How to use teaching as a learning tool
summary
Argues that teaching accelerates deep understanding by forcing answers to why, not just how, and by exposing gaps through audience questions; claims about practice include wrote ~50 articles and a book, plus running 5–8 conference talks per year. Recommends starting with blog posts or local meetups, warns workshops and screencasts require much more prep, and describes tooling used when self-publishing: built a Symfony Flex app to convert a manuscript to PDF/EPUB and sold the book independently with better income than Leanpub.
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chapters (50)
- 0:00Start
- 1:34Teaching is another great learning tool!
- 1:46Shouldn't you know it before you teach it?
- 2:04HOW CAN TEACHING IMPROVE YOUR PROGRAMMING SKILLS?
- 2:53"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." - Albert Einstein?
- 3:39THE GREAT DECEPTION
- 4:22But what did you learn?
- 6:08Theory and concepts still elude us
- 6:42TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL
- 6:55Still have to get your hands dirty
- 7:14But working solution isn't enough anymore
- 7:59Need to be able to explain what you did
- 8:26Forces you to master what you want to teach
- 9:29MAKING THINGS SIMPLE
- 9:59Teaching is also about communication
- 10:35Need to find the essence of a topic
- 11:44Results in a better understanding
- 12:39WHEN DO YOU KNOW ENOUGH TO TEACH?
- 13:02Good ol' impostor syndrome
- 13:18More to teaching than what you know
- 14:05COMMUNICATION ABOVE ALL
- 15:15More important that they understand you
- 16:03No PhD required
- 16:17You need empathy
- 17:19Teacher splits students in groups
- 19:08You can do this too!
- 19:48There are also limits
- 19:59You're not always right
- 20:34It's ok to be wrong
- 21:08Whole point of learning by teaching
- 22:21But where's the limit?
- 22:41Think about the impact of being wrong
- 22:54Example Mental health
- 23:47Potential for harm outweighs benefits
- 29:58WHERE CAN YOU TEACH?
- 30:08Finding the right medium to teach on
- 30:22WRITE ON YOUR PERSONAL WEBSITE
- 31:36For some, just publishing online can be scary
- 33:12For others, getting the word out is hard
- 34:08DO A PRESENTATION
- 34:28Most major cities have local meetup groups
- 34:38Some events are social
- 35:13Great way to start public speaking
- 36:44Public speaking is scary for most of us
- 39:56GIVE A WORKSHOP
- 40:07Workshops are popular with developers
- 41:37BY TEACHING, WE LEARN
- 42:28Constant pressure to learn new things
- 43:01Why effective learning technique are important
- 44:26Questions?
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