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"Most of our projects are tested using a small piece of plastic known as a breadboard. Officially, it's known as a 'solderless breadboard' because it enables you to use circuit parts without soldering them together. Electrical components are connected by pushing them into the holes in a breadboard. These holes are connected in strips, as shown in the main image. If you push a wire, or a different component, into one hole in a strip, and another wire into the hole next to it, it's as if you'd physically joined (or soldered) the two wires."

"You see it melting. Your shaky hands bringing it closer to the sweet spot. Slowly you touch it. You feel the rush through your body. Ecstasy. Pure bliss. Just like heroin through an addict's vein, electrons flow through the wires in the soldering gun in your hand. And BAM, the last wire in your DIY home automation project that you have been working on for the past three months is soldered in place. Making something on your own, using your hands, soldering wires in places is an experience like no other that leaves you craving for more. And it was never as easy as it is today. All thanks to the rise in the maker tech available in the market. It's not just the hardcore geeks and engineers who are tinkering with electronics and creating amazing things. The lines that divide the geekdom from the less tech-savvy population are blurring. The number of hobbyists, students and people in general who are tinkering and making stuff is on the rise."

"Creativity is at the heart of a makerspace. The possibilities are endless and the supplies in a makerspace can spark ideas. One of my favorite creativity-fueling components of our makerspace is a Makey Makey, or as they're known as - an invention kit for everyone. The Makey Makey comes in a simple box with very little instructions. For non-techies, the wires and alligator clips could scare people from exploring. So, let's break this down, because there is no reason to fear the unknown. Picture The Makey Makey comes with a circuit board (your home base), a USB connector to connect to your computer, and alligator clips and wires (these help you connect and create). All of these components allow you to connect back to your computer to control what's happening on screen through the USB cord. You can connect the wires in any combination you'd like to work with different programs on your computer. "

wired

"WIRED today announced the reissue of its iconic inaugural issue on the iPad as a free download on June 1. Launched nearly twenty years ago in January 1993, the premiere issue featured science fiction author Bruce Sterling on the cover and quickly became a sought-after collectible. "

"Kids between the ages of 8 and 18 spend 11.5 hours a day using technology - whether that's computers, television, mobile phones, or video games - and usually more than one at a time. That's a big chunk of their 15 or 16 waking hours. But does that spell doom for the next generation? Not necessarily, according to Dr. Gary Small, a neuroscientist and professor at UCLA, who spoke at the Learning & the Brain Conference last week. "Young people are born into technology, and they're used to using it 24/7," Small said. "Their brains are wired to use it elegantly.""

""The minute you're born, you learn by playing together," says Åsmund Furuseth, VP for business development of Kahoot!, a game-based learning platform with one exclamation mark and 13 million monthly users. Furuseth and his colleagues at Kahoot! want students, parents and teachers to keep that process going into school and beyond. His company enables anyone to create their own game-based educational content, and helps to found new types of classrooms in which to best exploit it. Furuseth tells WIRED.co.uk he wants to "create an emotional connection between the learners so that they learn much better together -- this is what we believe is the future of how you learn"."

Video collection from Wired.com

"Here at WIRED Science, we're big fans of science graphics. And not just the fancy, big-budget ones, but charts and figures and visualizations: the folk art of scientific imagery. In this gallery are our favorite graphics of the year. They're in no particular order (though we did save a treat for last). Each tells a story with elegant simplicity, and sometimes even beauty. Enjoy!"

"When it comes to brain development, time in the classroom may be less important than time on the playground. "The experience of play changes the connections of the neurons at the front end of your brain," says Sergio Pellis, a researcher at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada. "And without play experience, those neurons aren't changed," he says. It is those changes in the prefrontal cortex during childhood that help wire up the brain's executive control center, which has a critical role in regulating emotions, making plans and solving problems, Pellis says. So play, he adds, is what prepares a young brain for life, love and even schoolwork."

"At its core, the rise of "fake news" is first and foremost a sign that we have failed as a society to teach our citizens how to think critically about data and information. Take that email from a Nigerian prince offering to transfer you ten million dollars if you'll just send him $10,000 to cover the wire costs. Enough people get that email each day and wire those ten thousand dollars that this scam continues in 2016. The Internet has globalized the art of the scam and the reach of misinformation, allowing a single tweet to go viral across the planet, sowing chaos in countries on the other side of the world from the person sending it. At the heart of all such news is the inability to think critically about the information that surrounds us and to perform the necessary due diligence and research to verify and validate. In April 2013 when the AP's Twitter account was hacked and tweeted that there had been an explosion at the White House that left President Obama injured, automated stock trading algorithms took the news as fact and immediately launched a cascade of trading activity that plunged the Dow Jones by more than 100 points in less than 120 seconds. Human reporters, on the other hand, simply picked up the phone and called colleagues stationed at the White House to inquire if they were aware of any such attack and were quick to refute the false information."

"You can now use the tablet to hack like MacGyver, farm like the Quaker Oats guy, and sculpt like Michealangelo. (OK, we're stretching, but you get the idea)."

We'll be brief: Hemingway once wrote a story in just six words ("For sale: baby shoes, never worn.") and is said to have called it his best work. So we asked sci-fi, fantasy, and horror writers from the realms of books, TV, movies, and games to take a shot themselves.