About me

I'm a geek working as a distance learning specialist for a large corporation.

My Pandora "radio station" profile
This is my favorite way to listen to music now.

My Yahoo "radio station"
(Unfortunately, only works in IE.)

Caddickisms Store

Calendar

July 2008
S M T W T F S
« Jun   Aug »
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728293031  

Recent Comments

  • Harriet: I know this blog is old but I ...
  • Jeff: It's a weird feeling to look u...
  • Jeff: heh... very sad. Weren't your ...
  • Jason: I completely agree with your a...
  • Jason: I am crying. That was so funn...
  • Jeff: Ha! Love the "hit man movies" ...
  • Jason: I like this format, it reminds...

Topics

Posts by month

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

Around the site

"There are a lot of challenges that instructional designers and trainers face in developing and delivering courses in a corporate environment. For instance, usually there is barely time to get the material together, let alone organize it well and produce"
Challenge students?! Are you crazy?!

"Seriously, where else are you going to get a combination like that? I've got three video clips for you today, and one of them is not fiction. See if you can figure out which one. Firefly is back! That's right, Nathan Fillion has"
Firefly is back, Singing Batman, and Cyborg Rats

"I think it's official: I'm addicted to Kathy Sierra's blog. Yesterday she made a great (if a tad long) summary of some pretty basic points she made earlier in the year that apply to learning. Here's a bulleted list of her main"
Instructional Design reminders

"This is a follow-up to my previous, spoiler-free post. I have a few observations about continuity problems in Superman Returns. Spoilers below! If you want to read it, take your mouse and click & drag from here until the end of"
Review: Superman Returns :: Spoilers!!

"[tag]Christian Bale[/tag], [tag]Michael Caine[/tag], and [tag]Christopher Nolan[/tag] (all of whom worked on [tag]Batman Begins[/tag]) join [tag]Hugh Jackman[/tag] to create one of the best magician movies I've ever seen. Actually, this movie crosses a few genres, but I won't list them"
Review: The Prestige

"If you're not a parent or don't want to talk about the logistics of sickness, move along... nothing to see here. You've been warned. So after Thanksgiving dinner was over and we were all about to head home, my nephew got sick."
Not for the queasy - where to get sick

"Smallville's a repeat tonight after the mid-season cliffhanger two weeks ago. Not sure where the plot is going? Come on... Chloe is still possessed by Brainiac, Doomsday is a raving murderous monster who just wants to be loved, and Clark"
Smallville fix

"That is some seriously well-integrated CGI. I love it. The Stormtrooper's "Boo-ya" at the end kills me. To be a total geek, here, I gotta say that a beam meant to take out a planet would not stop at taking out one"
Tuesday TubeWatch: Death Star Trek Wars

"NBC.com > Heroes "They thought they were like everyone else... until they woke with incredible abilities." When I first heard of this show, I figured it would be an X-Men rip-off, similar to Mutant X. After having watched the preview, though,"
Heroes preview

"I mentioned last week that I was a guest on a podcast over at Lee and Dan's Midnight Movie Club. The show has now been released so head over and listen. You should be able to pick me out. I'm"
Greetings, Program!

"Hey, guess what... this review will be completely devoid of jokes about having seen this movie before. Just wanted to get that off my chest. Off the top of my head I can't think of any movie I've seen Denzel Washington"
Review: Deja Vu

"Slice of Scifi - Science Fiction TV & Movie News, Interviews & more » Animated Star Wars Moving Along The animated Star Wars series is on track. Some tidbits from Ron Coleman, animation supervisor for Industrial Light & Magic: Fifteen episodes are"
Animated Star Wars - gettin' ready to rock

"To continue with the theme of my last post... Clark Aldrich talked about the similarities of video games and training simulations in one of his blogs for ASTD's Learning Circuits: Computer games must teach skills that are actually used and improvised upon,"
Video games and simulations

"Alex & Emma is a thoroughly predictable love story with half-realized characters and little to no tension. Luke Wilson was boring and a bit unnatural in his acting (his brother Owen might have been able to make the character somewhat"
Review: Alex & Emma

"Learning2005 learningwiki.com - Mistakes Elliot Masie's Learning Wiki has a page for common mistakes trainers/instructional designers make, as reported by subscribers to his newsletter. He received over 700 responses -- the wiki page is just an 'executive summary'. Some of the"
Training Mistakes

10000

Randy Pausch passes on

Back in January I wrote a bit about Randy Pausch’s “Last Lecture”:

Everything about this recording is interesting to me:

  • From a technology standpoint, what he has achieved and set in motion
  • From a teaching standpoint, how he delivered the lecture – the design, “tech elements”, and presentation style
  • From an emotional standpoint, how he pulls it together in the end. Absolutely perfect.
  • From a personal standpoint, how he comes across as completely genuine and open. Someone you’d really like to get to know.

I never met the guy or heard of him before, but he is now one of the most impressive people I’m aware of.

Randy died yesterday, succumbing to the illness that informed his lecture and made it so poignant. It seems fitting to bring the lecture back again for those who may have missed it.

Another piece of his legacy is the groundbreaking “Alice” programming instructional tool. I wrote more detail about that in a previous post. The genius of it is that it entices kids (even more specifically, girls, an under-served demographic in that area) to learn how to program by introducing story-telling and fun into the learning process.

Take a few minutes to watch the lecture. It’s worth the investment. If you’re pressed for time, I have links to shorter versions on the original post – but I do encourage watching the longer version if you can.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati
  • TwitThis
  • MySpace
  • Twitter
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

2 comments to Randy Pausch passes on

  • Jonathan

    Unfortunately, like most videos on the internet, this one is not captioned.

    However, I was able to find a transcript of the lecture online. Well worth reading. Thanks for bringing my attention to this.

    Reply to this comment

  • You know, I hate to admit it, but that’s an issue that has never crossed my mind before. That must be a real pain in the neck. I don’t even know if most video software has a captioning option.

    I’m glad you found the transcript. Like I said, this guy really impressed me.

    Reply to this comment

Leave a Reply

 

 

 

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

CommentLuv Enabled