Seward Incorporated

This week, we decided to take our “What We’re Reading” theme and give it a bit of a fun twist. Here are our picks for Seward’s Summer Reading List.

 Nell Kauls’ pick: Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd

 I am loving this book. From Library Journal: “Hope Clearwater lives alone in a beach house in an unnamed African country, trying to patch together her shattered life. An ecologist, she had come to Africa to participate in primate research and to heal the deep wounds of her marriage to a brilliant English mathematician; but she soon found herself plunged into another crisis, one that threatened not only her career but also her life.”

I am reading it for a bookclub. It doesn’t sound like it from the description, but it is a real page turner.

Vicky Frank’s pick: The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

 Diane Setterfield’s first novel has been described as a gothic suspense reminiscent of Rebecca and Jane Eyre - high praise for sure, but for some this invokes overly sentimental characters stumbling along through dusty and protracted parlor dramas. The Thirteenth Tale is cast as a mystery story, the setting is eerily fun, and the characters are complex (but the females are not weak and weepy). However it’s the choice of words and the use of language that astonishes and elevates this book above so many others. There is a love story to be had here, but it’s not between the characters - it’s between reader and what’s written. Simply put, I loved this book for its words.

 EXCERPT:  “Do you know the feeling when you start reading a new book before the membrane of the last one has had time to close behind you? You leave the previous book with ideas and themes–characters even–caught in the fibers of your clothes, and when you open the new book, they are still with you.”

 If your love of reading is based on a love of words and language, don’t read the reviews, just read this book!  

Melanie Ruda’s pick: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

 This book is a sobering read that argues the case for investing in the health and autonomy of women in developing nations around the world.

Paul Johnson’s pick: Simple Genius by David Baldacci

 Sean King returns to solve yet another mysterious crime, this time involving an employee from a think tank found at a CIA facility.  I’m not that far into it yet so the verdict is still out, but some of his other efforts had me turning the pages faster.  Hopefully this one will pick up.

Brian Thompson’s pick: Drowning Ruth by Christina Schwarz

Occurring shortly after the end of World War 1, this mystery unfolds in a small rural Wisconsin town.  The main character, Amanda, returns home after feeling overwhelmed by her work as an army nurse, but she soon finds that her old home is no escape from her troubles.  One horrible night, Amanda’s sister (and Ruth’s mother) Mathilda is found drowned beneath the ice in a nearby lake.  As Ruth grows up under her aunt’s care, the secrets of that fateful night continue to affect her and the community until the truth is finally revealed in a heartbreaking conclusion.

Our last three picks are a trilogy which, incidentally, has been on three of our Seward staff members’ reading lists lately:

Nick Wanserski’s pick: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I bought Stieg Larsson’s “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” for my wife this previous Christmas as it had begun to attract critical attention.  She quickly read it and it has been relegated to coaster since.

But the book has become increasingly popular, and as I have not read any of the “Twilight” series, I’m loath to be left out of another literary cultural zeitgeist.  I decided to give “Dragon Tattoo” a read this past month.

I’m not much of a mystery reader, largely because I don’t have the analytical mind this genre favors.  But I did enjoy “Dragon Tattoo,” even if it won’t make a convert of me.  The ‘locked room’ mystery device is given an engaging twist here, as the novel’s central crime takes place on an island inaccessible to the mainland.

And much has already been discussed about the book’s most intriguing character, the heroine Lisbeth Salander.  A gothic hacker with Asperger’s syndrome, it’s to Larsson’s credit that he can write her as a fully developed person and not simply a reductive collection of quirky adjectives.

Lastly I’ll say the noir mood is well served by the frozen Swedish setting.  Though personally, I find the many references to open-faced egg and herring sandwiches to be far more dispiriting than any description of a ­­­bleak, forgotten clime. 

Alison Sanders’ pick: The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Following up the riveting “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” the second book in Stieg Larsson’s trilogy is “The Girl Who Played with Fire.” The story again focuses on the introverted genius Lisbeth Salander, who has now become implicated in three (related) homicides. Mikael Blomkvist, who collaborated with Salander in solving the mystery in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” does not believe she is the culprit, and launches his own investigation into the murders. He and his colleagues at Millennium, a somewhat controversial news magazine, suspect that there may be an even more sinister set of people and circumstances behind the killings.

