Teach to Learn

Greetings all. I am following Robin Wood's (@digininja) recent Twitter advice about using one's blog as a learning tool. I find that I struggle to retain much of what I have read - I love InfoSec, but I'm afraid that much of the reading material is a bit... well... boring. I am currently reading Windows Internals Part 1 in an effort to better understand how the Windows OS works under the hood. Unfortunately, as I sit in the lobby of a hotel in Kansas City, I find that my mind wonders when I  try to digest this information (there is some excellent mariachi music playing on the overhead). To combat this, I am going to take some advice that I once encouraged others to take.

I'm a former high school teacher and as such I always used to tell my students to write down what they were learning as a way of forcing themselves to engage with the content. Rather than just taking notes and blindly parroting (plagiarizing?) the material however, I encouraged them to write it out as if they were attempting to teach it to someone else; it's amazing how much easier it is to retain information when you do this. As a teacher, I found myself in several situations in which I had to teach a lesson that I had absolutely no background in. To prepare, I forced myself to study the material beforehand and I found that creating my presentation and lesson plan during this process greatly enhanced my understanding of the subject matter. So, without further ado, I am going to relive my days as an educator and approach this material as an opportunity for me to teach you, dear reader, about what I have learned. If you think I have goofed, feel free to correct me in the comments. I don't claim to be an expert, but I certainly don't want to spread incorrect information.