Trends and Issues in Extension » Teaching/Programming

Fuel Consumption and Extension Programming

thomas.69 — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:45:18 +0000

Consumers have started to drive less and appear to be keeping the driving down even as gas prices head down. Or so says a recent Wall Street Journal Online article. Less driving will likely reinforce three trends in Extension. One is the continued difficulty in getting clientele to drive to meetings and events. The second is a move toward more changes in work structure and social entrepreneurship. A third trend is subject matter specific: An increased market for energy programming related to conservation.

Our ability to attract audiences still appears to remain high, but converging societal trends make it difficult for all non-formal and volunteer based organizations to draw audiences. Gas prices have some impact, although there seems to be scarce research to demonstrate direct impacts. Regardless, Extension and outreach professionals will need to find alternative ways to connect with clientele and volunteers.
A bigger impact of fuel prices occurs internally. Many Extension and third sector organizations continue to face the double squeeze decreasing travel funds and rising fuel/reimbursement costs. Extension professionals essentially see their travel budges reduced while the per mile reimbursement increases. One impact from this dilemma is an increased focus on adopting (or more accurately, adapting) tools that allow for distributed collaboration.

Finally, consumers can and do change their behavior based on incentives. What new (or old) programming can we offer related to energy conservation?

Using Web 2.0 Tools to Teach Knowledge Economy Programming to Extension Professionals

thomas.69 — Tue, 08 May 2007 15:16:43 +0000

Here at OSU Extension we’re on the cusp of selecting a pilot group of internal students (cutting edge OSU Extension Professionals) to test our ability to teach Knowledge Economy programming via Web 2.0 tools. More information about the program can be found here. An initial source of inspiration came from the Otter Group and their work with the American Library Association (see this link for more on Kathleen Gilroy and the Otter Group). As I’ve repeated for the last year or so, the librarians continue to impress me with their experimentation with newer technologies to reach audiences (see an older post here and a new one here).

We’ve also developed a fairly detailed LOGIC model to measure our longer term impacts. I’ll share more of this as we move ahead. Based on our instructors’ training bootcamp I’m expecting this to be a messy but fun experience. More updates as we move ahead. I’d really like to hear more ideas or input from other Extension Professionals (or other fields for that matter) on related programming.

Revisiting the Educause Seven Things You Should Know Series

thomas.69 — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 22:16:20 +0000

Back in August 2005 I wrote this post about Educause’s fact sheet series. I’ve been trying to put together some fact sheets for a blended e-learning project and went back to Educause. Actually, I simply went back to my blog, searched and then re-read my old post with the links. Talk about easy knowledge management. Anyway, the series (actually called The Seven Things You Should Know about ___ series) has continued to grow with subjects like Creative Commons, You Tube, Facebook and others. Each has a tight focus that describes the tool and how it can be used in educational or learning settings. Highly recommended.

Audio Video on the Knowledge Economy

thomas.69 — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:05:31 +0000

I just added a post to new blog at our OSU Extension Knowledge Economy Website. The site is still under construction, but we hope to have more blog postings soon. The post describes a power point presentation that serves as a good intro to the Knowledge Economy. The whole KE (Knowledge Economy) concept is pretty critical right now but is also hard to describe to people. Hence the neatness of the presentation.

IM Use by Age

thomas.69 — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 19:33:42 +0000

CNN.com has an interesting news post today that discusses the differences in the use of instant messaging (IM)between current teenagers and baby boomers. No surprise that the kids use IM more and e-mail much less. The reverse is true of boomers. This dovetails much of the work done by Pew Internet Study. More reinforcement of the need to consider differences in work styles and alternative ways of reaching this generation of youth.

New eXtension Communities of Practice

thomas.69 — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 17:41:05 +0000

eXtension has announced 10 new Communities of Practice. Here is the link to the complete list, including the existing COP’s.

Kids These Days…

thomas.69 — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 02:25:37 +0000

I mentioned earlier that Ryan Schmiesing and I are starting to work on a youth collaborative software project. This means that I’m doing spurts of research on the subject. One area of information that I’m collecting compares current youth generations to older adult generations. So I was really interested in this Business Week article about

Millennials serving as interns (found via Tom Peters’ blog). It’s an interview of an entrepreneur that hired summer interns and takes 3-4 minutes to read. The culture clash is interesting, and I still wonder how much of it is generational differences versus typical kids working for typical baby boomer adults. Two key differences that I do think are real: A generation that knows nothing of the cold war and that take multi-tasking as a way of life.

I’m especially interested in the group of youth called the Digital Native generation. This is the generation that grew up in a complete digital lifestyle and knows nothing different (I picked the term Digital Native up from Glen Hiemstra’s new book Turning the Future into Revenue. Glen credits Marc Prensky with coining the term – see this article by Marc. See also p. 15 of the Glen’s book for more information). Another interesting term is “Mypod generation”– from Myspace and iPod – two tools that almost every teenager understands. For more on what the newer digital savvy workers expect, see this article from the September 2006 issue of Optimize. What we need to understand is this is the only life that many of our youth have experienced. Hence our efforts to look at both Extension youth and adult programming to better understand how youth use social collaboration software. Extension can play a key role in helping both the youth (via understanding the pros/cons of social software, the consequences of what they post, understanding job and other life skills) and adults (to actually better understand tools like Myspace, how club and other advisors can use the tools, and how to work with mixed generations of co-workers and citizens).

Simple Ways to Incorporate Web 2.0 into Extension Programming

thomas.69 — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 01:13:04 +0000

Kathleen Gilmore at the Otter Group has a post about a simple mix of Web 2.0 type tools that a teacher friend is using to help coordinate learning in her middle-school classroom. All of the tools are easy to use and could be incorporated into a number of Extension programs. For example:

A 4-H club or event
Any educational program that is ongoing and involves the need for sharing of information
Various teams
Program planning groups

I use basecamp and delicious fairly frequently. All of these can be accessed for free (Basecamp in limited format). Simple ways to use simple tools to connect and empower people. Extension professionals could find many ways to use these tools.

Future Educational Trends and myspace

thomas.69 — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:10:03 +0000

Ryan Schmiesing (Associate Director, 4-H Youth Development at Ohio State University Extension) and I are in the early stages of developing potential programming about youth using social software. We (Ryan is actually the lead on this) are very interested in curricula for youth, parents and advisors, and how to conduct 4-H related activities on these mediums. The current hot medium is of course myspace. So it was with interest that I found this post by Andy Carvin at learningnow.com. Andy opines about some future trends for the upcoming school year. In particular I find the discussions about the future of myspace and DOPA very interesting. See also the comments that are posted. We need some good, accurate information on social software platforms that youth are using. What are the true risks? What is good public policy (read the Wikipedia article on DOPA and decide for yourself if there is a generation gap)? What do youth need to know about the sites (for example, that anything a youth posts on their or others’ sites will be permanently around in cyberspace. Even if they delete the posting. Imagine a future boss or college admissions officer doing a google search and what can be found.)? How can we use them as tools and resources? Lot’s of opportunities for research, programming and curricula for Extension.

2007 NETC & ACE

thomas.69 — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 17:05:24 +0000

I blogged earlier this year about the

NETC (National Extension Technology Conference) conference in Florida (see the posts here, here, here, here and here). Next year’s conference is held jointly with ACE (Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Life and Human Sciences) in Albuquerque, NM on June 15-19. I strongly recommend the NETC tracks to anyone interested in current and future technology uses and applications in Extension. I’ve never attended ACE, but would love to see an agenda. The conference site is up and running. Be sure to see the video podcast about the conference. Session and track information has not yet been posted.