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AI & Linked Open Data for Innovation in Extension

AI & Linked Open Data for Innovation in Extension

Justin G. Smith
Assistant Professor, Community & Economic Development
Washington State University

Big Data & Artificial Intelligence
Two of the biggest topics in technology today are big data and artificial intelligence (machine learning and deep learning). Data is growing exponentially, and according to IDC, the digital universe will double every two years from 2010 to 2020. This includes satellite imagery data, sensor and mobile data (IoT), banking and economic data, as well as health and genetic research data. Businesses are also generating massive data sets related to supply-chain operations, and customer purchase patterns, while governments and non-governmental organizations around the world collect and publish information about population demographics, economic indicators, environmental quality and health outcomes.

Exponential Growth of Big Data - https://insidebigdata.com/2017/02/16/the-exponential-growth-of-data/

In many cases these data are open to the public, Given the increased accessibility of data, we have seen rapid development in the field of artificial intelligence. The synergy between big data and new data analytics methods are leading to a new cognitive technologies that give people power to improve (and even automate) decision-making and optimize outcomes. This powerful combination is leading to breakthroughs in medicine, finance, transportation, operations, security and law enforcement, as well as food and agriculture. In particular, there are a growing number of case studies highlighting improvements in a broad range of decision-support functions such as fraud detection, recommendation systems, medical diagnostic systems, and now driverless vehicles, and precision agriculture.

Linked Data, AI & the Semantic Web
These advancements would not be likely if it weren’t for the openness and accessibility of structured data; applications that utilize machine learning or ‘deep learning’ techniques often require significant amounts of data to develop accurate models. In particular, the proliferation of Linked Open Data tools (RDFa, JSON-LD, Microformats), common vocabularies (Schema.org, Linked Open Vocabularies), and APIs (web-services) have contributed significantly to the pace of development of new smart systems by providing access to structured data. Consequently, the success of AI powered by big “linked” data, has incentivized the adoption of standards and new publishing practices such as OpenAPI, leading to a growing network of accessible data services from which to explore and solve new problems.

The relationship between structured data and intelligent machines on the Internet was suggested nearly 20 years ago, by Tim Berners Lee and his colleges at CERN. In 2001, Berners Lee, Hendler and Lassila published a paper titled the “Semantic Web”, where they described a network of structured data, semantically linked together, and encoded in standard formats readable to both people and machines. Since then, the development of semantic web technologies, and more recently Linked Open Data have accelerated, creating new opportunities for organizations to access and use data in new ways.

Cognitive Systems and the Possibility of a Virtual Extension
The number of new decision-support technologies (or cognitive systems) is astonishing, and new platforms are coming online every month. This trend inspired my own thinking. I wondered, what could our Extension systems create. What if we could develop cognitive technology that could access and use the knowledge resources from Extension across the country to help communities and families adapt to climate change or improve household food security? What if the same technology could connect people to the experts across the county that could help them solve real challenges? Or perhaps the tool could provide small farmers answers to questions about fertility management, integrated pest management, or food preservation?

Virtual Assistant – Interactions between Data, Devices and People
Virtual Assistant - Interactions between Data, Devices and People

For a moment, I imagined what it would be like to interact with a virtual assistant like Alexa, to be able to ask questions, find experts, or even conduct a collaborative strategy meeting where a virtual assistant acts as a kind of facilitator that collects and displays data, or walk a group through a sequence of planning tasks. I imagined teams of professionals in the counties I work conducting SWOT analysis, policy mapping, or testing climate change mitigation and recovery strategies. Such a system could interface with augmented reality tools that support problem-solving in situ with a mobile device. I could see our clients working in new ways while leveraging the knowledge and expertise of Extension and Land Grant Universities all across the country.

For many of my Extension colleagues, this all sounds like science fiction, or in the very least wildly ambitious. Ambitious is probably true, but it is definitely not science fiction. In addition to the proliferation of open structured data, the new API economy is creating access to services, allowing developers to connect to third-party applications and data to create new products.

Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Amazon all offer access to their computing infrastructure and machine learning services. Moreover, an active community of developers both within and outside these companies are generating the documentation, examples and materials needed to uses these services (see: Flask-Ask). Using these APIs we can integrate Alexa Skills, Google Speech API and our own custom set of interactions, essentially creating entirely new services. Many of the foundational technologies have been established to help us develop our virtual assistant. We don’t even have to worry about training a model for voice recognition before getting started. Teams of researchers and developers at Google, IBM, and Amazon are already working on providing the services that can help us get a minimal prototype up and running.

Now we know some of the basic tools are in place to make our virtual assistant a reality, and we can explore the idea further. So what’s next? For sake of simplicity, let’s say we are willing to use Amazon’s Alexa service. Next, we would need to define a set of use-cases, prototypical sequence of interactions. For instance, we could define a strategic planning protocol, that simulate a brainstorming session to allow small groups to organize ideas, collect and display data. We might also define an ‘expert-finder ’ protocol, or a search and data aggregation protocol where each interaction process extends the overall functionality of the ‘assistant.’

Extension Data Products
Extension Data Products
In each use-case we are tasked with mapping a spoken or written request to a relevant and accurate spoken and/or visual digital response. In this context the digital response utilizes Extension experts and Extension research assets.

The (Structured) Data Challenge
Using these assets requires the ability to collect structured data from among a diversity of data types (e.g. Briefs, Factsheets, etc.), and service providers (the universities). This presents the first major challenge. For the most part, Extension’s resources are not available in a structured form. Some content providers do use a combination of Schema.org and Open Graph formats already, allowing some access to generic content descriptions, such as titles, type description and occasionally content authors and summaries. These provide useful metadata for content searches, but are not expressive or precise enough to run more complex queries and interactions. However, both Schema,org and the Open Graph protocol offer access to a rich vocabulary that can be extended to include different data types (or used with existing vocabularies), and these tools allow us to describe these data from within HTML web content.

This is crucial as developing our virtual assistant as we will need access to the embedded content within Extension research products. This includes identifying and encoding both generic descriptions (e.g. summaries and keywords), as well as embedded data (e.g. processes, methods, numeric data) across a range of content such as impact reports, curriculum, research articles, and technical reports. The more embedded snippets of content can be exposed, the more information and behaviors we can code into our virtual assistant.

However, this is more difficult than it would appear. Extension systems manages their digital assets differently (different policies and technology platforms) and separately. There is no ‘complete’ central directory of Extension faculty listing their expertise, and among the directories that exist, they often lack additional information about a person other than name, rank and department. Moreover, there is no agreed upon vocabulary that could be used to describe these resources. The necessary enabling technologies and standardized institutional practices are missing.

The lack of critical infrastructure or adoption of Linked Data practices presents a significant hurdle, one that will need to be resolved before our virtual assistant can be successful. Filling the current capacity gap would require the kinds of recommendations laid out by Jeff Piestrak’s vision for a Land Grant Informatics.

Extension Knowledge Network
Extension Knowledge Network
This includes the development of common vocabularies or ontologies relevant to Extension. This also includes the adoption of new publishing tools that enable embedded tagging of people, places, things and events, as well as ways to link these together across institutions.

Before we can develop our virtual assistant, we need to define an ontology, or type of vocabulary for describing a much richer set of data, and then devise a strategy for describing existing Extension assets using that ontology. This of course is no trivial task. To ensure the ontology is useful would likely require broad participation and buy-in from Extension faculty across the country, and then, we still need to go back through all of the historical databases and describe these resources.

The more you dive into it, the more challenging this virtual assistant project sounds. Yet, this challenge is not exclusive to building a virtual assistant. A vast majority of modern web applications rely on accessible third-party services, data and ontologies to develop new products, but without a roadmap (for Extension) to connect it all together and no common language for interacting with the content, we find ourselves confronted by a kind of virtual wall. So it seems that in order to build my new ‘killer-app,’ I will first need to solve the ontology problem, and based on what I’ve describe so far it sounds like it could take a decade to complete. Unfortunately, I am not all that patient. I cannot wait 10 years for this to be resolved, nor can my clients. So what now?

