Interactive Radio Design and Training for
Ethiopia's Ministry of Education

From 1999-2004 we provided training and design services to improve English language teaching and learning in primary schools through radio-enhanced direct classroom instruction. As veteran designers of Interactive Radio Instruction (IRI), we have been working to improve teacher performance in English teaching through design of countrywide trainings via a training-of- trainers approach. Our work in Ethiopia has been done in collaboration with the Ethiopian Educational Media Agency and under contract to the Academy for Educational Development's BESO project, funded by USAID. In addition to training and materials design, we have helped the Educational Media Agency to transform production from analog to digital. We specified, acquired and installed equipment for three new state-of-the-art digital radio production studios. We also provided trainings for technicians and educational media writers from each of Ethiopia's 11 regional education bureaus, and equipped their studios with new hardware.