Much like the first book in the trilogy, I found “The Girl Who Played with Fire” to be a smartly-paced and intriguing mystery. Although it is over 600 pages long, the story impressively manages to avoid any feelings of tedium, and maintain a sharp, easy-to-read style. I enjoyed it greatly, and am looking forward to reading the third installment!

Matt Finholt-Daniel’s pick: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest by Steig Larsson

As the final book in Steig Larsson’s trilogy, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” is an artfully constructed conclusion to the thread of events initiated in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and “The Girl Who Played with Fire.” The story picks up right where book two left off, with both Lisbeth Salander and her adversary Alexander Zalachenko in critical condition in the hospital. Mikael Blomkvist, in typical fashion, pulls all stops in an attempt to exonerate Salander and to hold Zalachenko responsible for his past.

Like the other two books in the series, I couldn’t set it down.  If you haven’t already made time to read these books, pick them up now as you won’t be disappointed.

Seward Inc. is currently in the middle of development of the Word Learning Strategies (WLS) project ; a program designed for teaching upper-elementary students (grades 4-5) essential strategies for vocabulary development, such as using context clues, using word parts such as prefixes and suffixes, and using the dictionary and thesaurus. The curriculum is multi-platform including print, online, and video resources. The WLS project is a good example of how developments in technology and teaching philosophy have grown in tandem to change how children learn.

The standard teaching model for millennia of pressing lessons onto a wax tablet with a sharpened reed seems to have fallen from favor. Educators and students alike have learned the limits of simple didactic approaches. Now, curriculum developers understand the importance of strong graphic design for reinforcing teaching methods in sophisticated educational packages. Interactive games, mascots, and elaborate interfaces are now common and increasingly factor into a curriculum’s development cycle.

For WLS, we decided on a superhero world for the visual component. Having established a broad theme, it is important to create hero characters that can aid with the lessons while building an aesthetic that creates a more complete, immersive environment.

For example, we created the hero Infracta for WLS. Infracta is the designated avatar for the ‘word parts’ section of the curriculum. The word parts section deals with prefixed, suffixed and compound words—words that can be too large for many young readers. When broken apart into components, these words can be better understood. Then they can be reassembled, the whole meaning made clear.

Infracta is a superhero, and as such, a character of action. There has yet to be a successful hero whose power consists of superhuman sentence-diagramming and grammar structure. But at the same time, no character can beat up a word and send it to prison for being above a fifth-grade reading level. So it became a matter of taking the more action-oriented nouns and verbs of the word part strategy, “large,” “break apart,” “reassemble,” and re-contextualizing the meaning.

Infracta evolved into a creative young inventor. She uses her mind to create a group of small, cyclopean robots named “Smidges.” These Smidges have lasers they emit from their eyes that can cut through imposing or dangerous structures, make sense of them, and weld back together in a more useful form.

In an impressive suit of armor, surrounded by a phalanx of robots, Infracta retains the dynamism of a superhero while sublimating the destructive tendencies of the genre into something a little more enriching.

In this way, graphic design is the proverbial “spoonful of sugar” to help the educational medicine go down. And while students are much too savvy to be fooled into believing they’re not learning (nor should they be), it is the hope of the project that a strong visual hook and cast of characters can engage a student’s mind better and for longer than that old, reliable wax tablet.

The iPad is quite a hot topic right now (and with sales figures in excess of 3 million, a hot product, too). There’s a lot of buzz about it in eLearning circles, too, some positive, some negative. Some even call it a game-changer. While it does spark the imagination for new fun learning apps, it has a number of challenges to overcome. Consider:

• No camera. This excludes entire classes of applications (e.g. virtual classrooms, augmented reality).
• No Flash support. The eLearning industry has invested a lot of time and effort in producing Flash-based content. Targeting the iPad requires either converting it into an iPad-compatible format or abandoning that content entirely.
• Limited availability. Although the iPad has been selling extremely well, there are still less than four million of them in use. That’s an extremely limited reach compared to the billion-plus PCs in use, over 99% of which run Flash.
• The App Store Terms and Conditions. One purchased application can be downloaded to up to 5 iPads, after which the application must be purchased again for the next 5 iPads and so on. That’s bad news for schools wanting to buy $15 apps for an entire classroom full of iPads unless Apple changes their terms.

