Темы с участием VonLuzig

emilyw - 2/20/2015 10:52 - Наверх #

I found that learning to juggle taught me SO MUCH about how to learn and teach things. I realised it was much less about aptitude than I thought, and much more about process, but also about managing the learner's state of mind to maintain motivation (sports psychology is a related field here).

I think my experience learning to juggle was a large part of how I later ended up a ski instructor. And now I teach computer programming. Teaching is a skill! Teaching yourself is a harder skill :-)

Unlike programming training, there's not so much of a market for juggling teaching, so you don't see many really skilled teachers around the juggliverse, which is kind of a shame.

Mike Moore - 2/20/2015 14:31 - Наверх #

> but also about managing the learner's state of mind to maintain motivation (sports psychology is a related field here).

Between climbing and juggling, I've found this so interesting. In juggling, I'll hit a roadblock, and once I've exhausted my ideas about how to make myself succeed, I'll think, "If I were trying to teach someone this pattern, what would I have them do now?" Thus far, that's been very effective at getting rid of the nasty ego I have and having me think more objectively about the problem.

In climbing, I have somewhat of the opposite problem. When I'm against a bouldering problem that I can't solve, I ask myself, "How would [better climber] do this?" Often that opens up possibilities that I subconciously elimintated because I thought they were above my skill level. Sometimes they are, but sometimes I surprise myself!

emilyw - 2/20/2015 15:07 - Наверх #

I find increasingly when I'm teaching, I spend nearly all of my time saying "So how could you go about solving this problem?" or "How might you find out the answer to that question?"

It's particularly convenient when I have forgotten the exact answer myself :-)

Ages ago I worked somewhere that had an enormous stuffed hedgehog with its own desk, and if you had a technical problem you would go explain it to the hedgehog. Sure enough, while explaining the problem you would often figure out the answer.

Recently I told this story to some students, and they liked it so much that they went straight out and bought a toy hedgehog for their office. They named it after the imaginary employee who signed all the emails sent automatically by their servers to notify them of problems.

Danny Colyer - 2/20/2015 19:45 - Наверх #

I have an image in my mind of people queuing to speak to the hedgehog...

Little Paul - 2/20/2015 19:51 - Наверх #

We used to call it Panda Debugging because we had a toy panda rather than a hedgehog. It's surprisingly effective, and yes, we occasionally had a queue :)

mrawa - 2/23/2015 01:44 - Наверх #

I have three turtles at work for this purpose. It really does work!