Just a quick post to mention that Ask an Expert now has a global search field that can be accessed from anywhere in the AaE application. Previously, you needed to view a question detail page to get to the search field. We hope this little change makes AaE easier to use!
eXtension’s first national web conference for 2011 is Wednesday, February 16, for all who wish to be updated on eXtension’s progress and current activities. The web conference will be held at 2:30 p.m. ET at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/teammeeting.
For more information contact Terry Meisenbach at tmeisenbach@extension.org.
A new meeting space, 4-H Leaders Campfire Retreat, is opening this month adjacent to the virtual state fairgrounds in Second Life. This area of the Morrill sim is available for use only by 4-H volunteer leaders and 4-H staff.The eXtension Initiative is providing this group and informal meeting space to 4-H clubs and programs across the globe for networking, learning to use Second Life, program resource sharing and community building.
Access to the space is limited to members of the Second Life group “4-H Club Leaders and Staff.” To request group membership, send an instant message from your avatar to the eXtension SL coordinator, Thynka Little. Your affiliation with the 4-H program must be confirmed through your local 4-H office. Then you will receive your group invitation, and you will be all set to enjoy this new networking and learning space.To register for Second Life, go to http://slurl.com/secondlife/Morrill/151/14/24 and click the “sign up” button. You will arrive at the Virtual State Fair entrance. Take advantage of the new user information located there. The entrance to the 4-H Leaders Campfire Retreat is at Morrill/174/195/24.
Last August the eXtension staff began the process of moving four different websites to a Drupal content management system (CMS) platform. When this move is complete, all the content at about.extension.org/wiki, events.extension.org, faq.extension.org, and cop.extension.org will be housed in this new CMS.
We are pleased to report that one of these websites has now completed this transition. All the content formerly housed at http://about.extension.org/wiki (or as we called it “the About wiki”) is now available at http://create.extension.org/about. So, if you are looking for information about eXtension governance, marketing, content development, professional development, evaluation, institutional teams, or engineering and information technology, come to Create. While you are there, you will also discover some other features which are being made available as part of our standard toolset.
Blogs, as well as forums for the exchange of ideas, are already in full use by the Drupal Implementation Team as it works toward the migration of the the other three sites later this year as well. Be watchful over the next few months for announcements about training on these systems to be offered two or three weeks prior to actual migration of the content.
Five new Communities of Practice identified in 2010 are in the start-up process: Farm Safety and Health, Feral Pigs, Enhancing Rural Communities, Diabetes, and Backyard Small Poultry Flocks. Three Communities of Practice have recently launched public resources: Grapes, Plant Breeding and Genomics, and Drinking Water and Human Health. Additional Communities of Practice we expect to launch soon include Pork Information Gateway (PIG), Freshwater Aquaculture, Rangelands, and Companion Animals.
In January, a group of extension professionals and stakeholders met in Dallas, TX to begin updating eXtension’s Strategic Roadmap. Focus was given to understanding customer expectations with regard to today’s Internet, issues Cooperative Extension faces to compete effectively in the knowledge marketplace, and feedback received from the strategic evaluation conducted last fall. As a result, critical success factors and certain key priorities were identified.
Earlier this month, eXtension staff returned to Dallas for an additional work session developing key priorities and strategies for moving forward, which will be shared with Cooperative Extension directors and administrators at the National Extension Directors and Administrators (NEDA) meeting in March 2011.
The second wave of an environmental scan of Extension programs being conducted for military families has provided the Military Families Partnership with more valuable information. Specifically asking 4-H State Liaisons we now have this additional information about Extension military families programs. An additional 73 programs have been identified bringing our total to 275:
• 15 Community Capacity Building, totaling 51
• 4 Workforce Development, totaling 8
• 53 Family & Youth Development, totaling 189
• 1 Food & Nutrition, totaling 11 total.
Because we targeted 4-H, there are no additional programs to report for Child Care (6 total reported) and Child Personal Finance (10 total reported).
