Working Up

Working Up in Project Management, Systems Engineering, Technology, and Writing

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Lesser-of-Two-Evils Questions (and Meta Questions)

November 14th, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips There are times when I ask if my situation was caused by one of two shortcomings. Neither answer is pleasing. Then I move on to ask why I am in such an unsatisfactory situation. A couple decades ago, I heard a statement about explaining a bad situation. One paraphrase of the statement […]

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Tags: Communication · Excuses · Learning · Problems

Effective Teachers?

October 31st, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I suggest a method of measuring teacher effectiveness.  The vast majority of methods for measuring teachers rests on a simple question: do we trust students? Bill Gates and his wife have been working towards improving education in America. I applaud their efforts as they could be using their billions of dollars to […]

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Tags: Education · Learning

The Myth of the Top-Tier College

October 4th, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Top-tier colleges? I think they are grossly over rated. I read this post recently about someone returning to a top-tier engineering school to recruit employees. He was impressed with the high-quality of the students and the competition among companies to hire them. Sigh. I’ve been in the workplace for 30 years. I […]

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Tags: Learning · Life

College: Education and/or Fun

October 3rd, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Most people in America still see college as fun first and education second. At least education is in the top two. Here is an article about the slow pace of adoption of online learning in colleges. The technology is here and has been here for years. Still, most colleges don’t go online. […]

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Tags: Fun · Learning · Play

Knowing Something

July 28th, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I find that there are three levels of knowing something. (1) understanding (2) using (3) explaining. Take care when assuming more than we know. I know a lot of things (there are many more things that I don’t know, but that is another matter). Over the years, I have been privileged to […]

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Tags: Communication · Learning · Reframe · Work

Tutoring Writing – Part 3 – Internet References

June 27th, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Writing students at George Mason University teach me how to cite Internet references using APA Style. I continue to work with students at George Mason University on their writing. And they continue to teach me. A recent student had questions about citing references from Internet sources according to the APA Style Guidelines […]

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Tags: Learning · Wikipedia · Writing

A Couple of Thoughts about College

June 13th, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Watch out for the coming college bubble where tuition at prestigious universities crashes. Maybe some of those universities will crash as well. I read a couple of things this week about college. They seemed to be related (in my mind at least). The first item was on TechCrunch and it discussed the […]

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Tags: Learning

PMP Certification

May 17th, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips I  obtain the PMI’s Project Management Professional certification. It seemed that every request for proposal that we received from the government wanted the same thing: a certified project manager.  It didn’t matter that a person, like me, had years of experience, three degrees, and had written several books on project management (like […]

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Tags: Learning · Management · Work

Change the World – 0.02 – Reading

April 28th, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Work with someone who wants to learn to read. Would you like to change the world? Do this, Work with someone who wants to learn to read. Go to Barnes and Noble or Amazon or something online and order a complete set of the McGuffey Readers. Order two or three. Use these […]

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Tags: Change · Learning

A Couple of Thoughts about College

April 18th, 2011 · No Comments

by Dwayne Phillips Watch out for the coming college bubble where tuition at prestigious universities crashes. Maybe some of those universities will crash as well. I read a couple of things this week about college. They seemed to be related (in my mind at least). The first item was on TechCrunch and it discussed the […]

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Tags: Learning