National eXtension Initiative

The recent fire and explosion in West, Texas garnered national news attention. Behind the scenes, our Cooperative Extension peers contributed in part to the recovery. The following is a message that Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service employees received from Director Doug Steele:

“Put simply, the emergency response to the tragic explosion in West, Texas, required extraordinary efforts. As the recovery began, many of you helped on a personal level and others also served in official roles, as part of state and county emergency management plans—all doing exceptional work to help friends, family, neighbors and fellow Texans in need. Although I can’t recount all your efforts following this catastrophic event, I would like to acknowledge the following:

· County Extension agents and staff in McLennan, Hill and surrounding counties, who helped wherever they could, in addition to their support role for animal issues, public information, and ongoing educational needs during community, business and family recovery.

· Our 4-H and Youth Development Program, which activated statewide to collect, pack and ship basic supplies to first responders and affected families, as well as to raise more than $5,600 in monetary donations.

· Texas A&M AgriLife Communications for assistance with media inquiries; the Texas Extension Disaster Education Network (EDEN) for elevating relevant educational material on its website; Mr. Ron Woolley for serving as agency liaison to the Texas Department of Public Safety Disaster District Committee; and Dr. Andy Vestal, our Extension director of emergency management, for providing reference information for a USDA-NIFA and White House teleconference on April 18.

At such a difficult time, the importance of each person’s part simply cannot be overstated. Thank you to all who helped and continue to help the residents of West.”

According to Suzanne Deatherage, assistant agency director-communications, other members of the Texas A&M University System also supported West, a community just 107 miles north of the flagship campus.

Linnette Goard

Cindy Bond

Reduce health care costs. Increase wellness and productivity of employees. That seems to be today’s mantra for every industry and organization but that was the goal in 2006 when the wellness coordinator for the County Commissioners Association of Ohio asked Ohio State University Extension for help in lowering health care costs and having healthier, more productive employees.

Since that beginning, OSU Extension educators have developed lessons, a blog, an email challenge and a Facebook page to help people live healthier.

The OSU Extension Live Healthy Live Well Workplace Wellness Program works to
• encourage healthy lifestyles through research-based workplace programs,
• develop new or strengthen existing partnerships,
• empower individuals and communities to make informed choices about healthy behaviors, and
• use online communications to reach busy adults.

Linnette Goard, Assistant Professor and Field Specialist for Food Safety, Selection and Management, and Cindy Bond, Extension Educator in Community Development with Ohio State University Extension, shared their methods and results at the Priester Extension Health Conference last month.

Lunch and Learn Lessons
Working with the County Commissioners Association of Ohio, OSU Extension developed an online health needs questionnaire. The survey results were used to develop lessons for onsite lunch and learn workshops. The lessons were peer reviewed by out of state reviewers. The lessons covered topics including
Physical Activity: A Good Fit!
Stress Management
Maintaining a Healthy Weight
Cooking for One or Two
Planning Healthy Meals for Meetings

Wellness Challenge Started in 2007
There are three wellness challenge periods (fall, Thanksgiving to New Year’s, and spring) each year. Two short email messages go out each week on themes such as eat more vegetables and fruits, cut out fast food and consider your portion sizes.

“The challenge is a new way to link face-to-face classes with technology so people get the information from the lessons via email,” said Goard. Extension educators promote the challenge at all their programs, through the university at large and at national Extension events so the challenge includes people outside Ohio. In 2012, the challenge had more than 1,100 participants per session.

Challenge participants survey responses
94% Learned new information
98% Recommend participating in an online challenge to others
54% Lost weight, 42% maintained current weight
Respondents lost 406 pounds in Zero Weight Gain Challenge –and the goal was just maintenance!

Blog, Facebook
In November 2010 the blog, Live Healthy Live Well, went online. The blog, with twice weekly posts, averaged 55 views per day. In September 2011, the initiative added a Facebook page, go.osu.edu/PRP.

“I went to the first eXtension conference in Louisville,” Goard said. “eXtension opened my eyes to technology that I didn’t even know about. When I came home and talked to my (then) teenage children, they encouraged me to try the technology. We started this program with six OSU Extension educators. Other educators got excited about this and now we have 16 working on it. This is really exciting. We have enough people to create subgroups to work on the different aspects.”

The Wood Products community of practice provides research-based information on the design, production, management, marketing and environmental impact of wood products. It’s at http://www.extension.org/wood_products.

“Our goal is to educate practitioners and communities by disseminating key knowledge in the effective and efficient use of forest products,” said Henry Quesada, assistant professor at Virginia Tech. Through frequently asked questions and the Ask an Expert feature, the new web site connects wood products academicians with farmers, wood enthusiasts and small businesses that are interested in the use of wood as a truly sustainable material.”

