Who's ready for another startling revelation?
There are multiple ways to learn something!
You see, this is why I started this blog, to really shake things up.
I'm not going to talk about most of these options, I really just want to talk about one, and that's helping someone else learn/understand it. What's this "it"? That's the beauty part, the "it" can be anything! Okay maybe not anything, but lots!
Let's say you have all the pages of a book in a pile, and you need to move the pages to where you have to bind them. If you have a tiny backpack--or no backpack--you can only take, let's say, one at a time. This may get the job done but it won't be fun. The bigger the backpack, the more you can carry at once, the faster you'll get the job done.
It's not a perfect metaphor, but as I was coming up with it I was gaining a better understanding of the thing I was trying to teach. This happens every time I try to teach something, no matter what it is.
Don't forget to ignore their rolling eyes and exclamations of "staaaahp!", that just means it's working.
There are multiple ways to learn something!
You see, this is why I started this blog, to really shake things up.
I'm not going to talk about most of these options, I really just want to talk about one, and that's helping someone else learn/understand it. What's this "it"? That's the beauty part, the "it" can be anything! Okay maybe not anything, but lots!
Story Time!
In university someone had asked me what this RAM thing was they had heard so much about. I knew what it was and what it was used for, but trying to explain it to someone to was "not a computer person" was proving to be a challenge. I really wanted to be able to explain this so I started wracking my brain until I found what I thought was a brilliant analogy: a backpack.Let's say you have all the pages of a book in a pile, and you need to move the pages to where you have to bind them. If you have a tiny backpack--or no backpack--you can only take, let's say, one at a time. This may get the job done but it won't be fun. The bigger the backpack, the more you can carry at once, the faster you'll get the job done.
It's not a perfect metaphor, but as I was coming up with it I was gaining a better understanding of the thing I was trying to teach. This happens every time I try to teach something, no matter what it is.
Cool... so?
I know, this isn't new info (probably), so why bother talking about it? Because I want to. Also because I want to recommend that once you learn something, you go out of your way to try and explain it to someone. Join local meetups, volunteer at something like Canada Learning Code, mentor someone, or do what I do: bring up the thing to your friends apropos of nothing and just explain it as though they've never heard of it before.Don't forget to ignore their rolling eyes and exclamations of "staaaahp!", that just means it's working.