In Need of a Different Approach
Well, there might be a solution, are at least a bridge to a solution. What if we turned a few implicit assumptions on their heads? Up to this point I’ve talked about structured linked-data as the required input for training a machine learning model. This type of approach to machine learning is called supervised learning. In a supervised learning situation, the algorithm approximates a prediction about some data based on previous data. In this case, we feed a structured data set to our algorithm to develop a model or representation of the data that we then use to interpret any new data.

What if that isn’t the complete story? What if we could use machines to learn and create ontologies readable to humans, and usable by other machines? Or what if we could use machines to create semantic links between content, and then offer access to these data through accessible API services? Developments in natural language processing, and computer vision suggest the possibility that we could indeed use machines to generate structures that could be useful in our virtual assistant (or any other application). Semi-supervised and unsupervised machine learning allow for structured data to be pulled directly from data with little or no upfront input needed. There are a growing number of examples with AI being used to create content, such as music or art, content summaries, as well as image and video content. Considering these developments, it seems reasonable that AI could be used to describe and encode our content just as easily as it is being used to create fake news, or conversely, combat fake news.

In 2016, eXtension and GODAN teamed up to sponsor a joint fellowship to explore these questions and develop pathways for creating the ontologies that would link Extension to the larger universe of linked open data. In particular, their request focused on developing ontologies, methods and recommendations that could be used to link Extension data to address challenges around climate change adaptation and food insecurity. This included exploring the possibility of using competency frameworks and design patterns to define a set of ontologies that could be used to describe various eXtension content. Together, these frameworks provide a vocabulary for defining skills, knowledge, resources, problems, contexts and solutions — enough new metadata that could prove expressive enough to power a virtual assistant or similar applications.

Later that year, eXtension and GODAN, gave me an opportunity begin exploring these questions. In October, I began work on several experiments to determine the efficacy of machine learning and AI technologies to create structured data from eXtension content. I worked with eXtension fellow Christian Schmieder from University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension, and colleagues at Washington State University to develop and test new methods and algorithms that could be used generate ontologies and automatically markup resources using RDFa and JSON-LD.

During the following 18 months, I embarked on an incredible (and difficult) journey of learning and discovery that profoundly changed my life. This experience revealed new passions in design, natural language processing, decision analysis, algebraic topology and cognitive technology. The fellowship also thrust me into a new field of scientific inquiry with a rather steep learning curve, and I found myself immersed in the language of graphs, networks, matrices and probability distributions – the basic building blocks of modern AI. In all of this learning, I was given a platform to develop new approaches to AI that incorporated existing state-of-the-art with more recent developments in reinforcement learning and topological data analysis. The result was a set of methods and tools with broad application in content classification and organization, but also in complex systems analysis, multicriteria decision-analysis and optimization.

Over the next several weeks I will be sharing the process and results of these experiments through a series of blog posts, tutorials and open source software. In each post I will walk through the challenge of developing a usable vocabulary that can serve our hypothetical virtual assistant. I will also be posting a series of scientific notebooks that show how these systems work (or don’t work), discuss opportunities and remaining challenges.

For More Information

For more information, contact Dr. Justin Smith at:
justingriffis@wsu.edu

 

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Newsroom

eXtension Foundation receives EPA grant for Pesticide Safety Education Funds Management Program

national pesticide safety education center logoWe are excited to announce that eXtension is part of a national grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which will fund grants to state Extension programs about pesticide safety.

eXtension Foundation logoGrant Background

In early September 2017, eXtension received formal notification from the EPA of their acceptance of the grant application to establish and administer a national sub-award program in support of pesticide applicator education and training for certified applicators of restricted use pesticides. eXtension Foundation was invited in early 2017 to apply for this grant by pesticide safety education coordinators and the National Pesticide Safety Education Center (NPSEC). The goal of the newly-formed NPSEC is to support Extension Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP) educators.

The NPSEC seeks to strengthen the national system of university extension PSEPs by improving the quality, consistency, and accessibility of educational offerings, promoting collaboration and leveraging of educational resources and learning assessment tools, and increasing revenue generation of Extension programs. The eXtension Foundation currently provides contractual services to NPSEC to deliver online programs and temporarily serves as the Center’s fiduciary service provider. NPSEC and eXtension are partners in the grant deliverables and implementation.