Featured articles include:
• Basics of Cross Laminated Timber (CLT)
• Marketing for Wood Products Companies
• Carbon Impacts of Wood Products
• Integrating Lean Manufacturing Techniques and Energy Saving Practices Boost Productivity and Cuts Costs
• Design and Operation of a Solar-Heated Dry Kiln

The new content compliments other resources on eXtension including forest farming; climate, forest and woodlands; farm energy and wood energy. Efficient use of wood products has a positive impact in the management of the forest and woodlands. Many farmers own forests that can generate new value-added products as well as wood products residues or byproducts that can be used to generate clean and sustainable energy.

Experts from across the country contribute to the site and respond to current and future issues on the use of wood. The leaders and contributors for the wood products content include Adam Taylor from the University of Tennessee, Omar Espinoza from the University of Minnesota, Phillip Mitchell from North Carolina State University, and Brian Bond, Henry Quesada, Earl Kline, and Robert Smith from Virginia Tech.

The State of Nevada requires employees to take mandatory training courses upon employment and retake them every few years. The courses had to be completed using specific state computers or by attending in-person classes.

Much of Nevada is rural, and therefore it was difficult for rural county employees to complete the trainings. Seeing a need, Vicki Jones, a University of Nevada Cooperative Extension employee, wanted easier access for county employees. Jones worked with the Nevada Department of Personnel to get the department’s Moodle-based training courses duplicated on eXtension at http://campus.extension.org/.

Now all of Nevada’s Cooperative Extension employees as well as all employees of Nevada’s higher-education institutions have online access to the trainings.

Each of the state’s 10 institutions currently using these courses is provided a unique enrollment key. Nevada administrators can create reports for individual institutions. Each institution receives a quarterly report of those who have completed final exams for the various courses and received a certificate of completion.

Nevada has eight of these training courses on eXtension’s website. There have been more than 4,000 certificates issued since 2010.

Nevada’s organizational training courses are specifically for State of Nevada employees, but there are likely components of these courses that would apply to employees of almost any institution.

For information about how Moodle might contribute to your educational efforts, contact the eXtension Moodle help desk at moodlehelp@extension.org. You may also contact Chad Waters at University of Nevada Cooperative Extension, watersc@unce.unr.edu, for additional information about the Nevada courses.

Over 25 different learning events in May are listed at Learn.extension.org for your own learning or for you to share with your audiences, and more will be added! By participating in an event you can extend your knowledge and keep more up-to-date on conversations in your areas of expertise and interest.

Everyone is welcome to participate in the events listed at Learn (learn.extension.org). Sign in with your eXtensionID to Follow to get notifications and plan to attend. Use each session’s unique URL to share links to online events in your area of expertise so that others can learn with you. Encourage your customers to also sign in with their Facebook, Twitter or Gmail account to Follow, and plan to attend. Additional sessions may be added at any time, so check back to see what’s new, or add your web-based sessions.

Popular topics in May include…
“Celiac Disease and Gluten Related Disorders – What’s the Difference?” was live on May 1. Gluten-free diets and lifestyles are being promoted in books such as Wheat Belly and in media ‘talk shows’. But who should be buying and eating gluten-free foods? Has the prevalence of Celiac Disease increased significantly in recent years? Can a person be gluten sensitive but not have Celiac disease? If someone in my family learns they need to avoid gluten, what do I need to know and do Offered by the Families Foods and Fitness CoP. Watch the Recording!https://learn.extension.org/events/1009

“Paying for Post-Secondary Education Expenses – Part 1″ on May 21 and “Paying for Educational Expenses and the GI Bill – Part 2″ on May 23. This 2-part series on paying for educational expenses is offered by the Military Families Learning Network.

Go to Learn (learn.extension.org) to find more sessions related to 4-H, Backyard Flocks, Capacity Building, Companion Animals, Creating Healthy Communities, Disasters, Energy, Entrepreneurship, eXtension, Families Foods Fitness, Farm Safety & Health, Fire Ants, Home Energy, Immigration Reform, Leadership, Livestock and Poultry Environmental Learning Centers, Military Families – Child Care, Military Families – Family Caregiving, Military Families – Personal Finance, Network Literacy, Volunteerism, Wildlife Damage Management, Backyard Flocks, and Youth.

Questions and Comments? Contact Beth Raney at beth.raney@extension.org. If you have web-based events for which you would like more participation, please add it at Learn.extension.org.

The Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University is partnering with eXtension and the Military Families Learning Network to help equip communities to better serve military service members, veterans and their families with the How to Help Military & Veteran Families series. The Military Families Learning Network will assist in the national promotion and distribution of the How to Help series and provide opportunities for interaction through online social channels as well as coordinate and offer professional development associated with the series topics.

Military families can face especially intense challenges. Along with separation come additional stressors, such as concerns for the safety of a deployed loved one and the well-being of those left behind. When service members return from deployment the challenges don’t end. Families may encounter mixed feelings, and these emotions can make reunions both joyful and trying. Whether service members are single, living alone or with parents, married with or without children, they rely on support networks to help ease the anxieties involved. Assistance from a wide variety of support networks is critical and can have a lasting impact on service members and those closest to them. The hope is to help increase understanding of the unique stresses, obstacles and opportunities that often accompany military service and therefore strengthen communities by building their capacity to better support the military families within them.

The How to Help Military & Veteran Families series is a new set of publications developed by the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University. There are 11 issues in the series. Each issue provides evidence-based guidance on how a particular interest group can help military and veteran families, with short, practical suggestions and links that point to additional resources. Each issue has been carefully reviewed both by subject matter experts and military family support organizations.

The 11 issues are:
• Issue 1. Medical Professionals
• Issue 2. Extended Families, Friends & Neighbors
• Issue 3. Faith-based Communities
• Issue 4. Early Childhood Educators
• Issue 5. Teachers
• Issue 6. Employers
• Issue 7. Higher Education
• Issue 8. Financial Institutions
• Issue 9. Legal Professionals
• Issue 10. First Responders
• Issue 11. Mental Health Providers

Jessica Wright, Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel & Readiness (invited) and Dr. Catherine Wotecki, Under Secretary of Agriculture for Research, Education and Economics, will host a launch of the How to Help Military & Veteran Families series on April 15, 2013 at The Army Navy Club in Washington, D.C.

Look for the How to Help Military & Veteran Families series and associated resources at the Military Families Learning Network after the national launch. (http://www.extension.org/militaryfamilies; http://blogs.extension.org/militaryfamilies/; https://learn.extension.org/)

National media outlets featured and cited eXtension on a number of topics in March 2013.

Child care – 2 mentions
Climate, forests and woodlands – 1 mention
Corn and soybean production – 1 mention
Dairy cattle – 4 mentions
Families, food and fitness — 1 mention
Feral hogs – 2 mentions
Imported fire ants – 2 mentions
Organic agriculture – 2 mentions
Personal finance – 1 mention
Plant breeding and genomics – 4 mentions
Small meat processing – 2 mentions
eXtension – 4 mentions

If you know of other eXtension mentions in national media outlets or have suggestions of potential national news stories, contact Lynette Spicer at lynette.spicer@eXtension.org.

The mentions with links to media are posted at http://create.extension.org/node/95597 .

The 2013 Priester National Extension Health Conference is just days away but the chatter … make that Twitter … began last month connecting participants and engaging them.

The Priester National Extension Health Conference, named in honor of the late USDA National Program Leader Jeanne M. Priester, draws professionals involved in health research, education and policy from the Cooperative Extension System, health care, federal organizations, private nonprofit organizations, schools and higher education. The conference is April 16 and 17 at Oregon State University in Corvallis with preconference activities on April 15.

Marissa Stone, a coordinator for the eXtension Creating Healthy Communities community of practice (CoP), set up a 12-session Tweet chat series – 60 minute conversations on Twitter – to generate conversation around the topics to be explored at the conference, before the conference. The chats began March 7 and conclude April 15. Each tweet chat highlights one topic. Some chats build on each other while others initiate new topics. All pertain to health literacy. Tweet Reach (http://tweetreach.com/), an online application used to determine the reach of a #hashtag (tag used to aggregate tweets) is used to create reports from the last 50 tweets of each chat.

“After each chat, I create a report of original tweets, retweets and replies and send to all members of the Priester Planning Committee and the Creating Healthy Communities CoP,” Stone said. “The reports help educators understand the value of using technology to extend their reach. To date the number of impressions (similar to a magazine ad) per chat ranges from 25,000 to 28,000. The number of people (actual Twitter accounts) reached runs between 2,500 and 2,900 for each chat.”

The chat series was designed to facilitate communication between attendees and presenters. According to Stone, success will be determined by the size of the health literacy learning network made up of those who connect and communicate via tweets and other posts during the conference.

“I measure success of a social media strategy very differently than most,” Stone said. “Social media applications can encourage and enable communication. The reach of a message or the return on investment (ROI) of a strategy means nothing if the conversation fails to continue beyond the specified event. If attendees can learn the value of communicating in online spaces the same way they communicate in face-to-face situations, the reach of Extension’s message becomes limitless. When I help one person learn to use a social media tool, and later observe or engage in their ongoing virtual conversations, I feel the social media strategy was successful.”

