Un-professional Development

Millions of peole watched the recent episode of Oprah where she had Professor Randy Pausch give part of the lecture entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams”  he gave at Carnegie Mellon University on September 18, 2007. What made the story special is that the man is dying of Pancreatic cancer, and is given just a few months to live. (I only knew it was on Oprah because my wife and daughters were watching…honest!)

For the people who think YouTube and Google video have no educational value and have no place in our schools, the entire lecture (not the 10 minute version as seen on Oprah) has been available to the everyone on Google Video and YouTube since the day after the lecture was given to the live audience. Everyone with internet access can view the video at their convenience.

Dean Shareski brought this video to my attention in one of his posts. When I started watching it I immediately thought about teaching and learning styles and how the professors I had at university would lecture about how bad lecturing is for students. As I continued to watch and be drawn in by the lecture, I realized that lecture CAN BE A POWERFUL TEACHING METHOD as this is an amazing story.

 If this  isn’t educational, I don’t know what is.