Category: Learning

Over the last few centuries, behavioral psychologists have documented all kinds of ways of modifying our actions and the actions of various animals. From the famous Skinner boxes to many modern video game mechanics, animals and humans alike can learn through the addition or subtraction of various rewards and punishments. And it doesn’t only impact […]
Plenty of our childhoods had at least one math teacher who made the (ultimately erroneous) claim that we needed to learn to do math because we wouldn’t always have a calculator in our pockets. While the reasoning isn’t particularly sound anymore, knowing how to do math from first principles is still a good idea in […]
We wrote up a video about speeding up Arduino code, specifically by avoiding DigitalWrite. Now, the fact that DigitalWrite is slow as dirt is long known. Indeed, a quick search pulls up a Hackaday article from 2010 demonstrating that it’s fifty times slower than toggling the pin directly using the native pin registers, but this […]
Hackaday was at Chaos Communication Congress last week, and it’s one of those big hacker events that leaves you with so much to think about that I’m still processing it. Just for scope, the 38th CCC is a hacker event with about 15,000 attendees from all around Europe, and many from even further. If I […]
Whether you’re a kid or a nerdy adult, you’ll probably agree that the interactive exhibitions at the museum are the best. If you happened to get down to the Oregon Science Festival in the last couple of years, you might have enjoyed “Catch The Wave!”—a public education project to teach people about electromagnets and waves. […]
KiCAD has a rightfully earned image problem regarding beginners. The shiny new version 5 has improved things (and we’re very excited for v6!) but the tool is a bit obtuse even when coming from a electronics design background, so we’re always excited to see new learning material. [Mike Watts] is the latest to join the […]
It’s no surprise that we here at Hackaday are big fans of Fritzing KiCad. But to a beginner (or a seasoned veteran!) the learning curve can be cliff-like in its severity. In 2016 we published a piece linking to project by friend-of-the-Hackaday [Chris Gammell] called Contextual Electronics, his project to produce formalized KiCad training. Since […]
It’s impossible to ignore the fact that the coming generations will be growing up with more and more technology. It’s everywhere and impossible to hide from. But that means that you need to set boundaries and make rules for your children, to allow them to safely explore. While some parents try to ban all technology, […]