We currently have information about Extension military families programs in 47 states and 53 total land grants. United Tribes Technical College in Alaska was the first 1994 Land Grant reporting an Extension military families program. A total of 235 individual, professional, and organization partners were named in this second wave for a grand total of 1,085 for the two rounds of data collection.
The number of programs being reported shows an impressive network at the local level. eXtension Military Families will continue scanning for Extension military families programs. If you believe your program has not been reported, you can enter information about the program here: http://bit.ly/MFEScan
eXtension is completing the eXtension State and Institutional Reports and the Overall eXtension Metrics Report for the calendar year 2010. They should be available in the very near future. Because of our move to Drupal, the URLs for the reports have changed.
To view the eXtension State and Institutional Reports go to:
http://create.extension.org/node/2308
To view the Overall eXtension Metrics Report go to:
http://create.extension.org/node/2790
We will inform you as soon as the 2010 reports become available.
If you have any questions, please contact Mike Lambur (mike.lambur@extension.org).
February’s free webinars include:
Feb. 10, managing ewes and does (repeats February 17 & 24), http://www.extension.org/events/2071,
Feb. 10 practical food safety for produce farms, http://www.extension.org/events/2179
Feb. 10 using social media in small businesses, http://www.extension.org/events/2062
Feb. 17, managing ewes and does, http://www.extension.org/events/2072,
Feb. 18 resolving conflict in dairy teams, http://www.extension.org/events/1818
Feb. 18 the changing management of nutrients in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, http://www.extension.org/events/2200
Feb. 22 protecting your barn and horses from disease, http://www.extension.org/events/2087
Feb. 23 a program to help preschoolers develop healthy eating habits, http://www.extension.org/events/1988
Feb. 24, managing ewes and does, http://www.extension.org/events/2073
Feb. 24 using market data for fruit and vegetable commerce, http://www.extension.org/events/2111.
A news release has all the details on time and how to get details to join the webinars. See http://www.extension.org/pages/Learn_from_February_Free_Educational_Webinars_from_eXtension_and_Land-grant_Universities
eXtension posted 226 news articles from Cooperative Extension writers and editors at 38 universities during January. Thanks to the experts in content and writing for good news releases.
Releases by institution:
16 each–University of Illinois and North Carolina State University
14 each–Oklahoma State University and North Dakota State University
13 each–Michigan State University and Kansas State University
11–University of Missouri
10 each–Texas AgriLife Extension and Mississippi State University
8–Iowa State University
7–University of California
4 each–University of Nebraska, University of Florida, University of Connecticut, University of Arkansas, University of Arizona, and Penn State University
3 each–University of Kentucky, University of Georgia, South Dakota State University, and Purdue University
2 each–Washington State University, University of Wyoming, University of Vermont, University of New Hampshire, University of Delaware, Ohio State University, Louisiana State University and Alabama Cooperative Extension
1 each–Virginia Tech, University of Tennessee, University of Minnesota, University of Idaho, University of Hawaii, Oregon State University, Cornell University and Colorado State University
31–Other sources
3–Original releases
Releases by Community:
25–Families, food and fitness
22–Personal finance
12 each–Corn and soybean production and Farm energy
10–Beef cattle
9 each–Family caregiving; Gardens, lawns and landscapes; and Horses
8–Blueberries
7 each–Dairy and Parenting
6 each—Cooperatives, Home energy, Marine fisheries,and Climate forests woodlands
5 each–Animal manure management, Entrepreneurs and their communities, Organic agriculture, Companion animals, and Plant breeding genomics
4–Geospatial technology
3 each–Child care, Cotton, Diversity, equity and inclusion, Drinking water and human health, Extension master gardener, Grapes, Pest management in and around structures, and Wood energy
2 each–Bee health, Community planning and zoning, Goats, Youth Science, engineering, and technology, Wildlife damage management, Swine, and Rangelands
1 each–Food safety, Wildfire, Freshwater aquaculture, Omega-3, and Invasive species
226 TOTAL