National eXtension Initiative

It’s late but do use on your news site if you can. Jill Heemstra from the Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Center received information late from presenters and asked we help get the information out.

The news release is at http://www.extension.org/pages/Disposal_of_Cattle_Carcasses_is_Topic_of_June_19_eXtension_Webcast

Or alternately, it’s the top news release in the animal manure management resource,

http://www.extension.org/animal+manure+management/news

Lynette Spicer, Virtual News Room

This past Spring eXtension created a task force to study opportunities and issues around the eXtension Ask an Expert service. The task force conducted four different studies as a part of its deliberations:

• A study of the public users of the service
• Focus groups of specialists, agents, educators, and volunteers
• Interviews with Directors and Administrators
• An analysis of system logs and clientele goal fulfillment

The objectives of the task force were to answer the following questions:

• were people receiving meaningful/useful answers to the question they asked?
• were the answers provided sufficient to solve the problem the question addressed?
• did the public perceive that the answers provided were based on scientifically defensible information?
• were the answers provided quickly enough to affect the resolution?
• were the answers written in a way to be easily understood by a non-scientists/lay audience?
• were people satisfied with using the AAE service?
• did the people understood/realize that the answers were being provided from non-biased university sources?

The report detailing the findings and decisions of the task force were presented to the eXtension Governing Committee on June 4th. The full report is available for download: Ask an Expert Task Force: Findings and Decisions (PDF 900k).

Results and a discussion of the finding will be presented on June 25 from 2:00-3:00p Eastern. To join the discussion come to: http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn.

For more information contact the Task Force Chair Kevin Gamble, kevin.gamble@extension.org

To date, eXtension has been developing new Communities of Practice (CoP) through three approaches: 1) voluntary applications from content areas, 2) needs-based calls to Extension Directors/Administrators and, 3) through successful proposals submitted through various CSREES competitive grant programs (e.g., Specialty Crops Research Initiative (SCRI), Agriculture Food Research Initiative (AFRI), etc.).

In an effort to expand our approaches to identify appropriate CoP’s that are relevant to the Extension system, we conducted a national survey of Extension field faculty/educators. The purpose of the survey was to engage all Extension field faculty/educators in collecting issues/topics they feel may be appropriate for developing new CoPs.

Responses were received from 983 individuals. The data is currently being analyzed and will be available soon. There will be an overall summary, as well as regional summaries.

If you have questions, please get in touch with Mike Lambur (mike.lambur@extension.org).

The eXtension Governing Committee has approved a draft policy to support the acceptance of non-CES institutions as state affiliate members. The draft policy is being sent to directors and administrators for a final review and feedback. The new policy supports membership in eXtension based upon an existing partnership with local (state) CES organization(s), strength of content and services to be contributed, payment of an annual assessment and acceptance of contributor agreements. To learn more the draft policy please visit:

http://about.extension.org/wiki/State_Affiliate_Membership.

At the October 20-23, 2009 National eXtension Conference eXtension will recognize a high performing Community of Practice (CoP) and individuals who have contributed significantly to the success of eXtension in addressing the needs of Communities of Interest. (CoI) Awards include:
• Outstanding Community of Practice Award: a competitive award for a high performing CoP that excels at being responsive to the needs of a CoI. The selected CoP will receive $5,000, which will be added to their CoP budget to support activities.
• Community of Practice Achievement Award: a competitive award that up to three individual members of CoPs may receive based upon their exceptional performance in meeting the needs of Communities of Interest. An award of up to $1,500 will be made to support the individual’s work on behalf of the CoP.
• CoP Partnership Award: a competitive award will recognize partner organizations with which a CoP has collaborated on content and/or services for their site. The partner may also have provided financial support for CoP activities in addition to content development/contribution.
• eXtension Champion Award: an award made by the eXtension Governing Committee to recognize individual contributions and outstanding service to eXtension.
A formal announcement is being sent to members of eXtension Communities of Practice with nominations due by August 1, 2009.

