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Why you learn when you teach

Zell Liew πŸ€— on June 21, 2018

The best way to learn is to teach. You've heard many people say this. But is it true? I knew teaching had benefits. For example, if you teach, pe...
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Kauress

I agree. I often tell students to explain a concept or how they got to a solution in their code to the person sitting besides them. The greatest obstacle is pretty much communicating using metaphors/examples that are most relevant to the code block/concept.

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Juan A. Fuentest Torcat

1) I am the only senior developer, on charge of 4 other juniors. They're great people, eager and willing to learn. So I want to help them as much as I can.
2) Patience. I get frustrated when I have to repeat myself.

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Zell Liew πŸ€—

Have you thought about writing things down so you don't have to repeat yourself?

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Juan A. Fuentest Torcat

Yeah I definitely need to set up some kind of manual of operations or something

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stevenwalkers

Nice article and illustrations, Zell. I often use interactive method in my classroom, because its the most effective way to teach and learn. BTW I recently took a course called "learning how to learn". Author claims that you can read some info and might think that you understand it, but in fact it's not true. So she suggests to discuss a book or an article you recently read for better memorization.

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Levi Voorintholt

Would love you hear more about this. I love helping others get better. My company almost always has some short-term interns around that I would love to help out.

However, I never seem to connect with them so that they 'get' what I'm trying to tell them. Of course, it's almost always an informal setting, we need a task to be completed which I've done many times but they have never even seen the system they need to perform it in.

Tried talking with them and writing out a sequence of actions in steps. But always end up 'showing' as in, taking control of the pc and doing the task like I would do it. Which is somewhat awkward for both of us.

Being quite socially awkward myself probably doesn't help.

I'll certainly read up if you end up doing more of these pieces.

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Zell Liew πŸ€— • Edited

I'll write more :)

Your question pertains more to training than teaching, but I'll see what I can do.

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Janz Aeinstein Villamayor

I love the article. I have always thought to myself that the best way to learn is to teach. I love teaching my classmates about web development, mathematics, and algorithms. I give them little exercises and ask them to explain their work. In the end, they even provide me better alternatives and additional concepts that I even didn't know about it. It gives me a "WOW" factor and this is my most favorite part when teaching and learning.

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Zell Liew πŸ€—

That's amazing. Thanks for sharing!

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harish1996

Although mine cant be termed as teaching .. I now write blogs related to git version control . linuxfromanoobie.wordpress.com . The motivation was similar . Learning git was confusing at start , i wanted to make someone easily pass through those layers and meanwhile learning more about it

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Zell Liew πŸ€—

You can teach through blogs! That's called teaching too.

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rjjohnson1617

This is a great post! I've always thought teaching what you have learned is the best way to solidify your understanding of a topic and you may even get a question along the way that makes you think in a way you wouldn't have otherwise (or even stump you and you need to do some extra research). We can learn as much from the students as they learn from us.

I have wanted to start a tech group in my area (and hopefully eventually a tech training company) that meets up and we teach each other about an area of interest to us. I have not gotten it started yet as we are in the process of relocating and house hunting, but I want to soon!

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Zell Liew πŸ€—

Let me know when you start one :)

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Kyara.

I'm learning javascript myself at the moment and it's super hard for me. So I do want to teach or talk about certain projects that helped me learn and also to not make the mistakes I made! Hopefully I can do that soon.

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Zell Liew πŸ€—

You can do it already.

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dgigafox • Edited

I would like to teach because of these two reasons:

  1. Yes I believe you learn when you teach. So I wanna have a solid understanding of what I already know. Solid as I can explain what I know in a really understandable and simple form. As Einstein said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."

  2. For me, teaching is the pinnacle of every career. You had already the chance to explore every knowledge in the craft of your choice so it is then your chance to share it to people who want to take your path.

My greatest obstacle is my communication skill. I cant construct my sentences well enough for people to understand the concept I am explaining.

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Zell Liew πŸ€—

It seems to me your communication skill isn't lacking as badly as you believe it to be. I can understand you well from your comments.

Can you give an example of a problem you encountered?

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Abdeldjalil Hachimi • Edited

Perfect article,Frankly you bring me back When I was learning English I was using the same method.
I can't wait to read more articles of yours

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Thomas Melville

This is exactly why I like to mentor new hires on our team.
Although, I never thought of it from the point of view of seeing how far I've come. Thank you for that.

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Zell Liew πŸ€—

:)

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Third_Thinker

I love your metaphor!

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Gene

I don't think this is actually wrong but, you CAN'T teach others what you don't know. Maybe that was just a typo?

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Zell Liew πŸ€—

Yup thanks for spotting it.