Despite the challenges, the iPad is a very exciting device with great prospects for eLearning. Right off the bat, it makes a nice e-reader for any textbook in e-book format. Going further, it’s a relatively inexpensive touchscreen computer with great audio and video support. That’s a mix that can’t help but spark the imagination with ideas for learning apps that couldn’t really be done on older styles of computers.

Do you have any ideas for eLearning apps on the iPad? Leave a comment below!

Everyone has heard of Twitter and Facebook by now. Opinions vary as to the usefulness of social conversation tools. Some contend they can have a legitimate business use (see Twitter:  It’s Not Just for 15-Year-Olds.) Others decry them as time-wasting purveyors of mindless minutiae.

But did you know this real-time “social conversation” comprises a larger and larger share of searched Web content? Facebook is just one of many sources of user-generated content that is growing exponentially. With more than 400 million active users, 200 million log on to Facebook in any given day. The average Facebook user alone creates 70 pieces of content each month and as a group, Facebook members share more than 25 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) each month.¹

So user-generated content is filling up the content pool – so what? Why should you care about this?

If you are interested in how your Web site and your brand are perceived online, here are two reasons to care about user-generated content and real-time search:

1.       All this user-generated content is indexed and searchable and it’s now competing with your Web site for attention from the search engines. Recognizing that searchers value up-to-the-minute content, search engines themselves have changed. Within the last year, the big three traditional search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing (formerly MSN Search) announced the launch of real-time search results. It was recently reported that 25% of search results for the world’s top largest brands link to user-generated content.² Search engine optimization (driving qualified traffic to your Web site through sheer hard work of optimizing your Web pages to be attractive to search engines) has been changed with the advent of user-generated content. Search engines have begun to deliver your desired searchers to the people who are talking about you vs. to your Web site.

2.       Not only is user-generated content competing with your content for your desired searchers, these same searchers have been found to put as much or more trust in this type of content than the content they find on your Web site. The Nielsen Study on Global Advertising³ reports that that consumers trust their friends’ recommendations at a 90% rate and other consumer opinion postings at 70%, equal to the trust they put in brand Web sites. This is not a new concept – word of mouth has always been a powerful marketing tool – but it heralds a game change in the way you acquire qualified prospects/customers.

Search engines continue to be the primary way people navigate the Web. In May 2010, Americans conducted 15.9 billion core searches.⁴ Comparing April 2010 with May 2010, Automotive, Business and Finance, Entertainment, News and Media, Shopping and Social Networking categories showed double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.⁵ Of special attention is the fact that while the average user spent 1 hour, 21 minutes on Google during April (2010), Facebook users were logged on an average of 6 hours.⁶  

The explosion of user-generated content and the increased reliance on search to navigate the Web has implications for the average brand Web site manager. If you are serious about your online brand, here are five ways you can promote your brand in real time:

1.       Monitor and participate in the conversation. Join social networks not only see what others are saying about you but to add your (indexed and searchable) two cents to the conversation.

2.       Use bookmarking and sharing tools to push content about your brand to new searchers.

3.       Dedicate some aspect of your Web site (typically a blog) to providing fresh information for the search engines to find. If creating a blog is too much work, comment on someone else’s blog. This content will become part of the content search pool in no time.

4.       Submit press releases to free press release sites. Google “free press release sites” or contact us for a list of those we use. We find the releases indexed by Google in a matter of hours.

5.       Add a free feedback mechanism on your Web site like Kampyle that allows you to collect and manage your Web site visitors’ feedback and engage with them one-on-one.

Real-time search has and will change the strategies employed by Web site managers and search optimizers. What time zone are you in?

Addendum 7.7.10:  Twitter is now the fastest growing search engine

According to co-founder Biz Stone, who spoke yesterday at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Twitter now reaches some 800 million search queries per day. That’s over 24 billion searches per month, more than Bing (4.1 billion) and Yahoo (9.4 billion) combined. http://www.fastcompany.com/1667617/twitter-is-worlds-fastest-growing-search-engine?partner=homepage_newsletter

NOTES

¹Facebook Press Room:  Statistics, July 6, 2010, http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
²Marketing Vox and Nielsen BuzzMetrics SES Magazine June 8 page 24-25 Chris Aarons, Andru Edwards, Xavier Lanier Turning Blogs and user-Generated Content Into Search Engine Results
³NielsenWire: Global Advertising: Consumers Trust Real Friends and Virtual Strangers the Most,

Here are some of our favorite things that we’ve read lately!