Marissa Stone is an information technologist and social media strategist. She has been on Twitter for five years and sent more than 25,000 tweets. She is working on PhD in computer technology in education at Nova Southeastern University in Davie, Florida. She has a master’s in family and consumer sciences from the University of Georgia. Stone currently lives in Plano, Texas. Check out her biography.

This is the third Community of Practice Stone has worked with on eXtension. She has been a leader of the Just in Time Parenting Community of Practice since 2006. She has also worked with eXtension’s Military Families Learning Network.

The Creating Healthy Communities Community of Practice focuses on
• improving the health of vulnerable populations,
• developing community engagement and leadership skills,
• fostering informed health policy decisions and
• advancing healthy community environments.

The Priester National Extension Health Conference website is at http://blogs.extension.org/priesterconference/. The conference program, speakers and other details are on Lanyrd, http://lanyrd.com/2013/priesterhealth/. Connect with the conference on Twitter @PriesterHealth and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/PriesterHealth.

This month features the reopening of the Food Safety Inspector Game, located adjacent to the Virtual State Fair in Second Life. The game teaches basic food safety concepts in a commercial setting, and was originally piloted by Kristin Woods of Alabama Cooperative Extension. Visitors play the role of food safety inspector, locate and learn about 16 possible sources of foodborne pathogens in the local diner, solve a puzzle and receive a prize package of virtual items for completing all activities. Non-player characters interact with the visitors to make the experience more fun and realistic. The diner also serves as a social hangout, where avatars may listen to music, select a virtual meal and chat with friends. From the diner, visitors may explore other content located throughout virtual Morrill County and the fairgrounds.

To access the game, go to http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Morrill2/216/216/24. If you are new to Second Life, you will be prompted to register for a free account, and after that you will arrive at the game. An orientation area is available there for new users. More information is available at www.extension.org/3d and by contacting luann.phillips@extension.org.

Idaho Extension educators are seeing a new generation of home canners who are inexperienced and may not be trained in safe home food preservation techniques. At the same time, only one in three Idaho Extension offices have an FCS educator who is knowledgeable in food safety and home food preservation techniques. Often one educator covers multiple counties with limited resources. Other states are experiencing similar changes.

In 2004 a team of University of Idaho Extension and campus faculty, led by Carol Hampton, Boundary County FCS educator, adapted the researched-based University of Idaho/Washington State University Food Safety Advisor Volunteer Handbook into a web-based course, Preserve @ Home. Since that first offering Hampton, Laura Sant and Joey Peutz, Idaho Extension educators, have partnered with Extension educators in Deschutes and Tillamook Counties in Oregon, Boulder County in Colorado and Washington State University Extension to educate more than 430 people in the U.S. and internationally. Local educators enhance the Preserve @ Home experience with a hands-on lab or instructors connect students to their local Extension office.

In 2012 the course was moved to campus.eXtension.org to take advantage of the technical support offered by eXtension’s Moodle instructional designers. The course was redesigned to make it more user friendly and increase student satisfaction.

The program goal is to reach and educate individuals on food safety and food preservation while limiting geographical barriers. Preserve @ Home’s six week program includes: lessons, National Center for Home Food Preservation’s So Easy to Preserve videos, weekly student discussion board and real-time chat, quizzes, final exam and evaluation survey to collect impact data.

Students are required to cite their quiz answer source which exposes them to a large number of research-based Extension publications and web sites. It is the philosophy of the instructors that it is more important to know where to find an answer than it is to think you know the answer and share incorrect or outdated information. On average 75 percent of students regularly participate in the discussion board and weekly chat. Many students stay in touch after the course and use instructors as continuing resources for questions or personal preserving successes.

Students have evaluated the course with comments including “Thank you for all the work you’ve put into this class. It’s been exactly what I’ve wanted since I started canning”; “I learned a lot and feel much more confident in knowing the correct way to preserve food.”; and “I have learned so much and really feel prepared to evaluate the safety of recipes and methods of home preservation in my own kitchen”.

One significant advantage to the eXtension online course is the ability of Extension educators from different counties or states to teach cooperatively. Instructors can access the classroom from any location with internet.

Preserve @ Home is a fee based course, but if you would like guest access to view it, would like to offer the course in your state or have questions, contact Carol Hampton at champton@uidaho.edu. For information about how Moodle might contribute to your educational efforts, contact the eXtension Moodle help desk at moodlehelp@extension.org.