Startup Phase

The startup phase of this grant is in progress and because of changes in EPA requirements, the process will be different than in the past. Tom Smith, Director of the NPSEC and Beverly Coberly, eXtension Chief Operating Officer, will co-chair an advisory committee and lead this effort.  Things to look for as this grant is rolled out are:

  • EPA rules have changed so the application process, use of funds, compliance understanding and reporting of outcomes will require more accountability.  There will be an online application system and award system to help with the transparency and accessibility of information for, applications, awards, reports and communications.
  • Survey Monkey Apply will be used for those completing these processes due to the familiarity that many PSEP Coordinators are likely to have with Survey Monkey. At this time, these systems are being put into place by eXtension
  • An Advisory Board will be formed to provide input and advice regarding the educational products developed throughout this program.  One requirement for each state will be to develop an educational product that can be shared with another state, regionally, or nationally.  Efforts will be made to reduce duplication of efforts and to help those interested in similar products to collaborate.
  • A Project Manager will be hired to lead this effort.  Applications for the position are being taken and will be reviewed soon.
  • Standard Operating Procedures are being developed so that as the grant is administered, the procedures will be transparent and sub recipients will be fully aware of the procedures of the grant and will have greater ease of use through the online system. These processes will be evaluated and improvements to streamline and facilitate the process will be made in the future as necessary.

Projected Timelines

The planned timelines are:

  • Hire Project Manager by October 15, 2017.
  • Create Advisory Board by October 30, 2017
  • Have on-line application system in place by late October 2017.
  • Take applications and distribute funds November-December 2017
  • Grant in in full implementation January 2018

What Can Extension Professionals Do?

  • Understand new expectations and timelines to support your state’s PSEP Coordinator

To Learn More

The primary contact is Chief Operating Officer Beverly Coberly beverlycoberly@extension.org.

The Executive Director of the NPSEC is Tom Smith 517-202-3019 or smitht48@msu.edu.

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Diversity & Inclusion Information

i-Three Issue Corps: Diversity Corps Member Heads to Chile

As a recent eXtension Diversity & Inclusion Issue Corps member, I am conducting some of my research in developing several South American Cuisine curricula in Chile. I recently went on a study tour with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Food & Culinary Professionals Practice Group to Santiago, Valparaiso, and local sites nearby.

The purpose of the trip was to learn about the culture and cuisine of Chile, as well as Peru and Argentina. We worked with local chefs and historians touring seafood and produce markets, vineyards, a goat farm and cheese facility, indigenous pottery production, and preparing the multi-cultural foods.

Seafood at the market
A variety of fish and octopus at the market

Surprisingly, besides the Spanish influence, French and Italian cultures had, and continue to have, a large influence on the customs and cuisine. For example, one would think coffee would be the hot beverage of choice, as they are so close Central America, where is it grown. However, tea wins out, mostly due to the western European influences.

One of my favorite culinary finds was the spice blend of Merken, a combination of local ground chili pepper, ground coriander, and a little salt.

Merkin - a spice blend found in Chile

Merken is a local spice mix used in Chile

It is used in soups, stews, and on sopapillas with salsa, for example. Of course, with Chile having such a long coastline, you would expect to see a variety of seafood as well. I hope you enjoy my introductory video and pictures highlighting some of my finds.

grilled octopus dish
A grilled octopus dish
A curried scallop dish
A curried scallop dish

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Extension Food Systems i-Three Corps Information

i-Three Issue Corps – Beginning beekeeping workshop is successful to participants

This picture is of some of the education material that participants could look at during the Beginning Beekeeping Workshop.
Some of the education material that participants could look at during the Beginning Beekeeping Workshop

Back in February we held a workshop in Osceola, Mo. in which we targeted people interested in getting into beekeeping. We had 28 people that attended the workshop. The goal of this workshop was to provide the potential beekeepers with the knowledge and tools to be successful in beginning and managing their new bees and hives through the first year. The class was taught by a local beekeeping organization Pomme De Terre Beekeepers.

