National eXtension Initiative

eXtension’s professional development opportunities are open to all Cooperative Extension faculty and staff. We’ll be offering a variety of “30 Minute Sessions” of interest to any and all. Plan to attend any of the MediaWiki sessions to learn more about working in the CoP or Collaborate wikis.

“30 Minute Sessions” – Give us 30 minutes and we’ll teach you something useful! These sessions will be held via Breeze at http://breeze.extension.iastate.edu/learn. Plan to join the session 5 minutes before the starting times at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, 3:00 Central, 2:00 Mountain, 1:00 Pacific, 10:00 AM Hawai’i.

* On Wednesday, September 6th at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, we’re offering a “30 Minute Session” FAQ System – Questions & Answers. Come ask us your questions about the FAQ System, and we’ll try to help!

* On Thursday, September 7th at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, “30 Minute Session” Markup in MediaWiki – Describing the content not the look, including HTML, section headings, bold and italic, linking to articles and images.

* On Tuesday, September 12th at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, a “30 Minute Session” Lists in MediaWiki – bulleted lists, numbered lists, combination lists

* On Tuesday, September 19th at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, a “30 Minute Session” Links in MediaWiki – Linking to articles, images and external resources.

* On Wednesday, September 20th at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, a “30 Minute Session” Feeding frenzy: an introduction to Web syndication. Feeds are everywhere today. Even eXtension is syndicating everything. So what are these things? How do they work? And most importantly, how can you use them to save yourself a ton of time. Come to the Feeding Frenzy to learn how you can start using feeds and change your life forever.

* On Thursday, September 21st at 4:00 PM Eastern Time, a “30 Minute Session” MediaWiki – Questions & Answers – come ask us your questions about doing anything with MediaWiki!

To participate in a session…

1. Five minutes before the start time, go to the Breeze meeting room at http://breeze.extension.iastate.edu/learn.

2. You will be presented with a login screen that has an “Enter as Guest” option. Select that option and click your mouse on the “Click to Enter” button.

3. Enter your first name, your last name, and your institution/university, then click the “Enter” button to join the conference.

4. To hear the audio of the workshop and participate in the Q&A portion of the workshop we will be using a built-in teleconferencing capability of Macromedia’s Breeze conferencing software. Once you login into the meeting you will be presented with the option to enter your call-back phone number. After entering your number you will be automatically called and joined into the audio portion of the Web conference.

If you or a colleague would like to get notices about upcoming professional development sessions offered by eXtension, go to https://lists.extension.org/mailman/listinfo/learn and subscribe to the “Learn” email list.

Join us on for one or more of these sessions in September!!

eXtension has joined the many others in Kentucky and nationwide in mourning the loss of Larry Turner, Associate Dean for Extension and Director of the Cooperative Extension Service at the University of Kentucky as a result of the crash of ComAir Flight 5191 Sunday morning.

The tributes to and recognition of Dr. Turner continue to come in from throughout the country recognizing his long career and contributions to the Cooperative Extension System. eXtension has enjoyed the support of Dr. Turner since its inception and will miss his positive interest in this project.

Though final arrangements are still pending expressions of sympathy can be sent to Dr. Turner’s family:

Lois Turner and Family
3249 Blenheim Way
Lexington, KY 40503

On August 23 at 12:00 Noon Eastern Time (11AM Central, 10AM Mountain, 9AM Pacific), eXtension will host software developer Sam Ruby with a presentation on Atom for Syndication.

Ruby has made significant contributions to many of the Apache Software Foundation’s open source projects, and to the standardization of web feeds via his involvement with the Atom web feed standard and the popular Feed Validator web service.

He currently holds a Senior Technical Staff Member position in the Emerging Technologies Group of IBM. He resides in Raleigh, North Carolina. Find out more at his site on Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Ruby, or read his blog at http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/.

To participate in a session…

1. Ten minutes before the start time, go to the Breeze meeting room at http://breeze.extension.iastate.edu/learn.

2. You will be presented with a login screen that has an “Enter as Guest” option. Select that option and click your mouse on the “Click to Enter” button.

3. Enter your first name, your last name, and your institution/university, then click the “Enter” button to join the conference.

4. This session will use Voice over IP rather than the telephone. To participate in the Q&A portion of the workshop we will be using the chat capability of Macromedia’s Breeze conferencing software.

Please make sure your speakers are on and turned to an appropriate volume. If you do not hear any sound, please check to confirm that your computer speakers are working by playing a sound on your machine. If you still don’t hear any sound, please dial 800-478-0057.

If you or a colleague would like to get notices about upcoming professional development sessions offered by eXtension, go to https://lists.extension.org/mailman/listinfo/learn and subscribe to the “Learn” email list.

An article in Science Daily states that, Establishing Trust Online Is Critical For Online Communication there conclusions were reported in a paper “Swift Trust in Virtual Teams”.

The authors, Starr Roxanne Hiltz and Naomi Rotter, argue that virtual team leaders and on-line teachers need to overcome the potential coldness of the electronic medium and suggest a number of tactics for building “Swift Trust” including:

1. Creating the sense that the leader is present even though they can’t be seen.
2. Establishing on-line dialogue early and quickly.
3. Swiftly and constructively replying to all new users comments and issues.
4. Recognising that the impression gained by users in the first week will have a major influence on future use.
5. Using private emails rather than public forums to scold users who are struggling.
6. These are useful techniques for virtual coaches and virtual team leaders seeking to create more effective virtually networked teams.

In William Issacs book on the “Dialogue and the art of thinking together” he introduces the Four-Player System originally developed by David Kantor. This is a very important technique for supporting real collaborative thinking in teams.

In any productive group thinking dialogue all four of the following roles should be in play:

The roles do not all need to be in play at the same time but need to have been played before the thinking concludes.

The Virtual Team Opportunity Iceberg is a very simple spreadsheet for letting you and your fellow team members instantly spot the potential for improvement in your teams. It’s not intended to be precise – a show of hands will do – but it can be a great team ice-breaker! Just answer these 3 simple questions individually and then aggregate the results for your team.

Q1. EFFECTIVENESS: Do our work teams mostly fulfil their potential?

Q2. SATISFACTION: Do we get as much satisfaction from our work teams as our social groups and voluntary teams?

Q3. TECHNOLOGY: Do virtual technologies noticeably improve our work teams performance?

Probably not with 50 billion e-mails dispatched every day wordwide but the signal to noise ratio is getting pretty bad with The Times, July 15, reporting in ONLINE, ON THE PHONE, ON THE UP that 88% of them are junk. It is really evident when I am using my smartphone, all the junk mail appears on that device.

The Times also reports

• 1% of all emails are virus-infected
• 50 billion e-mails are dispatched every day worldwide – 4 fold growth since 2001
• 32 is the average number of e-mail messages received per person per day
• 37 is the average number of texts a user sends per month – double compared to 2001
• 8 is now the average age at which a child gets a mobile phone in Britain
• 1 million children aged under 10 in Britain — one in three — own a phone

These statistics underscore the growth of instant messaging over email as the new communication channel as people and groups rediscover their messaging.