Category Archives: Learning

Merriam-Webster Goes Back in Time



2020 is unlikely to be remembered fondly but it’s brought new words and phrases into common use – pandemic, coronavirus, Covid-19, social distancing, bubble, lockdown, furlough. While not necessarily brand-new words, they’ve taken on different meanings and gained widespread usage throughout the year.

Language is always evolving and changing, and English does a particularly good job at creating, borrowing and morphing new words to suit the occasion. Etymologists are always interested in the first uses of words, especially in print, to see how words have developed and changed.

For the rest of us, it might just be fun to see what words came into use in the year we were born, in which case you’ll be delighted that Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler lets you choose a year of interest and then shows the words first used then. Let’s go back forty years to 1980 and see what was new. Here’s A to F….

Hindsight is a wonderful thing but I’m still surprised how now common words or phrases came into the language so recently. Some are clearly related to the technology of the time – BIOS, bitmap, DRAM, expansion slot – but air guitar, chill out and comb-over? Incredible that they are so recent. Ok, if you’re a millennial, it might not be “living memory”.

Merriam-Webster’s data goes back centuries and you can easily spend a few hours here.


Develop Mental Focus with BrainCo at CES 2018



Being “in the zone” reflects that total mental focus and clarity that comes to people concentrating hard. For athletes and professionals, it can take years of practice and hard work. For us mere mortals, BrainCo offers a way to learn how to focus. How? Professor Don gets all brainy with Max.

The idea behind BrainCo is to use their Focus One headband with gamification to improve mental concentration. The BrainCo band reads small electrical impulses in the wearer’s brain and picks up on changes in the frequency and amplitude of the impulses (EEG). As everyone’s brains are different the band establishes a personal baseline and works on changes from that baseline to understand when the person is relaxed, focussed or distracted.

While wearing the Focus One headband, the owner plays a smartphone game which takes information from the headband and responds as the wearer mentally focusses. Simply, the person has to focus to do well in the game. Overtime, the person learns how to focus their mind.

The BrainCo Focus One reinforces good mental behaviour and this can be especially useful for children who have learning difficulties such as ADHD, but it also has application in ensuring that teachers are engaging with their students.

The FocusOne isn’t yet available to buy but if you are interested, you can register on the BrianCo website for an early bird discount.

Don Baine is the Gadget Professor and gives lectures at TheGadgetProfessor.com.

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Ever Want To Learn How To Draw?



Digital Art

Have you ever wanted to be able to draw decent-looking artwork for your website? One of the things I’ve had a fledgling lifelong desire to do is learn to draw. However, I never took the desire seriously. Somehow I’ve always been convinced that in order to be able to draw well you have to be born with some mysterious “drawing talent” which I somehow never had much of.

I recently purchased a Microsoft Surface Pro 3, which comes with a high resolution touchscreen and a precision stylus called the Microsoft Pen. I was drawn to the Surface Pro 3 strictly by the ability to run a full version of Windows 10 on an ultra-portable touchscreen tablet equipped with a powerful processor that doubles as a laptop running full Windows 10. The Microsoft Pen stylus was a curious extra packed in the box. The first couple of weeks I left the stylus in the box because initially I didn’t have any secure place to put it. Once I purchased a protective case from Amazon that has a loop to securely stick the stylus in, I finally dug the stylus out of the box. Only then did I start to play with it a bit, initially looking at it the same way I look at the stylus that came with my Note 4 – potentially useful on occasions, but parked in the holder the vast majority of the time.

Curious about how other people were using their Surface Pro’s, I watched a bunch of Surface Pro YouTube videos. I ended up running across a very detailed video by an artist named Riven Phoenix reviewing the drawing capabilities of his Surface Pro 3. As often happens when watching interesting videos on YouTube, I ended up watching some of his other videos, and I quickly discovered he is a veteran 20-year art teacher and has quite a few art training videos posted to YouTube. After following along with several of his videos, I was quickly convinced that his teaching methods could teach me the skill of drawing. I had always assumed that drawing was a mysterious ability you had to be born with, but in fact the ability to draw is a skill to be learned if one is able to supply the motivation and is provided with the proper instruction. Riven Phoenix teaches with the powerful approach of inventing concepts and then constructing sentences with those concepts.

After watching several of Riven Phoenix’s videos, I went to his website www.alienthink.com and ended up purchasing full access to all of his instructional videos. He gives free access to the first 19 videos of his 225 video course on how to draw the human figure. He currently has full access to his entire website priced at $45 dollars, which includes 77 hours’ worth of video lessons. The first free 19 videos posted to YouTube contain a lot of material and completely convinced me I CAN learn the skill of drawing whatever I want.

His teaching skills come across very well in the videos. He breaks the task of learning to draw realistic-looking human figures down in a very formulaic way so that virtually anyone motivated and following along with his instructions in the videos will successfully learn how to draw realistic-looking human figures.

I am absolutely convinced that anyone with the motivation can use these videos and begin to learn how to draw. To my complete surprise, I’m now finding myself spending an hour or more each day practicing with the videos. I had no idea that purchasing the Surface Pro 3 would end up leading me in this new and fun direction.

Though devices such as the iPad Pro and Surface Pro 3 have something called “palm rejection” that enables you to rest your hand against the screen as you draw or write with the stylus, there are products for sale called “digital artist gloves” that cover the part of the hand that naturally rests against the writing or drawing surface. They are designed to electrically insulate the part of the hand resting on the capacitive touchscreen. I ordered the Huion Artist Glove for Drawing Tablet priced at $17.99 on Amazon. I have yet to receive these and will write a future article once I’ve used them for a while.

With the popularity of the Surface Pro and Apple’s newly-released iPad Pro, here is an opportunity to learn the skill of drawing and put that new equipment to work.

 


The My Learning Table by D-Redshop



My Learning TableD-Redshop introduced their newest learning device for children, the My Learning Table. They took the idea of the old fashion learning table by Fisher Price and brought it into the twenty-first century. The table works in conjunction with the My Learning App available on the iPad which goes in the middle of the table. The My Learning App has different games to play depending on the learning level of the child. Each game helps the child to learn something like the alphabet, numbers, color matching, eye-hand coordination and more. It is based on the award system. The idea is to integrated touch with physical interaction. Children learn while have fun at the same time. The My Learn Mini is similar to the My Learning Table, expect that the mini is separate from the tablet. Great for times and circumstances when the My Learn Table is not practicable. It works with the My Learning Mini App on the iPad.

The My Learning Table should be available for around $100.00 at various retail stores. D-redshop the maker of the Learning Table is looking for developers to develop apps for the My Learning suite. Further information about developing for the My Learning suit is available contacting D-Redshop.

Interview by Andy McCaskey of SDR News and RV News Net and Daniel J. Lewis of the The Noodle.mx Network and the Audacity to Podcast

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