Based on the exit evaluation the day of the workshop we were successful in accomplishing the task we set out to do. When we break down the results of the exit evaluation some key things that we found our workshop to be successful in were:

1. Some of the specific knowledge gained by participants was:

  • Process of swarm capturing
  • Breeds of bees
  • Beekeeper traps
  • Hive components
  • Diseases associated with bees
  • Starting a hive and managing it
  • Honey harvesting
  • Taking care of problems with bees
  • Transfer of bees either captured or purchased into a new hive

2. Over 90% of the people who answered the evaluation said they plan to use the knowledge gained from the workshop. Some of the ways that they said they would use the knowledge gained were to:

  • Start hives
  • Raise bees
  • Decide where to set up their bee hives
  • Be a successful beekeeper

3. Over 95% of the 28 participants said they were either highly likely or somewhat likely to become beekeepers based on the knowledge gained and the other participant was already a beekeeper.

4. Over 85% of the participants of the workshop said they were going to add bee hives in the next year and the number of hives ranged from 1 bee hive to 6 to 8 bee hives per person.

As you can see our workshop was successful in meeting our goals and participant needs. We were able to provide participants with the knowledge, contacts and information needed to answer their questions and help them in beginning to start and manage their bee hives through the first year. Because of their experience at the workshop they reported that they will now be able to successfully build and manage their bee hives.

This is not the end in working with these potential beekeepers. We will be sending out follow up evaluations to see how these beginning beekeepers are doing, how their bees and hives are progressing, and to learn how we can further help them as an extension service in their beekeeping operation. So say stay tuned for more information as we report on this at a further date.

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Food Systems i-Three Corps Information

i-Three Issue Corps – Using Facebook EFFICIENTLY…What We Finally Figured Out

Farm to School… Hmm… 

Young girl holding a cherry tomato

Our Theory: Efforts to promote healthy eating can’t succeed without considering food production, distribution and marketing. Likewise, agriculture cannot be profitable without attention to consumer interest and needs.

Our Dilemma: Schools are ideal environments to foster healthy lifelong behaviors. Yet, despite interest, relatively little local produce is used in school cafeterias, due to distribution, convenience and cost factors.

Our Team: We’re FCHS – the Family & Community Health Sciences Department with Rutgers Cooperative Extension. We promote healthy families, schools and communities. Our Grow Healthy school wellness initiative applies a garden-enhanced approached to wellness. We combine gardens, food systems, food, nutrition and movement to bring wellness to life at school. From classroom to cafeteria, our goal is to create a healthy school environment.

We’re working with foodservice, farmers, administrators, teachers and families to identify opportunities to improve school wellness environments. That’s a lot of people! And there’s a LOT of information to share. Whether it’s promoting a new training, announcing the availability of a new youth program or recruiting farmers and foodservice employees to support a new food initiative, getting the message to your audience is challenging.

Social (Media) Struggle: Facebook is the social media platform that seems to best reach our target audience. But, with reports that post reaches range from a mere 6.5% – 16%, we struggled with how to use this tool to our advantage.

Problem Solved!! We needed to find a way to make Facebook work better for us. We write our own posts and manage our own pages – in addition to our standard job duties. General page posts weren’t effective at communicating programmatic information and resources to our target audience.

So…we continue to use our Facebook page to post general and supplementary information. But, a more popular and effective tool has been our new Facebook GROUP. We invite members and they recommend others who have a specific, distinct interest in our project, programming and resources. For us, a Facebook group has been a much more efficient and effective tool to support programming.

What Are We Promoting? Currently, we’re promoting our 2016-2017 professional development program schedule. Check it out: http://gloucester.njaes.rutgers.edu/fchs/pdfs/2016-2017-Training-Summary-Brochure.pdf.

Categories
Climate i-Three Corps Information

i-Three Issue Corps: Ag Adaption to Variable Weather

Project Progress

Our I-Three Corps project is on schedule, YEAH!!! Our team, six members from three states, have been diligently working on the project and nearing completion.  To date, our team has finalized the evaluation method and questions for the project, identified two producers (Montana and Nebraska) and two citizen scientists (Montana) to interview and video for the project, completed the filming, drafted two fact sheets and one other blog post.  We are excited with the progress especially since we had difficulties finding producers willing to film and experienced scheduling conflicts.

