Teach someone else what you are learning

You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have, for instance.
—Franklin P. Adams

I laughed when I read that quote but one of the best ways to really learn something is to teach it to someone else. So, if you want to learn something really well, teach someone else about it. You will have to take extra time and research to make sure that you understand the subject well enough to explain it several ways. You need to be prepared to answer questions and clarify what you are saying so that your pupils understand.

I am doing this over at my camera blog, Low End DSLR. If you are interested in learning more about some different kinds of lenses, you can take a look at my ongoing series on Classifying Lenses, beginning with the Crop Factor.

Try New Things

Men can live without air a few minutes, without water for about two weeks, without food for about two months—and without a new thought for years on end.
—Kent Ruth

It has been estimated that the average person thinks between 12,000 and 15,000 thoughts each day, with deeper thinkers thinking as many as 50,000-65,000. It has also been estimated that about 90% of those thoughts are the same ones we had the day before. It is easy to get stuck in a rut, but one of the quickest ways out of the rut defined by few new thoughts is to try something new.

When you do something that you haven’t done before your mind is forced to think in new and creative ways. Problems come up that you have not experienced yet, and you must think about how to solve that problem. Sure, you’ll bring your prior experience with you as you seek the solution, but you’ll do so with fresh insight that you can apply to your old thought patterns, thus thinking even more new thoughts.

That has happened with this blog. I started it to keep me thinking about learning and to encourage myself to explore more about learning as a lifetime endeavor. As a result I have found that I have new ideas for some of my other blogs, and new energy to actually write them down and post them.

Still looking forward to hearing from anyone who has decided to start a blog to document their learning process as they try new things…

Life Long Learning talk posted

I have posted my Life Long Learning presentation as a PDF file:

Life Long Learning

It's a fairly large file, weighing in at almost 22 MB, so I have also uploaded an "outline" version that is only 240 KB, here:

Life Long Learning Outline

And the offer still stands - those of you who start a blog focussed on something you are interested in learning more about, please email the URL of the blog to me and I will review it and post a link to it from this blog. I'll also add it to a list of blogs on the sidebar.

You can find the email address in either PDF file above.

Stepping up to the plate

Tomorrow I am speaking at a home school youth seminar on the topic of Life Long Learning. I am encouraging the students to create a blog about something they are passionate about, or want to learn more about, as a way to help them become better writers and communicators. So I am starting this blog as an example.

I will be posting my presentation here, and updating on a regular basis to expand on the topics I'll cover in my talk. Also look for links to the students' blogs as they send them to me.