This tendency to learn by teaching has also given rise to a class of people who start teaching on their websites and blogs a little too early. They haven't yet got the right intuition, and still try to teach their audience, which leads to wrong assumptions or false answers/ conclusions. Sal is in complete contrast to this, coz he is so well prepared on the subject he is teaching. And he has a depth of knowledge of his subjects which anyone just learning it can't hope to have.

I'm experiencing something similar.

Many universities have some kind of "teaching assistantship" or "teaching fellowship", that is, they pay students who've already taken the class (or a similar class) to teach and hold office hours for other students.

This was my first semester doing it, and I learned quite a lot on a subject I thought I already knew very well. The thing is, when you have to teach something to someone during a section (or recitation, or whatever you call it) or during office hours, you must be prepared to answer unexpected questions, or explain the difference between two concepts that are very close. Best of all, you must come up with different examples and mental representations of your subject, hoping that one of the approaches will resonate with some students.

Now some mentioned the fact that certain bloggers where going live way too early. Well, my guess is that they can do it because they don't receive real feedback. And no, a comment is not the same as a student telling you that you don't know what you're talking about. You don't want to become a TA to early, lest you make a fool of yourself, and trust me if students can burn you, they will (although most of them are really nice people, they tend to loose patience when confronted with incompetence, as most of us do).

But the process of writing down some kind of explanation in a clear way is still a good thing. Often, when I'm programming and come up with a neat way of doing something, I write a blog post about it, but I usually don't publish it for the same reason many of you mentioned. Publishing a post would require thinking more about the subject, trying different approaches, testing the code for edge cases, etc, etc.. all things I don't have time to do. But it doesn't matter, writing is enough to wrap my mind around the subject.

I couldn't agree more. I saw that in two situations:

- I started blogging recently, and found that having to actually write my thought in an organized way forces me to really learn and understand the topic

- When I was a student preparing for a competitive exam (one where your rank determines the school you go to and the other students in your class take it "against" you), some people refused to help others, thinking they would beat them in the exam. In fact, I found that helping other actually helps you even more, and overall, the "helping students" fared much better in the exam

This is something I learned in my Grad. Cert. class when I started lecturing at a University (for a few years).

We retain:

5% from lecture.

10% from reading.

20% from audio-visual.

30% from demonstration.

50% from group discussion.

75% from practice.

90% from teaching.

(above copied from somewhere but there is a lot of information on this subject: John Biggs is a good source).

I would have students lecture classes for me (I would have them lecture to me the day before to make sure they had the lessons figured out).

This is why I'm a contributor on Stack Overflow.

The more I teach others, the more I learn myself.

This is a relatively well known technique already. In college, lecturers/professors often deploy it - we students would do the reading & research, then present the topic to the class with interactive questions where possible. (We didn't ever worry about not quite getting it right, perhaps because the prof was there to correct us.) It works fairly well for the actual sub-area you're assigned to work on, but you don't learn so much about your teammates' sub-areas (expectedly). And you learn even less from other teams' presentations, unless you're an excellent learner anyway.

Still, it's a good reminder to take the teaching approach wherever practical.

I totally agree that teaching a topic forces you to learn it much better than static consumption.

But... Probably the absolute best way to learn something is have a deadline where you have something to lose.

That's why I have moved to volunteering to teaching training courses whenever I can.. It forces me to learn it better than anyone, and the pressure of losing reputation if you get up and make a fool out of yourself is a great motivator to get it right. When you are done, you find you learned it faster than anyone, and are now the expert.

gives the phrase "those who can't, teach" a whole new meaning...

This might be good to way to weed out all the weak points in your thinking - but for a more beginner phase I recommend organizing panel discussions instead.

I wholeheartedly agree with this.

However, I think it's weak that the 'best example' is to 'hazard a guess' that Sal Khan learns more from teaching than just reading. There's no actual evidence in that statement, it's effectively just backing up 'I think' with 'I think.' I find it disappointing because I'm sure there are good arguments that could be made for his point.

That's so true. I noticed this when I started teaching iOS development (both on my own and at The Big Nerd Ranch). Teaching a subject forces you to see it from many different perspectives, as many as students you have. It still astonishes me the completely different ways each person approaches a same subject.

This is notabene part of the model that universities are build on: Students learn from those who know (arguably) the most about a subject matter; those who do research in that area. However that relationship is mutually beneficial.

This is a point that I take to heart but I find it difficult to make that last step to show others what I've learned out of fear of being factually incorrect. How do you overcome this hurdle?

There is a lot of truth in this article. Most things I remember are bits of information I have had to tell others about. Maybe schools should adopt this technique for helping kids learn?

teaching is still a bit different than deeply understanding it. when i was in high school, i always tried to teach my younger sister what i have learned in class when i got home hoping it will help me remember stuff. but over time i found out rememebering is still different than understanding. to understand better, u might have to sit in front of desk alone and put alot of thoughts on what u learn quietly.

Oh, definitely. That's how I learnt Japanese. Not sure my students got that much out of it, though.

I once heard about 3 levels of knowledge: 1. Understanding 2. Remembering 3. Being able to teach

"...though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does make the reassuring claim that where it is inaccurate, it is at least definitively inaccurate." Douglas Adams, _H2G2_

I've embraced this. Yes, by gum, I will stand in front of a room full of people who have paid thousands of dollars each to be there, I will plow thru the material with gusto and enthusiasm, I will create content on the fly if I have to based on my experience and skill, and if I make a mistake or slam into an embarrassing dead end then I will accept it and use it as a teaching moment to explain that even the best make mistakes or get stuck and that I'll get them a correct answer ASAP and in the meantime we will either start the topic over or move on to the next one. This is reality, this is me, this is what real developers have to deal with, and I'm not going to apologize (per se) for it.

No fear. No apologies. Do the best you can in front of an audience because you love the material. If you're going to be inaccurate, then be _definitively_ inaccurate.

The less impressive teachers start their talk with a "I am not an expert" statement which in my opinion is lame. Get up, speak with authority and present what you know in your way. If an error is made, or someone identifies a Better way, acknowledge it and move on. If you make a big deal about it, it just gets awkward and painful. So move on! It gets easier with experience. Start with smaller groups, your friends, or your favorite employees so there is no pressure.

In the last training section I ran I hijacked 7 of my employees to sit through the talk. For me this is a no pressure scenario and nothing to lose. It went well, and when I moved to a larger possibly hostile audience I knew what to expect... As my employees were already brutally honest and I survived.

Also, if you are wrong, better to learn it now (that's why you learn so much faster as the teacher) than complete life and never know! When I'm wrong I take that as a positive thing, the case where I probably learned more than the student did.

IMO, when you are in a situation where you have to teach, ultimately you realize that you both know your subject material well enough to help out people who are new to the material even if you might get minor details wrong. And in the event that you get something important wrong (it's happened to me, FWIW), people know that you are human-- as long as you're willing to own up and figure out where you are wrong (and actually do have a bit of mastery over the larger material) most students are happy to be learning along with you. The only way to overcome is to actually make mistakes and practice dealing with them. Fortunately, the more you teach, the more you will find opportunities to deal with your misunderstandings of the world.

I am absolutely paralyzed by this. Even the possibility of making a statement that might be arguable on some minor point seriously concerns me.