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Entries Tagged as 'Learning'

The em dash and Learning

July 10th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I still learn new things. I still want to learn new things. I recently learned how to make the em dash and en dash characters in OS X with keyboard shortcuts. I no longer have to go to the “insert symbols” function to insert these special characters. One of the disappointing results […]

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Tags: Education · Learning · Writing

But I Had a Great Time

May 29th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Once again I delve into the question, but what was the objective? I find myself planning events more than previously. At least I find myself involved in planning events. And, as I have written before, I tend to ask some variation of, “What is the objective?” I have been involved with many […]

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Tags: Learning · Planning

Writing Doesn’t Scale

May 15th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There is something about attempting to write a longer piece that makes writing a sentence much more difficult. I’ll start with something that is probably obvious to everyone else in the world: Writing doesn’t scale. Explanation: People who can write a two-page piece, flop when they attempt to write a 20-page piece. […]

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Tags: Education · Learning · Writing

Advise vs Assist

March 24th, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips If possible, assist instead of advise. I worked in a government bureaucracy for over 25 years. A favorite practice to this day is the review board. Some unlucky and usually young engineer works really hard for weeks and then brings the work before a group of older engineers. The older engineers pick […]

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Tags: Learning · Management

Obvious to the Casual Observer

January 2nd, 2014 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I often heard “it is obvious to the casual observer” in grad school. I even read it a few times. Guess what? That is not a true statement. I used to hear that in grad school, “It is obvious to the casual observer.” That was sort of a joke when we were […]

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Tags: Communication · Learning

AWS EC2: Hello World – Forward to the Past

December 12th, 2013 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I enter the world of cloud computing and learn that, once again, we go forward to the past. I finally did it. I entered the world of actual virtual cloud computing. Not just Facebooking or DropBoxing, but actual computing. Well, not much computing, but making a few bits move. Earlier this year […]

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Tags: Computing · Internet · Learning · Linux · Technology

HealthCare.Gov – An Excellent and Terrible Teaching Example

November 14th, 2013 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Take care when choosing an example for teaching. Often what seem to be great examples are terrible in that people concentrate on the unintended. I have taken a lot of courses related to project management. I have taught a few. I have read a lot of books on project management, and, as […]

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Tags: Communication · Education · General Systems Thinking · Learning · Teaching

The Personal Learning Environment

October 17th, 2013 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I learn a few things about learning environments. I recently attended a conference on innovation in education at George Mason University. I am not a professional educator and, to be candid, I never thought much about professional educators. To show that I am not all cold hearted and stone headed, I learned […]

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Tags: Education · Learning

Prior Experience

September 26th, 2013 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Every organization and endeavor is unique to a degree, but not absolutely unique. Learn the prior experience of each person and find a way to benefit from it. LikeĀ  many of my (hi)stories, this one is from yet another experience with morons in government. I had 20 years experience in the larger […]

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Tags: Learning · Management · People

Public Funding of Research

March 11th, 2013 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Once again we have a controversy about who owns publicly funded research. There is much debate recently about who owns the results of research that is funded by the public. See here for one article on recent policy statements. The simple answer is that when the public funds research, the public should […]

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Tags: Government · Learning