Seward Incorporated

From Seward’s office in Lilongwe, Malawi, David reports on part of the development of continuous professional development (CPD) workshops in literacy. This post provides a brief overview of the reality of education in Malawi, and the hope that comes from rich human resources in the country.

All of the holiday gift packaging got me thinking about resuability in international development and education. Can we gift wrap aid packages to be reused as learning material? And what about reusable learning objects? Are Open Educational Resources and Reusable Learning Objects the way for international development?

As more and more tablets come on the market, the prices have dropped considerably. With the soon to be released Aakash tablet by the UK-based Datawind, the affordability of tablets for education development projects is now a reality.

Let me start this post by saying, unlike many of my co-workers, I am not a big gamer.  But I agree with Brian that there is lot of value in video games for education. Educational games have even been recently discussed in the field of education technology for development.
With that in mind, I wanted [...]

One of the primary focuses of international development agencies around the world is education. As the old Chinese proverb says, “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” Simply put, education provides a solid foundation for a person to [...]

Educational researchers and instructional designers have been calling for more collaborative practices in classrooms around the world. They suggest that collaborative learning has the power to move students from mere passive consumers of information to active creators of knowledge. On top of this, it can help prepare them for their future work. In the developing world, this is especially an issue, since those lucky enough to gain access to higher education are often graduating with few transferable skills. Sure, they can memorize and take tests well, but do they know how to work in teams to solve problems?

I was recently in Malawi, Africa to kick off a small pilot test of using alternative technologies, in this case MP3 players, as a delivery vehicle for teacher training and continued professional development. In Malawi, like many other developing countries, a very small percentage of the population has access to electricity through an organized electrical [...]

One of the great challenges in the developing world is finding sustainable methods for improving teacher training. Two of the most common methods in use today for training teachers are Cascade Training and Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI).  While both of these methods have contributed to long-term improvements, they each have some inherent drawbacks and limitations.
Cascade [...]

Over the past 10 years, Seward has had the opportunity to work in a number of developing countries around the world to assist in planning for and implementing eLearning initiatives. During that time, we’ve seen initiatives succeed and we’ve seen initiatives struggle. Based on our experience, here are some best practices that can help your [...]

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. How to reach such a wide audience in a short time on a shoestring?