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Monday, 28 July 2025

Educational technology

              
              A students using an interactive whiteboard 
        
        Educational technology (commonly abbreviated as edutech, or edtech) is the combined use of computer hardware, software, and educational theory and practice to facilitate learning and teaching.When referred to with its abbreviation, "EdTech", it often refers to the industry of companies that create educational technology. In EdTech Inc.: Selling, Automating and Globalizing Higher Education in the Digital Age, Tanner Mirrlees and Shahid Alvi (2019) argue "EdTech is no exception to industry ownership and market rules" and "define the EdTech industries as all the privately owned companies currently involved in the financing, production and distribution of commercial hardware, software, cultural goods, services and platforms for the educational market with the goal of turning a profit. Many of these companies are US-based and rapidly expanding into educational markets across North America, and increasingly growing all over the world.
In addition to the practical educational experience, educational technology is based on theoretical knowledge from various disciplines such as communication, education, psychology, sociology, artificial intelligence, and computer science. It encompasses several domains including learning theory, computer-based training, online learning, and m-learning where mobile technologies are used.

Saturday, 19 July 2025

Designer clothing

 Designer clothing refers to apparel created by a specific fashion designer or licensed by a person or brand. It is often considered luxury clothing, known for its high quality and haute couture appeal, made for the general public and bearing the label of a renowned designer. Licensing designer names has been a common practice within the fashion industry since the 1970s. Designer clothing includes a wide range of apparel, such as designer jeans, which can often cost several hundred dollars.

                  Designer clothing in a shop window

                              in Beverly Hills

Designer clothing originally referred to apparel created by a specific designer. The definition has since expanded to include designs licensed by a designer or company. Licensing designer names was pioneered by designers like Pierre Cardin in the 1960s and has been a common practice within the fashion industry since the 1970s.Designer clothing is often expensive, luxury apparel known for its high quality and haute couture appeal, made for the general public and bearing the label of a well-known fashion designer.

Brands are often used to identify designer clothing. However, designer clothing may not always be created by the founder of the company. For instance, the actual designer behind Chanel today is not its original founder, Gabrielle Chanel, but French designer Virginie Viard. The quality of the clothing and its degree of resemblance to the designer's original work can vary significantly depending on the licensee and the terms of the agreement made with the designer. Some agreements may limit the number of garment styles that can be produced, allowing the designer to veto any designs they find unappealing. Examples include:

  • Armani
  • Alexander Wang
  • Balenciaga
  • Balmain
  • Berluti
  • Bottega Veneta
  • Burberry
  • Calvin Klein
  • Chanel
  • CĂ©line
  • Christian Louboutin
  • Diesel
  • Dior
  • Dolce & Gabbana
  • Escada

       


Fashion Trends

                 History of fashion design 


Audrey Hepburn Known for
 her timeless elegance,
 Hepburn’s style, particularly
 her role in Breakfast at
 Tiffany’s, popularized the
 chic, minimalist look and
 iconic black dress.

A fashion trend signifies a specific look or expression that is spread across a population at a specific time and place. A trend is considered a more ephemeral look, not defined by the seasons when collections are released by the fashion industry. A trend can thus emerge from street style, across cultures, and from influencers and other celebrities.
Fashion trends are influenced by several factors, including cinema, celebrities, climate, creative explorations, innovations, designs, political, economic, social, and technological. Examining these factors is called a PEST analysis. Fashion forecasters can use this information to help determine the growth or decline of a particular trend.

                  Princess Diana popularized.              
casual chic styles, including oversized
 sweaters and biker
 shorts.

Continuing on from the maximalist and 1980s influences of the early 2020s, vibrant coloured clothing had made a comeback for women in America, France, China, Korea, and Ukraine by the spring of 2023.This style, sometimes referred to as "dopamine dressing", featured long skirts and belted maxi dresses with thigh splits, lots of gold and pearl jewelry, oversized striped cardigan sweaters, multicoloured silk skirts with seashell or floral print, strappy sandals, pants with a contrasting stripe down the leg, ugg boots,floral print maxi skirts,Y2K inspired platform shoes, chunky red rain boots,shimmery jumpsuits,knitted dresses, leather pilot jackets with faux fur collars,skirts with bold contrasting vertical stripes, trouser suits with bootcut legs, jeans with glittery heart or star-shaped details, chunky white or black sandals, and zebra print tote bags.
Big, oversized garments were often made from translucent materials and featured cutouts intended to expose the wearer's bare shoulder, thigh, or midriff, such as low-cut waists on the pants or tops with strappy necklines intended to be worn braless.Desirable colours included neon green, watermelon green, coral pink, orange, salmon pink, magenta, gold, electric blue, aquamarine, cyan, turquoise, and royal blue.
In 2023, the predominant colors in the United States, Britain, and France were red, white, and blue. As in the mid to late 1970s, Western shirts with pearl snaps in denim or bright madras plaid made a comeback, and sometimes featured contrasting yokes and cuffs with intricate embroidery.Moccasins, stonewash denim waistcoats with decorative fringes, preppy loafers, navy blue suits and sportcoats, straight leg jeans instead of the skinny jeans fashionable from the late 2000s until the early 2020s,stetsons, white baseball jerseys with bold red or blue pinstripes, striped blue neckties, baggy white pants, Union Jack motifs, flared jeans, and duster coats as worn in the Yellowstone TV series,as well as preppy style college sweaters, retro blue and white striped football shirts,chelsea boots with cowboy boot styling, two-button blazers with red and blue boating stripes, V-neck sweater vests, royal blue baseball jackets with white sleeves, Howler Brothers gilets,shirts and suits worn open to expose the chest,and boxy leather reefer jackets were popular on both sides of the Atlantic.