From Nell Kauls:

Web Content Strategist’s Bible

Managing the creation and maintenance of this huge volume of web content requires an understanding of not just web writing, but of detailed, well-planned, realistic content development processes. This book by Richard Sheffield breaks it all down for you. Bonus: free deliverable template downloads!

Content Strategy for the Web

Content Strategy for the Web by Kristina Halvorson explains how to create and deliver useful, usable content for your online audiences, when and where they need it most.

From Vicky Frank:

Newser

Newser is a news aggregator - there are many of them out there, but this one aggregated by “Latest”, “Popular” and “Pick a Date”. One of the problems with some news sources is they only report today’s news and you and you can’t go back in time to read an article of interest. Newser also has a section called “Newser by Users” that invites readers to summarize and post their own stories. And for those who are interested in “Gossip” (nobody here!), there’s a section for that. Newser has an iPhone app that has just been updated for OS4.

QRANK

Pronounced “Crank”, QRANK is a trivia game with a great twist:  many of the questions are ripped from the latest breaking news. It’s one of the reasons I pore over the news aggregators so that I can study up for QRANK. QRANK also has an iPhone app and it just got updated for OS4. The interface is a bit like Jeopardy, with easier questions with lower scores at the top and harder questions/higher scores at the bottom. Responses also are timed, with higher scores awarded for faster picks. It’s a great brain trainer with a current events twist!

From Alison Sanders:

HighTalk.net: Conversations about PR, Media & the Social Web

This blog by George F. Snell III contains some really interesting posts about social media, web content design, and information technology. Thought-provoking topics such as “Social Media’s Staggering Influence on Journalists” - info and stats on how journalism is both utilizing and adapting to the growing presence of social media; “5 Reasons Why Businesses Struggle With Content” - how to address some common challenges in creating online content; and “Attack of the Fake Twitter Accounts” - inspired by recent events, an exploration of social media satire.

From Nick Wanserski:

Noupe

I came across this blog accidentally, but am quite glad I did.  Noupe contains a strong balance of tutorials and portfolio collections.   Noupe is presented largely from a visual designer’s perspective, which is nice for those of us who have little experience coding.

The site also balances out the very helpful tutorials with some levity, interspersing a handful of strange articles to keep things light.

From Brian Thompson:

InsideRIA

InsideRIA covers a variety of topics of interest to Flash and Flex developers.  It also has a number of articles touching on topics relevant to more general web development.

From Matt Finholt-Daniel:

Free Tech Tools For Teachers

Exactly as it’s titled, Free Tech Tools For Teachers is an online directory, in blog format, of technology-related resources that teachers can use free of charge.  Both domestically and internationally, a resounding theme in our discussions with teachers is that they desire to engage their students more through online technologies but that they don’t know where to find them. This site is an excellent resource and worthy of regular visits.

From Paul Johnson:

Blog Catalog

This site is a repository of interesting blogs searchable by topic.   This is a great place to go when you’d like to search the blogosphere directly versus doing a more general Google search.  Technology and social media are both well represented here, and there is also wide variety of leisure material.

Student Story Example

Student success stories on your website help prospective students see what is possible when they take a particular program. These profiles help students answer questions like, “Why did other students choose this program?” and “What compelling experiences are these students having?” Also, non-traditional students may ask themselves questions like, “How can I fit this into my busy life?” and “I wonder how far along I am if I use credits I’ve already earned?” All are very important questions that arise during a student’s decision-making process. Student profiles offer prospective students a way to “see themselves” in your students’ stories.

Profiles are also a way to engage your students in helping you fulfill your mission. Making students part of your content creation is a way to build and deepen their ties to your institution.

Use these tips to write student stories for your website:

• Include the student’s name and program. Include title and company if the student is employed.
• Include student’s accomplishments, such as a recent internship or a special project.
• Include quotes about the student’s interesting experiences in your program. Focus on those items that are the most compelling and have had the most impact.
• Highlight how the student works with other students.
• Present anecdotes about hobbies or interests outside of the university.
• Keep student stories brief (4-5 short paragraphs).
• Request a recent photo or arrange to take the student’s picture.