Few Americans are exempt from the stresses of the national financial and economic crisis. The Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP) Program Committee has initiated a collaborative effort to mobilize Extension’s capabilities to provide relevant, community-based educational programs on a national scale to complement what is already available at http://www.extension.org. The project will involve the content areas of individual and family financial and stress management, farm and ranch financial and risk management, community economic development, and youth development. eXtension is contributing to the initiative by providing communication and marketing leadership, as well as and technical support. A new collaborative workspace has been established at: http://collaborate.extension.org/wiki/Managing_In_Tough_Times and in cooperation with North Carolina State University, the University of Minnesota and CYFERNet, a MiTTNet searchable directory is being developed. The new database is to be made available for states to enter relevant programs and resources later this summer.

eXtension’s professional development opportunities are open to all Cooperative Extension faculty, staff and employees. No pre-registration. Please share this announcement with others and encourage them to pick a topic and try it out!

SPECIAL TOPICS

eXtension Ask an Expert Task Force Findings and Decisions

June 25 at 2:00-3:00 p.m. ET
* Presented by: Kevin Gamble, eXtension
* http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn

In the Spring of 2009 eXtension initiated a pre-hypothesis complexity-based approach to examine the various factors that affect users’ perceptions of the Ask An Expert service. The research looked at the public’s expectations of the service, and set out to answer the following questions:

* Were people receiving meaningful/useful answers to the question they asked?
* Were the answers provided sufficient to solve the problem the question addressed?
* Did the public perceive that the answers provided were based on scientifically defensible information?
* Were the answers provided quickly enough to affect the resolution?
* Were the answers were written in a way to be easily understood by a non-scientists/lay audience?
* Were people satisfied with using the AAE service?
* Did the people understood/realize that the answers were being provided from non-biased university sources?

Join us for this special session where the results from this study will be shared. If you are trying to serve Extension clientele through Ask an Expert this is a must attend session. If you aren’t actively involved with using the Ask an Expert service you should still find this session of interest. It will directly address the issues, opportunities, and challenges of serving online audiences in an era of instant communication.

This session will be broadcast and use your computers speakers for audio, not your phone. Audience interaction will be done using the built-in chat capabilities. This session will be held at our Web Conferencing Center at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn.

Mixed Reality Mixer–Live From ACE-NETC in Des Moines!
* Monday, June 8, 8:00-9:30 pm Central
* in Second Life at K-State’s Wildcat2 sim

What a great time to try Second Life, with some serious monkey business at a social mashup of real life and virtual reality. Join eXtension colleagues from around the country partying together with you live from the ACE-NETC conference in Des Moines at the Monkey Shines Pub in Second Life. Your entertainment starts in Des Moines with DJ Jen Noel and local musician Bryan Baker (IN SL Kaklick Martin) streaming music into Second Life. Next, popular blues artist Tony Uriba ( IN SL Tone Uriza) plays for us live from Tucson Arizona, with Marx Loeb (IN SL Speelo Snook) on the drums. Read about the musicians on their websites http://ka-klick.com and http://www.bigdaddybluesinsecondlife.com. Free sock monkey avatars and commemorative surfboards for all! Location is K-State’s Wildcat2 sim at
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wildcat%20Two/128/128/2
Questions? luann.phillips@extension.org or in SL Thynka Little.

30-MINUTE SESSIONS
This month we are offering 30-Minute Sessions on a several topics around Ask an Expert and part 2 of FriendFeed. Give us 30 minutes and we’ll teach you something useful! These sessions will be held at our Web Conferencing Center at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn and your telephone. Plan to join the session 5 minutes before the starting time. Each session will be held at 2:00 Eastern Time (1:00 p.m. CT, Noon MT, 11:00 a.m. PT, 10:00 a.m. AT; 8:00 a.m. HT) unless otherwise noted.

