Nov 2007 – Seward Incorporated, a Minneapolis-based educational technology design and Development Company, has been selected by the World Health Organization (WHO) to produce a searchable Web-based repository for the Pacific Open Learning Health Net (POLHN) website. This searchable repository will be made up of health related training, courses and programs available in the Pacific Island Countries and Territories.

This repository will list training and courses related to nursing, health administrators, doctors, dentists, laboratory technicians, midwives and other health workers as appropriate.

Seward, which has worked in North America, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa , brings 17 years of educational technology experience to this project.

May 2007 – Seward Incorporated, a Minneapolis-based educational technology design and development company, has been selected as a subcontractor to Miske, Witt & Associates of St. Paul, Minnesota to work on an Inter-American Development Bank funded project in Trinidad & Tobago. The project is being undertaken in conjunction with the Ministry of Education, Trinidad & Tobago, and involves conducting a study on the current conditions of students with special education needs, and the current capacity of the education system to serve them.

The purpose of the project is to provide recommendations for resources and program costs; early assessment and identification; training and professional development; coordination; monitoring and evaluation; and communication and outreach.

Seward's role in the project is to analyze the current role of information and communication technologies (ICT) in teacher training and the support of special education students. From this work, recommendations will be made for future efforts involving ICT.

Seward, Inc., which has worked in North America, Asia, the Pacific, Africa and the Middle East, brings 17 years of educational technology experience to the Trinidad & Tobago project.

February 2007 – Seward Incorporated, a Minneapolis-based educational technology design and Development Company, has been selected by the World Health Organization (WHO) to produce development standards for the online courses offered by the Pacific Open Learning Health Net (POLHN). The standards will guide faculty, subject matter experts, and instructional designers in developing high-quality online courses that address the unique needs of adult students in Pacific Island Countries and Territories.

To develop the standards, Seward will interview health educators in the Pacific, review sites and coursework of leading online providers, and research relevant literature on effective online instruction. The final standards document will provide criteria for the planning, development, implementation, and evaluation of instructor-led and self-paced online courses. The standards will be elaborated upon with guidelines, tips, examples, and illustrations.

Seward, which has worked in North America , Asia , the Pacific, and Africa , brings 17 years of educational technology experience to the writing of the standards.

July 2006 – Minneapolis , Minnesota, February 24, 2006 – Seward Incorporated, a Minneapolis-based educational technology design and development company, has been selected to produce the User Manual for a set of interactive DVDs. The project is a sub-contract from Miske Witt and Associates, an international education development company specializing in gender issues.

The DVD User Manual is intended for use by teacher training at Malawi’s Teacher Training Centers. The manual will contain instruction on the operation of the DVD and use of the menu structure within the various lessons. In addition, it will provide a series of suggested teaching strategies that may be used or modified by the teacher trainers.

The two disc set of teacher training DVDs was developed as part of the Malawi Teacher Training Activity, a project funded by USAID. The primary contracting agency for MTTA was the American Institutes for Research (AIR).

The discs, entitled Malawi Pre-Service:Life Skills Education for HIV and AIDS, were produced by Seward Incorporated. Seward worked with representatives of AIR and the Malawi Institute for Education to shoot video in Malawian schools. These videos consisted of one Life Skills lesson for each of eight grade levels and interviews with the teachers for each lesson.

Seward, which has worked in North America, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa, brings 16 years of educational technology experience to the Malawian Teacher Training Activity project.

June 2006 – Minneapolis , Minnesota, March 6, 2006 – Seward Incorporated, a Minneapolis-based educational technology design and development company, has been selected to produce educational materials for use by Omani teachers and in Omani classrooms. This award is part of the Partnership Schools Program under the Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) of the U. S. State Department.

The project’s purpose is to provide an Internet-based and/or CD-ROM based in-service teacher training tool for secondary-school teachers. Much of the in-country work for this project will be done in and around Oman’s capital city, Muscat. The funding period for this award runs through July or 2007.

Working closely with the Sultanate’s Ministry of Education (MOE) and in consultation with MEPI, Seward will develop technology-based teacher training modules and pilot them in three secondary schools. This effort will be the “launching pad” for the MOE’s implementation of a broader secondary curriculum reform. In additional to curriculum development, Seward will provide technical assistance to train a core group of master trainers whose task it will be to train secondary school teachers, at the national and provincial levels, on how to use the new curriculum materials.

