Randy Pausch's Last Lecture

I found Randy Pausch's Last Lecture extremely inspiring.  He had a lot to offer about teaching and learning.  Pausch used his humor and life lessons to explain how he chased his childhood dreams then went on to enable others to chase their own dreams.  There were a few topics that really stood out to me in his lecture about chasing dreams; they were have something to bring to the table, fundamentals, head fakes.
In the beginning of the video Pausch said always have something to bring to the table.  This really stood out to me, especially with the past few assignments in EDM 310 being group work.  I use to dread doing group work because not every one brought something to the table and more often than not I did most of the work.  Recently, my EDM group has showed me that group work does not have to be such a nightmare when everyone does their part. This ties into the next point made in the video: fundamentals.  Pausch told a story about his first football coach not bringing a football to their practice.  The anecdote went a little something like this (I'm paraphrasing):

On the first day of practice, my coach showed up and he did not bring a football to the practice. Everyone was really confused and we were asking how we were going to learn to play football with no ball.  My coach asked, "how many players on the football field at one time?" The answer being 22, then he asked, "how many players have the ball at any given time?" The answer to that question was one.  Then he told us, "today we will focus on the other 21 players knowing what they are doing."

I think this is a great lesson, first, because I really love football, second, because the ball carrier cannot do his job well if those without the ball do not know how to do their job properly.  From here, Pausch explained that having kids learn to play football is not actually about playing football at all.  It is what he calls a head fake.  A head fake is when the point of teaching something fun or exciting to kids is actually teaching them harder lessons.  The lesson in football being working together and socializing the children.  This is important in the classroom.  A teacher must find ways to teach the kids that capture their interest, that has relevance to their lives outside of the classroom.  
Pausch taught me about teaching and learning through these three topics.  In teaching and learning, one must always have something to bring to the table.  Teaching and learning require putting effort into one's work.  It is valuable to explain that everyone has something to offer if they put in the time and effort.  Teaching and learning also require fundamentals.  It is difficult for one to continue on with his education or aide another is his education without having the necessary fundamentals.  Lastly, by using head fakes, the teacher can teach students new and difficult tasks by making them think they are learning something else.