最后的演讲:乐土 (1/5)

英语自学网

Randy Pausch是美国卡内基梅隆大学的计算机科学、人机交互及设计教授。2006年9月，他被诊断患有胰腺癌。2007年9月18日，他在卡内基梅隆大学做了一场风靡全美的“最后的演讲”，根据这次演讲，他出版的“The Last Lecture”一书则成为亚马逊网站上最为畅销的书籍之一。Randy教授所传达的讯息之所以如此震撼人心，是因为他以诚恳、幽默的态度去分享他独特的经验。他谈的不是死亡，而是人生中的重要议题，包括克服障碍、实现儿时梦想、帮助别人实现梦想、把握每一个时刻……
Hints:
Tommy
Star Wars
Building Virtual Worlds
ETC
chutzpah
Alice
Carnegie Mellon
3-D
drag-and-drop

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Enabling the dreams of others can be done on several different scales. You can do it one on one, the way I worked with Tommy, the Star Wars dreamer. You can do it with 50 or 100 people at a time, the way we did in the Building Virtual Worlds class or at the ETC. And if you have large ambitions and a measure of chutzpah, you can attempt to do it on a grand scale, trying to enable the dreams of millions of people.
I'd like to think that's the story of Alice, the Carnegie Mellon software teaching tool I was lucky enough to help develop. Alice allows introductory computing students, and anyone else, young or old, to easily create animations for telling a story, playing an interactive game or making a video. It uses 3-D graphics and drag-and-drop techniques to give users a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience. Alice is offered free as a public service by Carnegie Mellon, and more than a million people have downloaded it. In the years ahead, usage is expected to soar.