Last Lecture

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” 
― Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture

Today in class we watched this phenomenal video of a lecture given by Randy Pausch, about achieving your childhood dreams. Randy Pausch was a Maryland born computer scientist, virtual reality specialist, and inspirational speaker. The video compelled me to find out more about Randy Pausch, which I was saddened to find that in great computer scientist fashion -for instance, Alan Turing-, he passed away in 2008 at the young age of 47.


Just from the hour and sixteen minute lecture we watched, you could tell Randy Pausch was an intellectually gifted and inspirational man. He led a group of students to win a zero gravity experience, worked as a Disney Imagineer, and co-founded Carnegie Mellon's Entertainment Technology Center.

He was also one of the developers who worked on Alice, a project designed to teach students the fundamentals of object-oriented programming in a way that is fun. What stuck out to me was the possibility that this could be a tool for interesting middle school girls in programming.

Getting and retaining female computer science students is a large problem. Last semester in junior seminar my final paper was about women in computer science. Studies have shown that to get women into computer science you must interest them at a younger age, most effectively through mother-daughter experiments and activities. Alice would be a great learning tool for both parents and students to learn, giving them both a bonding experience and a venue for young girls to express their creativity in a field that is not considered a woman's field.