Shawn D.

I've spent more than 20 years on an interesting journey down the paths of writing, editing, teaching, and researching. I spent nearly five of those years working for a major health insurance company in St. Louis. During my time there I had the opportunity to work with both commercial and proprietary computer systems, manage data, provide service to the providers of the network, edit and proofread documents and directories, research and troubleshoot data issues, create training documentation, and teach new employees. Needing a bigger challenge, I then spent two years teaching English in Madrid, Spain and four additional summers doing the same at a summer camp in northern Spain. During that time I had the unique opportunity to teach with a wide variety of people from all walks of life: six-year olds to sixty-year olds; Spanish military colonel to retired carpenter; oil company to the Spanish mint; in homes and offices or at summer camps. I also continued my journey towards new, more interesting challenges: learning and developing as a freelance writer, editor, tutor, and academic researcher, with leanings towards online content research, development, presentation, and management. That has included blogging, travel writing, technical writing, academic research, and special projects, as well as learning and improving my use of content management tools such as MediaWiki, WordPress, LearnDash, and Moodle. (One of my biggest projects utilizing my skills is developing and curating some 99 percent of the content for LIMSwiki.org.) I also extended that journey by going back to university and getting a degree in library informatics. My applied interests include laboratory and scientific informatics, data management, data preservation, archiving, and related tools. Specialties: instructional writing, technical writing, content development, training material development, academic research, internet research, teaching, tutoring, editing, proofreading, Spanish-to-English translation, scientific informatics, laboratory informatics, data entry, Microsoft applications, MediaWiki, WordPress, LearnDash, Moodle, HTML 4.0+, web technology, social media technology