Both NACDEP (National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals) and CDS (Community Development Society) currently have calls for presentations out for their annual meetings. NACDEP meets in Philadelphia from April 16-19 and CDS meets in Appleton, Wisconsin (with the National Rural Development Partnership – NRDP) on July 17-20. Both are great opportunities for Extension Professionals looking to share programming and research. Or to just attend to network and learn. The NACDEP call is here, the CDS call
here.
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.
Yahoo news carries this article about leaner years for federally funded research. Most of any increase will go to defense or space. Department of Agriculture research funding will not increase.
The state of qualitative research in Europe. Found via Political Theory Daily Review.
I keep finding myself adding librarian blogs to my aggregate feeder. As professionals dealing in information and data, librarians are quite active in using new technology to shape their practice and organizational strucuture. This post from Biblio Tech Web questions how much print reference materials libraries should keep on their shelves. The point being that several online sources are now readily available to users. Should reference space be truncated for different uses? How should people access the information?
These are good questions for Extension Systems to ponder as well. How do we make ourselves accessible online? How do we let people search (a big, emerging trend in information technology) in intuitive ways to find information? How do we find information for our own uses? Some good ideas to ponder.
A site to look at for some future tends in biotechnology. The recent spikes in fuel costs will likely cause renewed interest in biofuels. Found via Don Iannone’s blog at this permalink. Neat information.
From SciTech Daily come this link to a study review in Environmental Science and Technology Online (click here for more information about Env. Sci. and Tech. Online) about whether pesticides or the natural environment cause changes in frogs. Another resource for Extension Professionals working in both pesticide and sustainable programming. Sustainable issues will likely continue to be a major trend that impacts Extension programming and research.
From ED Pro comes this link to a rural poll in Nebraska. It seems that the rural population there is more vibrant and entrepreneurial than one would guess. See an older version of an Ohio example here.
From Smart Mobs comes this blurb based on a New Scientist (good Brit science weekly magazine) article about the emails we forward and how others react to them. There might be more social implications than you realize. Hmmmm…..think about what you forward. Good thoughts for me. I’m a rampant forwarder of emails and links.