Do you often find yourself just relying on books? With very little to nothing in terms of hands-on practice? No laboratories, exercises, or activities to get your mind going around the knowledge you’ve just picked up (or trying to pick up)? Do you also find that this doesn’t really help you at a practical sense of understanding why concepts are taught that way from the book?
My friends, learning by doing (or what’s known as hands-on work and practice) is an effective tool for us learners. It gives us the essential experience. It’s best to try something out, and actually do something, build something from the concepts or knowledge units that you’ve read about from books. Or that you may have learned from lectures.
I’m not saying that books are not good. No.
Books are very good. We ought to give time daily to reading something good and helpful. Perhaps, read a book for an hour or two, every weekday. But don’t forget to also give yourself time to rest.
What I’m trying to point out is, there needs to be a good balance, especially in terms of time spent, on understanding and obtaining knowledge from concepts, and growing actual skills and experience through doing what is being taught from books. Enough concepts + actually doing the concepts makes for a more well-rounded learning that remains with you. And one where you’ll be able to become job-ready also.
Simply knowing something isn’t much help, we must do something with what we have learnt. Application (or putting to work) of the knowledge is what bears the good fruits. This not only helps with knowledge retention over time, it also helps us understand how the mesh and melding of various concepts that led to current best practices at a given task. Aside from, you only grow skills when you actually do something meaningful with your knowledge.
For example, when you’re learning how to code. It doesn’t help much if you don’t actually write some programs to practice what you’re learning from a book, or from lectures. You must get to the actual task of writing and debugging programs and running them to see their outputs. In the process, you will get stuck and you will have errors and mistakes — these are part of the learning process. And also, in this way get a better feel and understanding of the interleaving of concepts and actual practice. As well as possible blindspots, or things that you’ve discovered only during the practice. Or things that perhaps were not discussed, or covered from book chapters, or lectures.
Learning by doing also allows you to grow some actual skills that grow your confidence. However, be careful that you don’t grow overconfident with your learnings. As there will always be something we don’t know, or don’t fully grasp well enough. There is always something new that we can learn.
Well that’s it for now, this is a short post that I wrote to try and discuss briefly how important it is to get some actual practice when it comes to learning. These could also be in the form of exercises, or laboratories. Regardless, try to get as much hands-on work as you learn something, especially if around technical matters like I.T. and programming.
For now, that’s it. Until next time.
Remember to keep learning, small bits but at constant strides, as much as possible during the weekdays. And rest and spend quality time with good friends and family when it’s the weekend.
Thank you, everybody. May God bless you!
Hello there! How are you? My name is Abraham, or, Abe to all my friends, acquaintances, and family.
I’m a young dad, an uncle, an older kuya, and a son. I love learning and putting things together when it comes to small projects around computers, and tech. And for me, I also love food, everyday drink — like coffee, and most furry creatures — like good doggo doggos (goofy doggos), and chonky (very fat, almost circular and literally round) cattos. ^_^ Anyway, I hope good animals also make you chuckle, my friends.
Recently, I was hired to work as an engineer in I.T., specializing in looking after web-servers, maintenance, and a few other stuff.
Thank God! From my end, I had been dreaming to become an engineer in I.T., and have been studying for it for a time now.
We mustn’t stop with our training and study. For we’ll need to keep learning in order for us to remain helpful.
Nawa, ang Panginoon’g Diyos ang Siyang purihin, dakilain, at pasalamatan sa ating mga gawain, at salita.
My friends, may the Lord our God be glorified, honored, and praised – through the kind of work that He called us unto.
Thank you, and for now, that’s mostly it for me. Salamat po!