Gold and Beautiful

I teach in a computer classroom and have to deal with distracted Freshmen who are addicted to Facebook. I do believe that banning FB in class is not an option. Like they say, when there was no FB there were notes being passed and you always have students who just skip into their own worlds... So you can force them to not use FB but you cannot force them to pay attention. For that you just have to be innovative with your classroom delivery. I totally agree with this thought and have tried to make this technology a part of my class. But obviously, there is only so much integration you can do with FB and Twitter. Can't do it for the entire semester. Obviously I also try to have as many activities in class as possible, so that we are actually using the computers for something productive. This semester though I decided to go one step further and include something in my syllabus: An "Acceptable Use Policy". There are 3 points in this policy, the other two will not be discussed ...

Carnegie Mellon University had a last lecture series for professors: "If you had to give one last lecture before you died, what would it be?". Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science and human computer interaction and design at CMU. His last lecture was truly a last lecture, he was dying of pancreatic cancer. His lecture was titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". This is a very inspirational speech and every person (techie or not) should see this video . Randy Pausch passed away in 2008. He was a big name in virtual reality and created a 3D programming environment called Alice geared towards attracting girls to computer science. I had heard about this video, but never saw it until Fall 2009, when I invited NN to be a guest speaker in my class and she brought this up. I have seen this video a number of times since then and I love it. Obviously I love the lessons: Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want things. They ...

This song by Chris DeBurgh has an amazing storyline. I am certainly not much into English music, but when I first heard this song, I really liked the song for the story it told.... It is about a Spanish train that carries souls of the dead and one day when the God is late, the Devil stakes his claim to those souls. God agrees to play a game of poker to win the souls back, but the Devil keeps cheating and winning.... Awesome lyrics and very well sung too!!! A glimpse of the lyrics: And I said Lord, oh Lord, you let him win The sun is down and the night is riding in That train is dead on time, many souls are on the line Oh Lord, don't let him win... Enjoy the song on Lala !!!