Sunday, 13 July 2025

Technology of Trends

A decade is a long time in technology. Given how prevalent they are now, it’s easy to forget that ten years ago, few of us had heard of cloud computing, deep learning, or Likewise, by 2030, the tech landscape may look very different than it does today.

Progress is sure to throw a few curveballs – for example, if I was writing an equivalent list in 2010, while I like to think I might have had the foresight to predict AI and the “app economy” would be a big part of everyday life by 2020, I may not have realized how much of a big deal cloud and “everything-as-a-service” would become.

With that in mind, here’s an overview of what I feel will be the most important trends throughout this decade. Individually they all have the potential to be as transformational as anything we’ve seen so far. But as with cloud, AI, and LoT over the past ten years, the truly revolutionary developments will be seen when they are applied together to push the boundaries of what we can do with technology.

Ubiquitous computing

A paradigm under which computers are no longer discrete objects that can be applied to various tasks but built into just about everything we use in order to make them more efficient at their job. Cloud computing, edge computing, IoT, and wearables are all trends that fit this concept. Ubiquitous computing is about creating IT strategies that deploy all of these capabilities in tandem to go beyond what’s possible with each one individually. Throwing AI and cognitive computing capabilities into the mix means all elements of the system will learn from each other, creating streams of data and insights that will impact many areas of our lives. By 2030, Cisco predicts that there will be 500 billion devices connected to the internet – roughly 50 devices for every person on the planet!

Connected and smart everything

Ubiquitous computing refers to the paradigm or ecosystem and infrastructure, but we can expect to see continued development on the hardware side as well, as more and more devices become networkable and capable of communicating and sharing data. Smartphones will probably still be most people’s interface with the digital world for some time yet – light, portable and economical on power consumption as they are. But miniaturization and advances in user interface design will bring changes to the way we use many other devices alongside the smartwatches, TVs, cars, kitchen appliances, and toilets that are already on the market. The merging of smart products with smart services that extend their usefulness will be another strong trend – for example, health insurance provider Vitality uses a number of smart devices such as watches and exercise equipment to track and assess their customers' progress toward more healthy lifestyles, rewarding them when they hit targets such as becoming more active. Other products focus on workplace wellness and performance, monitoring stress and activity levels to give insights that can improve employee health and productivity.


Thursday, 10 July 2025

Fashion

Fashion is popular aesthetic expression at a certain time and in a certain context, especially in clothing, footwear , lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle and body proportions.Whereas a trend often connotes a very specific aesthetic expression, and often lasting shorter than a season, fashion is a distinctive and industry-supported expression traditionally tied to the fashion season and collections.Style is an expression that lasts over many seasons and is often connected to cultural movements and social markers, symbols, class and culture (ex. Baroque, Rococo, etc.). According to sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, fashion connotes "the latest fashion, the latest 

Even though they are often used together, the term fashion differs from clothes and costume, where the first describes the material and technical garment, whereas the second has been relegated to special senses like fancy-dress or masquerade wear. Fashion instead describes the social and temporal system that "activates" dress as a social signifier in a certain time and context. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben connects fashion to the current intensity of the qualitative moment, to the temporal aspect the Greek called kairos, whereas clothes belong to the quantitative, to what the Greek called chronos.

Exclusive brands aspire for the label haute couture, but the term is technically limited to members of the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture in Paris.

With increasing mass-production of consumer commodities at cheaper prices, and with global reach, sustainability has become an urgent issue amongst politicians, brands and consumers.

Educational technology

                              A students using an interactive whiteboard                   Educational technology (commonly abbreviated as e...