Bring your imagination
If you happen to be in the south of the country near Cork city there is a great opportunity available to get creative at The Glucksman contemporary art museum in University College Cork.
They are running a free art workshop on Sunday afternoons between 3 and 4pm every week up until Sunday March 22. The events are led by professional artists and invite children and parents to learn all about making art to “just come along at 3pm equipped with your imagination”.
Places are limited and are filled on a first come first served basis. While the event is free, a small donation is advised. The museum is also currently hosting an exhibition that encourages families to explore their understanding of rights through illustration and picture book activities called Viewpoints: Children’s rights in imaginary spaces. If you’re there anyways, it might be worth a visit!
Plug in
Something that can be incredibly handy, whether you just really like gadgets, find it difficult to bend down or get behind furniture are remote control plug sockets. They are plugs that go into a regular socket with another socket on them that you can plug anything into; lamps, TVs kitchen appliances, whatever.
They require no fancy wiring and most can carry up to 1000W of power on each plug – this depends on the make of course. All you have to do it click the remote to which a set of 3 or 4 plugs are connected, and go. They are also not too expensive – often popping up in the middle rows of Aldi and Lidl for quite cheap; they are also always available in Woodies for €25.
Elderly people think they learn better from people – not machines
Older people have been found to pick up new skills better when they believe they are learning from a person rather than from a computer, according to research from the University of Edinburgh.
The researchers used what’s known as the Wizard of Oz system to create the illusion that the task each person was set was created by either a machine or a human.
When people thought they were interacting with a machine and not a human, they were slower and less accurate in completing a task.
“These findings suggest that beliefs affect how efficiently older people learn with technology, which could be taken into account when making technology systems user-friendly,” said Dr Catherine Crompton of the university’s Centre for Clinical Brain Science.