Example Questionnaire

Use these questions to start a conversation with a student:

• Where are you from? What are some of the cultural differences you have noticed in the U.S.? (question for international students)
• What set this program apart for you? What was your decision-making process to select this program?
• What has your experience been like so far? Elaborate on any corporate interaction, internships, and/or any leadership roles you have had.
• What are you hoping to do in the future?
• What has surprised you most about your experience in this program?
• What would you say to prospective students who are considering the program?

Show Students How It Works

Example of "How It Works" Feature

Also, use real examples with lots of specifics about how other students have used prior learning and transfer credits to save time and money. These examples speak to non-traditional students who may have a lot of previous work experience and college credits. Examples should answer questions like:

• Can I save money and time with transfer credits?
• Can my military training and experience apply toward my degree?
• Are there tests I can take to get credit for prior learning?
• Do I have certifications that can qualify as transfer credit?
• Can I get credit for work experience?
• What about credit for CLEP, AP, IB, or DANTES exams?
• Does this program give credit for independent study and internships?

Example of Overview Feature

Additionally, put program details like admission deadlines and total credits, and links to cost and financial aid information front and center. This information is crucial to prospective students as they are researching programs. Make it easy for them to find and scan!

In my last post, Write Alumni Profiles That Tell Your Story, I offer tips for writing alumni profiles. These profiles combined with student success stories help you tell your story.

(Content examples from Capella University and Metropolitan State University First College)

An alumni profile developed for one of Seward's higher ed clients

Alumni profiles tell prospective students an important part of your story—your alumni’s accomplishments and contributions to the community. These profiles also help prospective students answer, “What have other people done with this degree?” and “Do people succeed after graduation from the program?” Both are very important questions that arise during the student’s decision-making process, and your website content needs to answer them in an authentic way. Enter alumni profiles. REAL success stories are the most effective way to show prospective students the value of your program.

Profiles are also a way to engage alumni in helping you fulfill your mission. Making alumni part of your content creation process is a way to build and deepen their ties to your institution. Your alumni have many interesting stories to share and are often very pleased to be asked!

Use the following tips to write alumni profiles for your website:

• Include the alumnus’s name, title, company, and graduation year.
• Include alumnus’s accomplishments, such as a recent award received or a special project.
• Provide “where are they now?” information. You can also use this information to populate “Class Notes” sections of newsletters and web pages. This feature is a way to attract other alumni, not just prospective students, to your website.
• Include quotes and information from the alumnus about how she used her degree to improve her life, career, family circumstances, and organization. Focus on those items that are the most compelling and have had the most impact (“I was promoted and now lead my division!”). Many times you need to take license with a quote to make it carry the message more clearly. Make sure the alumnus reviews and approves it. These quotes can find their way into testimonials, ads, press releases, and brochures. They are great information to get and have in your content management system.
• Highlight how the alumnus built relationships with fellow students.
• Present anecdotes about hobbies or interests outside of the university.
• Customize questions around the alumnus’s area of expertise, focusing on interesting and current industry trends.
  

  An alumni testimonial feature developed for a higher ed client

• Create testimonials from the content gathered for profiles. A collection of 2-3 compelling quotes is all you need to create a testimonial.
• Use words your readers care about in your profiles. Use a keyword generating tool to discover new words for your website content. Google AdWords offers a free tool.
• Keep online profiles brief (4-5 short paragraphs). You can write longer, detailed profiles for newsletters and other publications.
• If possible, conduct the interview by phone or face to face. You will often get more and better information this way because it’s not the first question that gets you the story; it’s the question that comes out of the first question. However, emailing your questionnaire to an alumnus is more convenient and the information comes back to you in electronic format.
• Request a recent photo or arrange to take the alumnus’s picture.

Example Questionnaire

Use these questions to start a conversation with an alumnus:

• What degrees do you have and from where?
• What do you consider your greatest accomplishments? (Both personally and professionally)
• How did you become interested in your field?
• What do you see as the most compelling trends in your field?
• What do you enjoy most about your current career position?
• What have been the biggest challenges in your career?
• How has your college experience had an impact on your career?
• Describe any significant relationships with fellow students. How did collaborating with other students contribute to your education?
• What advice would you give to younger alumni or current students who aspire to follow a similar career path?
• What was the best class you took at the University? Do you have a favorite professor?
• What do you enjoy doing with your free time?  Family?  Hobbies?  Interests?
• What would you say to prospective students who are considering the program you graduated from?