Seward, which has worked in North America, Asia, the Pacific, and Africa, brings 16 years of educational technology experience to the Oman Teacher Training project.

May 2006 – In May, Greg Sales, President and CEO of Seward, will attend the 1st International Conference for ICT Development, Education and Training in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He will be leading two sessions – a demonstration of the online exam tool, Assessor, and a presentation describing Seward's work in Malawi to produce interactive DVDs for pre-service teachers.

Assessor Demonstration Session

Assessor is an economical online exam tool that allows you to quickly create and deliver online assessments and exams. Assessor is easy to use and allows individuals to:

• Create and customize exams.
• Manage all aspects of the exam site.
• Generate reports showing exam and learner statistics.

Assessor enables various organizations, such as business, industry, non-profit, healthcare, education, and government to increase and manage accountability. Assessments created with this tool are used to measure the success of their training and educational efforts including self-study, on-the-job, or classroom training. Assessor saves time by empowering authorized individuals to quickly:

• Design Exams
• Create Questions
• Enroll Users and Assign Exam
• Report Results

Interactive DVD Teacher Training for Malawi

DVDs with best practice teaching models and supporting resources can be highly effective tools for both pre-service teacher training and teacher professional development. Seward Incorporated, working as a sub contractor on a USAID project, worked with Malawian colleagues to produce two interactive DVDs for use in pre-service teacher training programs across Malawi.

Each DVD contains 4 complete Life Skills lessons, interviews with the teachers, and vignettes highlighting the use of various instructional techniques. The first disc contains one lesson each from Standards 1 through 4. All of these lessons are taught in Chichewa. The second disc contains one lesson from each of Standards 5 through 8. These lessons are taught in English.

As part of the project, each of the Teacher Training Centers (TTCs) in Malawi received 3 DVD self-contained portable players and one LCD projector. The TTC’s learners, or instructors, interact with the DVD using a remote control to scroll through the options and make a selection.

Why a DVD? Interactive DVD technology offers a number of benefits, such as:

• DVD players capable of delivering this interactive training are relatively inexpensive, costing less than $100 each. They can be attached to most televisions, video projectors, and/or LCD displays. In addition to being affordable, they are easy to use, and appropriate for use by individuals or group training.
• DVD training can also be accessed on computers with DVD drives. An additional feature available in this mode is the capability to print resources – lesson plans, instructional materials used in lessons, lists of references, etc.
• DVDs can be used to provide consistent modelling of teaching practices regardless of the trainer’s knowledge or expertise.
• DVDs can be used for both pre-service and in-service teacher training.
• DVDs can be used to assist with language learning.
• Replication of DVDs is inexpensive.
• Storing DVDs requires little space.
• DVDs are light, easy to disseminate and durable.

This presentation will discuss the design and development process and demonstrate the final products. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions about any phase of the process.

March 2006 – In March, Greg Sales, President & CEO of Seward, will attend the Comparative and International Education Society conference in Honolulu, Hawaii. He will be participating in a panel discussion on improving the quality of education in Malawi by strengthening the content knowledge of teachers.

The panel is comprised of participants in the USAID-funded Malawi Teacher Training Activity (MTTA). MTTA improves primary teachers’ understanding of English, mathematics, and science and provides support to pre-service teacher trainers in life skills and HIV/AIDS education. The panel will examine the project’s teacher and pupil assessment data and explore the challenges faced in developing materials based on the assessment findings. The materials include teacher resource guides and in-service teacher training handbooks in English, mathematics, and science (with special emphasis on using locally available resources), and an interactive DVD for teachers on teaching HIV/AIDS and life skills.

Greg will discuss the unique capabilities of DVD as a teacher training tool through his presentation entitled, “Innovative Technology for Teacher Development in Life Skills & HIV/AIDS Awareness.” He will also demonstrate the DVD created for this project, which consists of Life Skills classroom lessons designed for teacher educators to use with prospective primary school teachers for grades 1-8. In addition, Dr. Sales will describe the challenges faced in producing the DVD and issues related to selection and use of playback equipment.