eXtension’s professional development opportunities are open to all Cooperative Extension faculty, staff and employees. No pre-registration. Please share this announcement with others and encourage them to pick a topic and try it out!
SPECIAL TOPICS
eXtension Ask an Expert Task Force Findings and Decisions
June 25 at 2:00-3:00 p.m. ET
* Presented by: Kevin Gamble, eXtension
* http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn
In the Spring of 2009 eXtension initiated a pre-hypothesis complexity-based approach to examine the various factors that affect users’ perceptions of the Ask An Expert service. The research looked at the public’s expectations of the service, and set out to answer the following questions:
* Were people receiving meaningful/useful answers to the question they asked?
* Were the answers provided sufficient to solve the problem the question addressed?
* Did the public perceive that the answers provided were based on scientifically defensible information?
* Were the answers provided quickly enough to affect the resolution?
* Were the answers were written in a way to be easily understood by a non-scientists/lay audience?
* Were people satisfied with using the AAE service?
* Did the people understood/realize that the answers were being provided from non-biased university sources?
Join us for this special session where the results from this study will be shared. If you are trying to serve Extension clientele through Ask an Expert this is a must attend session. If you aren’t actively involved with using the Ask an Expert service you should still find this session of interest. It will directly address the issues, opportunities, and challenges of serving online audiences in an era of instant communication.
This session will be broadcast and use your computers speakers for audio, not your phone. Audience interaction will be done using the built-in chat capabilities. This session will be held at our Web Conferencing Center at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn.
Mixed Reality Mixer–Live From ACE-NETC in Des Moines!
* Monday, June 8, 8:00-9:30 pm Central
* in Second Life at K-State’s Wildcat2 sim
What a great time to try Second Life, with some serious monkey business at a social mashup of real life and virtual reality. Join eXtension colleagues from around the country partying together with you live from the ACE-NETC conference in Des Moines at the Monkey Shines Pub in Second Life. Your entertainment starts in Des Moines with DJ Jen Noel and local musician Bryan Baker (IN SL Kaklick Martin) streaming music into Second Life. Next, popular blues artist Tony Uriba ( IN SL Tone Uriza) plays for us live from Tucson Arizona, with Marx Loeb (IN SL Speelo Snook) on the drums. Read about the musicians on their websites http://ka-klick.com and http://www.bigdaddybluesinsecondlife.com. Free sock monkey avatars and commemorative surfboards for all! Location is K-State’s Wildcat2 sim at
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wildcat%20Two/128/128/2
Questions? luann.phillips@extension.org or in SL Thynka Little.
30-MINUTE SESSIONS
This month we are offering 30-Minute Sessions on a several topics around Ask an Expert and part 2 of FriendFeed. Give us 30 minutes and we’ll teach you something useful! These sessions will be held at our Web Conferencing Center at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn and your telephone. Plan to join the session 5 minutes before the starting time. Each session will be held at 2:00 Eastern Time (1:00 p.m. CT, Noon MT, 11:00 a.m. PT, 10:00 a.m. AT; 8:00 a.m. HT) unless otherwise noted.
* June 11 at 2:00 p.m. ET, a 30-minute session on How to Answer Ask an Expert Questions, by Beth Raney, eXtension. With expertise in so many areas, extension gets asked many questions! More and more are coming from the public via eXtension’s Ask an Expert form on www.extension.org and through Ask eXtension widgets. This session will take you step by step through answering questions, and some of the guidelines to keep in mind. (For all Extension)
* June 16 at 2:00 p.m. ET, a 30-minute session on The Ask eXtension Widget
– Aaron Hundley, eXtension Software Engineer. How to use the Ask eXtension widget to receive and answer questions directly from your county Extension web site or Extension-related blog. This widget adds question-asking capabilities to your site, but uses the power of the eXtension Ask an Expert and FAQ systems to assist you in answering. Take questions from your clients, and use the 40,000 questions in the FAQ system to assist you in providing a timely and accurate answer. Check out the widget-tracking feature that allows you to name the widget and monitor questions coming from your site. Also learn about the widget routing capability that will allow you to have questions routed to you from your widgets. This session will introduce you to the tool, show you the latest features developed, and will discuss what is necessary to begin using it immediately in your own county sites and blogs with helpful tips. (For all Extension)
* June 18 at 2:00 p.m. ET, a 30-minute session on Discussion and Q/A of the Ask eXtension Widget, by Aaron Hundley, eXtension Software Engineer. If you are currently participating in answering questions that come from any of the Ask eXtension Widgets, this will be a great discussion to be involved in. This session will focus on answering questions that you might have on the Ask eXtension Widget or the Ask an Expert system in general. We’ll share tips and recommendations for using the Ask an Expert system and discuss surrounding topics. (For all Extension)
* June 23 at 2:00 p.m. ET, a 30-minute session on Making FriendFeed your
Friend: Part 2 by Kevin Gamble, eXtension. This follow-on session will introduce you to FriendFeed’s most powerful features: lists, filtering, advanced search, groups, and those extra add-ons that make its use so enticing: widgets, book-marketlets, and cross-posting to other social networking sites. See the Recording for part 1 at
http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/p85121070/. (for all Extension)
OTHER SESSIONS
* June 24 at 2:00-3:00 p.m. ET, meet-up of Ask an Expert Question Wranglers.