In my last higher-ed focused post, Write Killer Content for Your Higher-Ed Web Site, I gave you a list of my favorite web writing best practices. Use these tips to write your alumni profile so it will be useful to your audience.

The Center for Transforming Student Services has announced its Call for Entries for the 2010-11 Innovation Award in Online Student Services.

 CENTSS is dedicated to helping educational institutions optimize their student services by combining the power of technology with the personal attention of traditional services. High-quality student services are a vital component of student retention and satisfaction, and online services can offer students an effective, easy-access option.

 Because we recognize the importance of student services, we want to give recognition to student services professionals who have used tools, creative strategies, and fresh thinking to produce great results. CENTSS is looking for entries from a variety of student service areas - including student communications, registration, admission, advising, career planning, financial aid, legal services, disability services, and more. Entries are accepted at centss.org/services/innovations.html through July 15, 2010.

Winners will be announced on October 15, 2010, and their innovations will be publicized to the higher education community through press releases and conference presentations. Winners will also receive a plaque to commemorate the award, a CENTSS Innovation Award badge for their website, and a trend report from the CENTSS database.

 For more information about CENTSS, visit www.centss.org .

I recently had the opportunity to present at a conference in Oman about Learner-Centered Approaches in Pre-Service Teaching. My objective was to present the results of a survey of educators around the world about their opinions, experience, and plans for using (or not using) student-centered methodologies in their teaching, posing the question, “What is your experience with student- centered teaching and how does your experience compare with educators around the world?”

I chose the survey tool SurveyMonkey and found it to be very easy to use and customize. They offer a free version that supports up to 10 questions. Although I wanted to keep the survey short, this turned out to be too restrictive, so I opted for the very affordable paid version ($19.95 per month). This version also provided skip logic, which enabled me to redirect people to another set of questions based on the answers they gave.

Some things I learned from creating the survey:

• Don’t just think of your questions, but think of how you want to capture answer data. This will help you choose the best question type when creating the survey. If everything is a fill-in answer, you will get lots of data, but nothing that you can work with to compare, trend, or present in an interesting way.
• If you are willing to share the results of your survey with other people, identify which flavor of Creative Commons license under which you will do so and let potential respondents know.
• A short set of demographic questions in the beginning can be very useful in providing meaningful response reports.  SurveyMonkey (paid version) allows you to both filter and cross reference questions, so consider obtaining demographic data to support these views of the data.
• Provide contact information on the thank-you page (create a thank-you page). SurveyMonkey does not allow you to embed live links or email addresses, but you can provide this information in text on the last page with your thanks.
• Use social media channels to find potential survey respondents. I posted to LinkedIn groups, Google groups, FaceBook groups, teacher forums; communicated on Twitter; and emailed my educator colleagues to promote my survey. I was surprised and pleased to receive responses from educators in 25 countries.

The survey is still available to respondents and I will update my results presentation over the coming months. I posted my results presentation on SlideShare and shared this with all respondents who requested a copy.

This experience was a very good one - I recommend using surveys to broaden your connections, obtain useful information, and learn something in the bargain about your chosen subject.

The First 4,000 Words is a program that Seward Incorporated has developed for first- through fourth-grade students to help build vocabulary for struggling readers and English Language Learners. The web-based lessons use interactive reading activities and games to teach the 4,000 most frequently used English words. The site can be licensed to individual teachers, or to an entire school, for classroom use.

Minnewashta Elementary School, a Minnetonka Public School in Minnesota, has recently adopted The First 4,000 Words for their 370 students in 1st-4th grade. Principal Cindy Andress says, “We have the technology at our fingertips to use an online tool. The First 4,000 Words program will be engaging for students and easy for the staff to set up and use in a way that will make a difference in the life of our students.” Teachers participating in field tests have also reported that the program was engaging, easy to use, and appealing and fun for students.

To introduce The First 4,000 Words to more schools, teachers, and students, Seward Incorporated is now giving away 100 free teacher licenses and 10 free school licenses. Teachers can learn more about the program and enter to win at www.thefirst4000words.com/contest .