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  • Author Author: dixonselvan
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What is your best method or place to learn electronics?

This poll is to know how Element14 community members gained most of their knowledge in electronics. I personally prefer practical learning which is now getting implemented as STEM learning over theoretical learning. Cast your votes if you have your opinion listed, else please leave a comment.

  • in reply to DAB

    DAB,

     

    My schooling experience was very similar to what you describe.  I felt that coming out of school I had to skills to go directly to work (which I did).  I have worked with others that seemed to have a better grasp of theory, but like to no experience in hands-on-skills. It took some of these new grads awhile to understand the how to work (which is a little different than how to think).

  • When I was in Tech School we spent two hours in theory and then two hours in lab so we could quickly get hands on experience building circuits and measuring how they work.

     

    You just cannot beat learn by doing.

     

    DAB

  • All the above! Unfortunately I often stall at the reading / research phase. I do like to get stuck in with practical experimentation else I tend to lose focus quickly.

  • in reply to genebren

    Another approach is to get an Arduino and a beginners Arduino project book.

  • As stated by others, learning for me is a combination of gaining knowledge from all available sources.  In college I always extracted more knowledge from lectures than I did from my text books.  Now that college is a distant memory, most of my learning occurs from hands on problem solving.  Now when I hit something that I need a deeper understanding of, it's books, articles, specification sheets and application notes to help me develop the necessary knowledge to solve the problem.

    Gene

  • in reply to keithmdavis

    For discrete electronics, the standard for many many years was the Amature

    Radio Handbook.

  • I have had many people that have helped me learn Electronics over the last 20 years sites like this one Element 14 community are great for getting answers to tasks that are extremely difficult to work out. So thank you if at any time i find a Question i can answer i will share. 

  • I still use the method of reading a lot, whether this is online or in books. There is also the theory that a baby who learns to crawl/walk too fast misses out on observation skills that the babies who are slow to crawl/walk achieve. I've no idea if that is true. Certainly quite some time can be wasted doing without planning, or hunting for appropriate videos/online material, when a book might have more detail and is self-contained.

    Also training courses or presentations with instructors are super useful, even if they are remote. The element14 free webinars are a good example.

    So, like others have commented, I think a blend is needed of practice and theory, but I also think it is today still worth spending a small percentage of available funds on books, and (if possible) get an employer to fund some training. It could change in the future, some people believe people will learn more through online freely accessible material.

  • I can't really pick any one of your specific options so I chose other. The reason being, I use all methods available to get knowledge. I'll read books and online articles, watch YouTube videos, create experiments to test out what I think I know and work out what does and doesn't work, etc.

     

    I also like to differentiate learning and understanding. You can learn an awful lot of theory but not really understand what it means or how to apply what you know to a real world situation. This quite often requires a more practical experimentation based approach to translating the theory into something that you can put to use.

     

    Best Regards,


    Rachael