in the video there are several times the instructor uses number pad full stop to center an object in the screen but does not explain what to use to center something and zoom on it using the numberpad emulation… is there a shortcut for zooming and centering without a number pad?
You can use Shift+C, which set the 3D cursor on the 0,0,0 coordinates and zooms to show all.
But is differs from the NumPad dot ‘.’ key, which resets the zoom, when using the NumPad + / - zoom.
To be honest, good usage of Blender depends on how you use keyboard commands. And NumPad is part of that interface. It’s very important to learn these keys, it makes working with Blender much more efficient.