Business Week Online is offering free online courses. They have two courses currently online: How to Give a Great Presentation and Online Marketing Tips. I just signed up for the Online Marketing Tips course. The courses start and end on specific dates, with the online content free. To get a PDF course outline, you have to agree to let the course sponsor share your contact information. I’m deferring for now. The only other potential cost are “recommended materials” for each course. This are only recommended. More information is available on the sites FAQ’s. Lessons are presented online, with a message board and email reminders.
I’m going to give it a try and see how it works. The price is definitely right. Hopefully the content is also worth my time investment. Either way, this is an interesting example of how Extension programs could offer online educational programming.
Anthony Townsend over at the Institute for the Future’s blog has posted a link to a new paper discussing the impact of an increasing knowledge base on innovation. He offers a nice summation that basically indicates a continual cause and effect loop whereby knowledge in society is increased by specialized researchers, hence increasing the need for more highly specialized researchers. The rub is that to create innovation (or inventions, the term Anthony uses) we now need collaborative efforts in team settings. I have not downloaded the report yet, but plan to soon.
This whole discussion fits well with the ongoing debate in Extension concerning whether field based educators should be generalists or specialists. To me the answer falls closely within Townsend’s description. To add value, we will need to have in-depth specialization. But to be able to respond to community and society needs, we will need the flexibility (both individually and institutionally) to come together in teams to address issues. It’s a give and take balance between developing specializations that allow us to be proactive, and the mindset that let’s us consider issue based solutions.
Rajesh Setty has a neat (and free) little e-book called When You Can’t Earn an MBA….Thoughts on Getting Ahead Without an MBA. It’s well worth the brief amount of time that you will put into reading it. I just read Setty’s recent book Beyond Code: Learn to Distinguish Yourself in 9 Simple Steps. Beyond Code is targeted towards IT folks but is really applicable to anyone. His major thrust is to develop strategies and traits that help knowledge workers to “de-commoditize” themselves – to become distinct and more valuable. When You Can’t Earn an MBA is related and has the same philosophical touch, but I would really recommend both. Especially to beginning and mid-career Extension Professionals. Setty starts Beyond Code by having his readers consider the return on investment of reading and using the information from his book. Use this formula and reading the e-book is a no-brainer. The price of Beyond Code makes it a no-brainer too. Rajesh’s blog for Beyond Code can be found here. Here is his post about the e-book.
eXtension has set up a blog to keep folks informed of the various eXtension type happenings. You can find it here. Looks pretty neat. The blog also has some links to the various wiki’s that eXtension has set up. Of particular interest is the "main eXtension wiki". I’ve added the blog to my aggregator, and strongly recommend other Extension Professionals to do the same. The wiki does not appear to have the necessary feeds at this time to get it on the aggregator. Lot’s of activity on the various eXtension pages lately - be sure to dip in regularly and see what’s happening.
Be sure to also take a serious look at the call for engagement to create communities of practice.
I’ve started a listing of collaborative software packages here at my delicious account. Please feel free to look it over and offer suggestions or comments. The collection serves multiple purposes, including potential packages we might use in our office and as a research data base for future work on distributed workforce tools.
To get on the Web 2.0 train Microsoft has introduced its new Microsoft Office Live packages. I have not tried them out, but have looked at an overview in Infoworld and a much more detailed analysis by Walt Mossberg. Office live is targeted to small businesses with no IT professionals. Live uses a template to help create basic webpages. Surprise, surprise, surprise – you need to use Explorer to work on the webpage. See Walt’s review for some good discussions on Live’s web platforms and flexibility. Looks like a Web 2.0 start for Microsoft, but a limited product. Live is free while in beta format.
Extension professionals working with small businesses should probably start looking at services like Microsoft Office Live and how they can help the small businesses they are working with establish a web presence.