Want to help people find answers to their questions? Work with your Extension colleagues from across the country? Help to serve Extension clientele in a new and exciting way? Become an eXtension Question Wrangler! We have opportunities for our public to ask questions through our “Ask an Expert” system, but in order to ramp-up this effort we need good people to volunteer to help make this a reality. If you think this is something you’d like to do please join us to talk about how we can handle this together. (For all who have signed up as Question Wranglers… or to sign up, go to https://people.extension.org/communities/38 and Join) This session will be held at our Web Conferencing Center at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn.
SECOND LIFE
Second Life is an immersive 3-D virtual environment, inhabited by over a million users from all over the world. You can learn to use Second Life to meet with colleagues, to create 3-D models that would be too expensive or impossible to make in reality, to provide guest speakers for a real life group, to teach using role play or group problem solving, to make content in your subject area available to a worldwide audience. This is an emerging and transformative technology, much like the early days of the Internet, and is expected to change the way most people experience web content within the next five years.
In Second Life, you will find that eXtension has a virtual fairgrounds, a model county office, projects in development on assistive technology, turf grass, pest management, and more. In Teen Second Life, we have Bailey Island available for any 4-H educator to use for programming. Each month eXtension hosts several community events in Second Life. It is best to spend two or three hours orienting yourself to the Second Life environment before attending an event. You should know how to walk, sit, chat, use voice, and teleport.
Instructions for entering Second Life are here:
http://collaborate.extension.org/wiki/Cooperative_Extension_Second_Life_
Educators
LuAnn Phillips, Second Life educator, is available to assist you, and can be reached at luann.phillips@extension.org or by instant message to Thynka Little in Second Life.
Please consider joining the Facebook group “Cooperative Extension Second Life”.
June Second Life Events:
June 8, Mixed Reality Mixer, 8-9:30 p.m. Central (6-7:30 p.m. SL time) Kaklick Martin and Tone Uriza with special guest Speelo Snook. Live from the Monkey Shines Pub on K-State’s Wildcat2 in Second Life http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wildcat%20Two/128/128/2
June 12, Second Life Meetup — 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. SL time (Pacific), 2:00-3:30 p.m. ET. Meet at the Virtual State Fair, Morrill Island, in Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Morrill/165/136/29 Mentoring for new users
June 18, Second Life Roundtable 2:30-3:30 p.m. ET — web conference, meet at
http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn. Making the Case for a Second
Life project, what makes sense to your boss and funders?
June 26, Second Life Meetup — 11:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. SL time (Pacific), 2:00-3:30 p.m. ET. Meet at the Virtual State Fair, Morrill Island, in Second Life
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Morrill/165/136/29 Make a talking sign.
Add these dates & topics to your calendar, and plan to join us on for one or more of these sessions in June!!
TO PARTICIPATE in any of the sessions held in our Web Conferencing Center…
1. Five minutes before the start time, go to our Web Conferencing Center meeting room at http://connect.extension.iastate.edu/learn.
2. You will be presented with a login screen that has an “Enter as Guest” option.
3. Enter your first name; your last name, and your institution/university, then click the “Enter Room” button to join the conference.
4. To hear the audio of the workshop and participate in the Q&A portion of the workshop we will be using a built-in teleconferencing capability of Adobe’s Connect Pro conferencing software. Once you log into the meeting you will be presented with the option to enter your call-back number, your phone will automatically be called. After entering your number you will be automatically called and joined into the audio portion of the Web conference on your phone.
EMAIL LIST:
If you or a colleague would like to get notices about upcoming professional development sessions offered by eXtension, go to https://people.extension.org/communities/learn and Click “Join Community.”
RECORDINGS:
Recordings of many past professional development sessions can be found at the main eXtension wiki at http://about.eXtension.org/wiki and scroll down under Professional Development heading and find “Recordings of eXtension Professional Development Sessions”, or search on the word Recordings.
Looking forward to having you join us to learn something new in June!!