* June 11 at 2:00 p.m. ET, a 30-minute session on How to Answer Ask an Expert Questions, by Beth Raney, eXtension. With expertise in so many areas, extension gets asked many questions! More and more are coming from the public via eXtension’s Ask an Expert form on www.extension.org and through Ask eXtension widgets. This session will take you step by step through answering questions, and some of the guidelines to keep in mind. (For all Extension)

* June 16 at 2:00 p.m. ET, a 30-minute session on The Ask eXtension Widget
- Aaron Hundley, eXtension Software Engineer. How to use the Ask eXtension widget to receive and answer questions directly from your county Extension web site or Extension-related blog. This widget adds question-asking capabilities to your site, but uses the power of the eXtension Ask an Expert and FAQ systems to assist you in answering. Take questions from your clients, and use the 40,000 questions in the FAQ system to assist you in providing a timely and accurate answer. Check out the widget-tracking feature that allows you to name the widget and monitor questions coming from your site. Also learn about the widget routing capability that will allow you to have questions routed to you from your widgets. This session will introduce you to the tool, show you the latest features developed, and will discuss what is necessary to begin using it immediately in your own county sites and blogs with helpful tips. (For all Extension)

* June 18 at 2:00 p.m. ET, a 30-minute session on Discussion and Q/A of the Ask eXtension Widget, by Aaron Hundley, eXtension Software Engineer. If you are currently participating in answering questions that come from any of the Ask eXtension Widgets, this will be a great discussion to be involved in. This session will focus on answering questions that you might have on the Ask eXtension Widget or the Ask an Expert system in general. We’ll share tips and recommendations for using the Ask an Expert system and discuss surrounding topics. (For all Extension)

* June 23 at 2:00 p.m. ET, a 30-minute session on Making FriendFeed your
Friend: Part 2 by Kevin Gamble, eXtension. This follow-on session will introduce you to FriendFeed’s most powerful features: lists, filtering, advanced search, groups, and those extra add-ons that make its use so enticing: widgets, book-marketlets, and cross-posting to other social networking sites. See the Recording for part 1 at
http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/p85121070/. (for all Extension)

OTHER SESSIONS
* June 24 at 2:00-3:00 p.m. ET, meet-up of Ask an Expert Question Wranglers.
Want to help people find answers to their questions? Work with your Extension colleagues from across the country? Help to serve Extension clientele in a new and exciting way? Become an eXtension Question Wrangler! We have opportunities for our public to ask questions through our “Ask an Expert” system, but in order to ramp-up this effort we need good people to volunteer to help make this a reality. If you think this is something you’d like to do please join us to talk about how we can handle this together. (For all who have signed up as Question Wranglers… or to sign up, go to https://people.extension.org/communities/38 and Join) This session will be held at our Web Conferencing Center at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn.

SECOND LIFE
Second Life is an immersive 3-D virtual environment, inhabited by over a million users from all over the world. You can learn to use Second Life to meet with colleagues, to create 3-D models that would be too expensive or impossible to make in reality, to provide guest speakers for a real life group, to teach using role play or group problem solving, to make content in your subject area available to a worldwide audience. This is an emerging and transformative technology, much like the early days of the Internet, and is expected to change the way most people experience web content within the next five years.

In Second Life, you will find that eXtension has a virtual fairgrounds, a model county office, projects in development on assistive technology, turf grass, pest management, and more. In Teen Second Life, we have Bailey Island available for any 4-H educator to use for programming. Each month eXtension hosts several community events in Second Life. It is best to spend two or three hours orienting yourself to the Second Life environment before attending an event. You should know how to walk, sit, chat, use voice, and teleport.

Instructions for entering Second Life are here:
http://collaborate.extension.org/wiki/Cooperative_Extension_Second_Life_
Educators

LuAnn Phillips, Second Life educator, is available to assist you, and can be reached at luann.phillips@extension.org or by instant message to Thynka Little in Second Life.

Please consider joining the Facebook group “Cooperative Extension Second Life”.

June Second Life Events:

June 8, Mixed Reality Mixer, 8-9:30 p.m. Central (6-7:30 p.m. SL time) Kaklick Martin and Tone Uriza with special guest Speelo Snook. Live from the Monkey Shines Pub on K-State’s Wildcat2 in Second Life http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wildcat%20Two/128/128/2

June 12, Second Life Meetup — 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. SL time (Pacific), 2:00-3:30 p.m. ET. Meet at the Virtual State Fair, Morrill Island, in Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Morrill/165/136/29 Mentoring for new users

June 18, Second Life Roundtable 2:30-3:30 p.m. ET — web conference, meet at
http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn. Making the Case for a Second
Life project, what makes sense to your boss and funders?

