Carmen Ward

Background

About Carmen Ward

I began my career in a conventional classroom, where I spent two years teaching English at the high school from which I graduated. After my first child was born, I was lucky enough to be able to stay at home with her (and eventually her younger sister as well). As thankful as I was to be able to care for my children full-time, leaving teaching was incredibly difficult - like having a part of myself amputated. Fortunately, after 5 years at home, I took a chance and applied for a part-time job assisting students in a computer-based training classroom. Within 2 years, I was managing the classroom and 3 employees. Eventually, a different opportunity became available within the same company to act as a production assistant for a team of instructional designers, project managers and developers responsible for developing online occupational health and safety training lessons. In my capacity as a production assistant, I am responsible for reviewing and editing storyboards for lessons covering a wide variety of safety topics - everything from hand and power tool safety, to flu and illness transmission prevention, to high-voltage electrical utility work safety. I must make sure the content of these storyboards adheres to a strict set of conventions and contains no grammatical or content errors or inconsistencies. Once the storyboards are developed into online lessons, it is my job to review the lessons and ensure they match the storyboards and do not contain any errors prior to their release to the public. In addition to these duties, I create narration scripts, review and edit audio narration files, and make edits in flash, html and xml files. On the project-management side of things, I manage the translation of my company's lessons into a wide variety of foreign languages, as well as the resolution of customer-reported content issues within our course offerings.