Trends and Issues in Extension

Immediately following my presentation at the USAIN conference I truck down to Columbus and fly to Raleigh, NC for the National Extension Technology Conference (NETC). Steve Lichtensteiger (OSU Extension Regional System’s Tech) and I present an overview of a blended e-learning program conducted at Ohio State last year. I’ve also scheduled several other meetings throughout the conference, including one on developing a proposed virtual book club.

More posts as the conference nears. I also hope to post a bit more during the conference like I did in 2006 (see here, here, here,  here, and here).

I’m putting the final touches on an upcoming pre-conference  about Web 2.0’s impact on agriculture information specialists from USAIN (United States Agricultural Information Network).  Extension professionals should be aware of USAIN. They focus on policy and other issues around agriculture information. Take a few minutes and poke around their website. The librarians at your ag library probably are involved with USAIN.

I’m looking forward to a fun teaching and conversation session!

Andrew McAfee has been a leading academic voice for Enterprise 2.0. For about four more weeks you can get his article “Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration” from the MIT Sloan Management Review for free. Here is the link.

This is a great summary of Enterprise 2.0 and includes McAfee’s idea of SLATE (Search, Links, Authoring, Tags, Extensions, Signals), some ground rules for organizations (make the offerings easy to use and do not impose structures on how the work is done or categorized), the roles managers will play (standard platform, having a receptive culture) and challenges and opportunities. Great, quick read. Highly recommended.

Wired has some basic intro points on using Facebook. Very brief, somewhat general, but also useful.

I’ve been lazily thumbing through Mark Frauenfelder’s book Rule the Web for the last several weeks. Then I came across this review by Kevin Kelly in his Cool Tools site (highly recommend site!). Kevin gives a nice, brief review. The book focuses on how to use the web more efficiently and effectively. Hence the subtitle “How to do anything and everything on the internet – better, faster, easier”. 

Cool and useful stuff. Read Kevin’s review and see his example. Some of the things I learned include finding promo codes, using a mobile phone to check prices while in a store, getting magazine articles, how to use one time credit card numbers and a host of other neat tricks. Like Kevin I’ve found myself ear-tagging several pages and marking them up. This is also a great book to simply jump around and look for the cool stuff. I’ve been skimming it and just simply opening it up to a section. The sections are brief and easy to use.

Mark is a creator of Boing Boing. If you are online a lot this book will be useful. Highly recommended.

Just like having a deep (or high, or sprawling among several rooms) collection of books, I also seem to have a full collection of recorded shows on my DVR. Right now I’m working through It’s All Geek to Me from the Science Channel. These are 30 minute shows hosted by David Pogue, the NY Times Technical columnist. So far I’ve watched the shows about digital cameras, cell phones and iPods. There very good, especially if you have a limited introduction to these tools.

They’re good because Pogue is good. Pogue’s background includes the theatre and he uses an entertaining and humorous delivery method. Much of the shows takes place either on the streets of New York or in tech stores.

Here is a list of upcoming shows. See also Pogue’s show notes for the tips and ideas he shares. David also has a cool site. All are highly recommended. 

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.

My Extension 2.0 paper proposal for this fall’s ESP conference has been accepted. I’ve been actively collecting enterprise 2.0 and web 2.0 type posts, reports, documents, etc. to help prepare for the presentation and some related journal articles. Any ideas, suggestions or just pointing me to new resources is greatly appreciated. Related to this, I’m also part of a team that has a session on virtual work in Extension. For delicious users, here is my current delicious Extension 2.0 list.

Below is the Extension 2.0 abstract:

Extension 2.0? The impact of Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and other forces in creating new organizational work structures in Cooperative Extension

Jerold R. Thomas

Ohio State University Extension

Several authors have been writing about structural changes in work environments brought about by new technology, changing demographics, global competition, and external issues like energy costs. This presentation will demonstrate how the Web 2.0 tools can be used and provide recommendations about how Extension systems can use Enterprise 2.0 techniques to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.

Many technology writers (Tim O’Reilly is a leading example) have been discussing a significant change in information technology that has been dubbed Web 2.0. Web 2.0 refers to new online technologies that allow users to interact with writers of web content and each other. Examples include wikis, blogs, podcasting (both audio and video) and other collaborative platforms. Web 2.0 changes the direction of discourse from top down (whoever posts information) to a more collaborative partnership. Early examples in Extension include the structural organization of eXtension. Enterprise 2.0 has followed Web 2.0 as researchers and practitioners look for ways of incorporating Web 2.0 tools into work structures. Leading researchers in this area include McAfee and Lakhani from Harvard University. Enterprise 2.0 is important because it focuses not on the technology, but rather on the technology as a tool to help develop and create systems that make us more effective and efficient. Enterprise 2.0 also encourages the development of systems and structures rather than imposing them.

Other trends that are converging to push society to Enterprise 2.0 functionality include demographics (the increased generational difference in the use of mobile and other electronic media), increasing energy costs that have led to more collaborative and geographically distributed work teams and systems and competition from around the world in adult education and providing of information resources.

The presentation will cover the major trends, address what Web 2.0 is and briefly demonstrate some of the tools (specifically a collaborative program management program, a blog, a collaborative writing instrument teams can use, and podcasts), and then introduce Enterprise 2.0 concepts and their impact on Extension. Dialogue and interaction will be used throughout the presentation, with questions and reflection encouraged.

Summary:

The presentation will cover major trends like technology, demographics, and energy and provide an overview of Enterprise 2.0 theory and how it increases effectiveness in Extension systems. Specific tools that will be demonstrated include: a collaborative program management program, a blog, a collaborative writing instrument teams can use, and podcasts.

eXtension recently announced their April training list. Among the topics is a presentation on April 24 about Web 2.0 tools. I’ve already placed it on my calendar and am looking forward to it. Beth Kanter is the guest teacher. Of course, several of their other offerings have been on Web 2.0 topics. We just tend to see them as individual tools versus part of an overall system of linked tools sharing a common philosophical outlook. I’m also interested in the widget training and it’s applications to Netvibes. I’ve been a very poor user of Netvibes. I keep going to my Feeddemon and Blogbridge readers instead, despite having a personalized Netvibes page as my home page. Still much to learn……

Jack Vinson has an interesting post about a Computerworld article that discusses some positive benefits of multi-tasking related to technology tools. One of the articles comments makes a nice point that much of what is being referred to as multi-tasking is simply switching between tasks.