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A month or so ago, I agreed to mentor

@jurvistan

in writing for 4 weeks. He wanted to get better at writing. I wanted to test my theory that tacit knowledge could be transferred via simulation — if he could watch me verbalise what I'm thinking as I edit, he would learn.

3:40 PM · Sep 22, 2020Twitter Web App

It worked! I've seen a HUGE improvement in

@jurvistan

's writing in just 2 weeks. (The recorded session, above was our 3rd session; I exclaim multiple times about how much better the piece was compared to our prior sessions).

Replying to

One example: Jurvis had a problem with run-on sentences in our first piece. I didn't really tell him what that was, or why it was bad — I just said "I don't like this; I'm going to write it differently" — and then the number of run-on sentences went way down the very next week!

I'm really pleased by this. I didn't actually do much teaching. No long lectures, no slides, no prepared pedagogy. Of course, one problem with this is that it isn't likely to scale — but that's what the YouTube recording was for!

If you're good at something, consider recording it and then putting it up on YouTube! Some kid in a developing country might thank you for it in the future.