June 26, Second Life Meetup — 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. SL time (Pacific), 2:00-3:30 p.m. ET. Meet at the Virtual State Fair, Morrill Island, in Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Morrill/165/136/29 Make a talking sign.

Add these dates & topics to your calendar, and plan to join us on for one or more of these sessions in June!!

TO PARTICIPATE in any of the sessions held in our Web Conferencing Center…

1. Five minutes before the start time, go to our Web Conferencing Center meeting room at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn.

2. You will be presented with a login screen that has an “Enter as Guest” option.

3. Enter your first name; your last name, and your institution/university, then click the “Enter Room” 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 Adobe’s Connect Pro conferencing software. Once you log into the meeting you will be presented with the option to enter your call-back number, your phone will automatically be called. After entering your number you will be automatically called and joined into the audio portion of the Web conference on your phone.

EMAIL LIST:
If you or a colleague would like to get notices about upcoming professional development sessions offered by eXtension, go to https://people.extension.org/communities/learn and Click “Join Community.”

RECORDINGS:
Recordings of many past professional development sessions can be found at the main eXtension wiki at http://about.eXtension.org/wiki and scroll down under Professional Development heading and find “Recordings of eXtension Professional Development Sessions”, or search on the word Recordings.

Looking forward to having you join us to learn something new in June!!

In May, 309 news releases from 33 states were posted for 31 communities of practice. This is the largest number of releases posted since the beginning of the eXtension Virtual News Room. Distribution of releases by Community of Practice and Institution are:

Articles by community of practice

Horticulture–43
Corn, soybeans–33
Disasters–29
Personal Finance–27
Beef Cattle–22
Parenting–17
Fitness–14
Dairy Cattle–12
Horses–11
Family Caregiving –9
Entrepreneurship–9
Science–7
Ag Energy–7
Wildfires–7
Swine–6
Food Safety–6
Drinking Water–6
Small Meat Processors–5
Organic Production–5
Wildlife Damage Management–5
Bee Health–5
Diversity–4
Urban Integrated Pest Management–3
Land Use Planning–3
Freshwater Aquaculture–3
Cotton Industry–3
Small Companion Animals–2
Goats–2
Animal Manure Management–2
Fire Ants–1
Ag Law–1

Articles by source

University of Illinois–27
Iowa State University–24
North Dakota State University–20
University of Arkansas–20
Kansas State University–17
University of Nebraska–16
Ohio State University–14
Oklahoma State and Langston University–13
Mississippi State University–12
Texas AgriLife Extension–12
South Dakota State University–11
University of Minnesota–10
Louisiana State University–9
Utah State University–9
Montana State University–8
Oregon State University–8
University of Missouri–8
University of Kentucky–7
Alabama Cooperative Extension–6
University of Nevada–6
Clemson University–4
Purdue University–4
University of California–4
University of Georgia–4
University of Idaho–4
Penn State University–3
University of Maine–3
Virginia Cooperative Extension–3
Michigan State University–2
University of New Hampshire–2
University of Wisconsin–2
Washington State University–2
New Mexico State University–1
Other sources–11
Original releases—3

TOTAL–309

The purpose of the eXtension fellowship program is to provide opportunities for qualified individuals, within or outside of Cooperative Extension, to work on a temporary basis through either sabbatical leave or other contractual arrangements with eXtension on specific projects that contribute to the Initiative as well as to the individual. We had originally accepted applications whenever they came in. However, because of an increase in Fellowship applications, we have decided to establish a deadline so all applications can be given equal consideration.

The program will operate on a calendar year basis (i.e., January – December). The deadline for applications will be October 31 for the next calendar year. Once all proposals are received, they will be reviewed and selections will be made based on proposal merit, contribution to eXtension, and available funding.

For more information, please see the eXtension Fellowship application information at:

http://about.extension.org/wiki/eXtension_Fellowship_Program

If you have questions, please contact Mike Lambur at mike.lambur@extension.org

These reports are now available at:

http://about.extension.org/wiki/eXtension_State_and_Institutional_Reports

We will be updating them in July. We will also be generating an overall eXtension metrics report and an eXtension scholarship metrics report in the near future.

If you have questions, please contact Mike Lambur at mike.lambur@extension.org