dying man who taught America how to live

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Reuters has this article up about a middle school in Boston that has stopped using textbooks, paper and pencils in favor of laptops. The laptops are handed out to every student at the beginning of the school day, the kids use them all day for math, reading, etc., and hand them back in at the end of the day. The school library is still standing and stocks lots of fiction in book form, so I suppose I can support the idea of computers replacing all tree-based implements of learning in the classroom. (Really, I think it’s that I can see the inevitable age of laptops-for-every-human and no-more-trees-left-for-paper coming down the pike, so I may as well give up and step out of the way.)

I adore pencils and paper (Ticonderoga #2’s and college ruled) and books that are bound and I will probably never give them up completely, regardless of mankind’s technological advancements. However, as much as I prefer words in print to their computer-screen counterparts, I do understand that technological evolution, progress, and advancement (blah blah blah) is forward motion and that is usually a positive thing.

I’m not terribly fond of the increased amount of screen time elementary and middle school kids will be adding to their daily tally if laptops are to be used all day in the classroom, but I’m sure that back when someone started writing on paper, there was my cave-writing counterpart bitching about how mankind’s technological advancements into paper making were going to ruin everyone’s eyesight. The symbols can be bigger on the walls, you jackasses! We’ll all go blind if you start writing small on that clay tablet crap! I am crotchety and I fear change no matter which epoch I’m residing in.

Further Reading:

Testing with Tech: The Role of Technology in Supporting and Enhancing Assessment

Technology Integration

Technology Not Being Used Effectively in Schools

NEA Survey Results on Technology in Public Schools and Classrooms

State Leadership in Technology For Schools: Trends in access, use and capacity

Technology Literacy and the MYSpace Generation

Posted by Alexa Harrington

Dr. Julie-Ann McFann over at Around the Academy wrote a beautiful post about the new GI Bill issue. She writes from the perspective of not only the daughter-in-law of a WWII veteran who benefited greatly from the GI Bill, but also as an educator who has taught students that enlisted in the military because it was the most realistic shot any of them had at paying for a college education. She’s as cranky as I am about the whole thing.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

For any recent college graduates who might be heading off to their first year of teaching, this post on Ephblog lays out with severe honesty what a first-year teacher might expect. I’m not a teacher, but I’ve learned from scores of them, and I found it interesting to read about what it’s like for a new teacher to jump into the breach for the first time. The post is the first in a summer-long series about teaching through the eyes of Williams College graduates and should be worth checking out.

Posted by Alexa Harrington

There’s an article in the NY Times about the increasing numbers of small liberal arts colleges dropping the SAT from their admissions requirements: Students’ Paths To Small Colleges Can Bypass SAT. Call it what you will (I like to call it WASP Guilt), but it’s moving me to confess: in high school I was an under-achieving slacker who got into college because I look good on paper. Many a kid smarter than I am (and possessing both an excellent work ethic and academic drive) didn’t end up in college because the realities of their lives made it hard for them to look as shiny as I did.

I test well. I’m a public school kid, and this theory of mine may be a bunch of crap, but I think 12 years of standardized tests prepared my brain very well for taking the SAT and the ACT. I skated along without having to do much actual work in school because the language spoken in my home was English and my entire family are voracious readers, which meant I was always reading or being read to. So I have that whole “excellent reading comprehension skills” thing going for me. Do you know what your life needs in order for you to be able to read a lot? Time, money, and a fairly low stress level.

Half of the population of the tiny California farming town I grew up in had arrived pretty recently (within a generation) from Mexico. I’m not an idiot, but I’m not a genius either, and I somehow always tested several grades above my actual grade level. Every year at testing time, the adults in charge made a big deal about how damn smart I was. I never corrected them, but I had a sneaking suspicion that I might not be as smart as the tests said I was.

I could see what went down in the classroom: there would be a tiny handful of extremely smart kids in the class. Of that handful, the smart kids who spoke English at home would grasp the material as soon as it was out of the teacher’s mouth. The smart kids who spoke Spanish at home would have the language hurdle to jump over, but then they would be off and running, still faster than the majority of the other students.

By the time I was applying to colleges, I got it that I looked good on paper, but that my test scores weren’t the whole picture. What my 98th percentile test scores didn’t show was that I was a decently (but not supremely) intelligent, English-speaking, total slacker with no work ethic to speak of (proof: my verbal scores rocked through no effort on my part, but my math scores blew hard because math requires studying, which I was too lazy to sit down and do), who came from an educated family which would be funding my college career.

There were several kids who we all knew were not only smarter, they also had more drive, and were generally more interested than I was in expending the energy required to kick some ass in the world. And would they be joining us at university in the fall? Not so much. And why? Because their families had bigger issues than SAT scores and college transcripts to tackle. Those kids didn’t get a lot of recreational reading or SAT prep-course work done because they spent their spare time working to help their parents make ends meet.

Here’s what my fortunate, English-speaking booty was up to. My habit through school was to complete my homework assignment in the five minutes of paper-shuffling before class started. I rarely studied for exams. I ditched the two SAT prep courses my parents paid good money for and spent those two Saturdays wandering aimlessly in the sunshine while those other suckers sat inside and wrote pages of intensely-scribbled (but probably very organized) notes on how to kick the ass of the kid sitting next to you when you go in to take the SAT’s.

I lacked a good work ethic. I was not the spastic over-achiever I am today. Far from it. How did I manage to get into Cal State? I test well. And I look good on paper because of it. My high school transcripts looked good because, since I didn’t have to work to survive, I had the time after school to do four years of swim team and student government.
Honestly, here’s what I think. If any college admissions person worth their salt had spent a day watching me and one of my Spanish-speaking counterparts, I would not have been chosen. I completely screwed up my first semester away at school. Eventually I gave in and saw that even I was going to have to buckle down and study in college.

That’s not the point. The point is that admissions boards are scanning transcripts and SAT scores to decide which kids should get in. I’m telling you (and hopefully them) that I did no more than I absolutely had to, and I sailed on in to a university. If someone had watched me in action or had interviewed me or had looked at my cush life next to that more-deserving-because-she’s-smarter-and-harder-working girl over there, I would have been passed over. Looking good on paper should get you nowhere. The whole picture, the whole package, that’s what should be scanned and weighed.

Posted by Alexa Harrington