What Should Electrical Engineering Students Learn Over Summer?

[kidman]

I am an electrical engineering student.I need your advice on what should i learn or so in summer to make myself a better electrical engineer and give more credit to my CV like what to learn other than college courses(ex:networking,programming...certifications) and what kind of training should i go for.

 

[berkeman]

What year are you? I'm assuming that you are just entering college next year, or maybe entering your second year? I'd recommend the following two things for your summer:

-- Buy a copy of "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill, and read it cover-to-cover. It's a great introduction to electronics, from the basics through opamp circuits and digital electronics. With that background, you will be much more effective as an EE student.

-- Build a couple of electronics kits projects, and throughout your EE education, try to keep building projects on the side. Start with some basic projects, and progress through kits and projects that involve microcontrollers (uCs) and programming them in assembly language and C. If you build a few things on the side, you will have a much more practical approach to your schoolwork. I like to call it "learning to ask the right questions, both of your teachers and of yourself". You can get some good kits at Radio Shack, or at websites like this one:

http://www.transeltech.com/kits/kits1.html

 

[abdo375]

I was going to ask the same question and I hoped that berkemen would answer.

Thanks berkemen and any other advice would be appreciated.

 

[berkeman]

After trading a couple of PMs, it occurs to me that I should have mentioned a little more advanced option:

-- Get a microcontroller (uC) development board, and practice coding up some applications on it in C or assembly language. Think up a couple fun projects to do with the uC development board, and maybe include some of the kit projects from my previous post. Like, make a uC-based universal learning IR remote control. Or control a stepper motor with the uC. The PIC uCs from Microchip are good to learn, and the BASIC Stamp and other chips from Parallax are also good learning vehicles.

http://www.microchip.com/stellent/idcplg?IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&nodeId=64

http://www.parallax.com/html_pages/resources/start/getting_started_main.asp