 

Recent Progress

The film crew spent an awesome day interviewing and filming the final producer for the projects. We met with Greg Schlemmer outside of Fromberg, Montana, to tour and understand his no till farming practice under sprinkler and furrow irrigation.  This was an incredible experience and opportunity to see a producer adapting his management strategies to rather arid growing conditions.  Greg farms around 3,500 feet elevation with an annual precipitation of 11 inches with clay soils.  The farm has access to a constant water supply out of the Clark’s Fork River, which they can irrigate from around April until freeze, which is normally the end of October.

Greg has been able to increase his organic matter from 2% to 3.5% while still growing his standard crop rotation of silage corn, sugar beets, and barley. The increase in organic matter is supported through the normal crops as well as companion cropping soybean with the corn and planting a cover crop after barley.  The operation has been cultivated for three years under no till practices and has already experienced many benefits from this new management style, such as: decreasing fertilizer inputs, decreasing fuel usage by two-thirds, increasing yields and sugar content in sugar beets, almost eliminating soil erosion, less stress to plants during hot periods due to increased soil moisture, and other benefits. 

Corn field at Greg Schlemmer’s farm near Fromberg, MT. Photo Credit. David Keto
Corn field at Greg Schlemmer’s farm near Fromberg, MT. Photo Credit. David Keto

 

Why Is This Important

Greg captured it best. If no till were not economical for his operation then he would not do it. Soil conservation methods are gaining acceptance in the Midwest but have not taken hold in western states due to the difference in climate, crops/market, and other reasons.  Highlighting a no till operation in an arid climate with similar crops will stimulate more interest in the practices, especially if it is economical.

Is no till for every operation? The general consensus is “No”, especially for an operation with furrow irrigation.  However, Greg’s operation indicates that no till can even work with furrow irrigation.  Learning from early adopters that are pushing the knowledge of what is possible can assist agriculture communities to be more competitive, more economically stable, and increase overall operation and community resiliency.

What a great experience!!

No-till sugar beets in furrowed irrigated field at Greg Schlemmer’s farm near Fromberg, MT. Photo Credit. David Keto
No-till sugar beets in furrowed irrigated field at Greg Schlemmer’s farm near Fromberg, MT. Photo Credit. David Keto

 

Image 1. Corn field at Greg Schlemmer’s farm near Fromberg, MT. Photo Credit. David Keto

Image 2. No-till sugar beets in furrowed irrigated field at Greg Schlemmer’s farm near Fromberg, MT. Photo Credit. David Keto

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Climate Learning Network Extension i-Three Corps Impact

i-Three Issue Corps – How do we get things done in Extension? We “Borrow, Adapt, Adopt”

All extension agents are familiar with the method of finding the best practices, adapting and adopting them to work in our communities. This is an efficient way to provide proven projects and methods with limited resources. While the idea of ‘Borrow, Adapt, Adopt’ may not be anything new, using it as a formal project method is.

Continue reading “i-Three Issue Corps – How do we get things done in Extension? We “Borrow, Adapt, Adopt””
Categories
Newsroom

eXtension Month in Review – May 2016

May, 2016

eXtensionMay was devoted to a number of forward-looking activities, particularly conducting conversations with Communities of Practice to learn more about their current needs and recommendations. eXtension staff is now working on developing more opportunities for Communities to collaborate and increase visibility.

Horizon Report for Cooperative Extension in Development for Fall Sharing

New Media ConsortiumThe eXtension Foundation, the Extension Committee on Organization and Policy (ECOP) Innovation Task Force and The New Media Consortium (NMC) have selected 56 expert panelists to examine trends with the potential to impact Extension’s future. Learn more…

New Webinar Service for Member Institutions Offer Capacity up to 500 Visitors

Zoom meetingAs part of eXtension’s recent acquisition of new tools for use by professionals at eXtension Foundation member institutions, eXtension has secured the use of Zoom Webinars to assist CoPs, LNs, and other users with webinar services. Learn more…

First Steps to Approaching of Mental Health Issues in Extension Work

mental healthIncreasingly, Cooperative Extension professionals are coming in contact in their work with individuals affected by mental health problems. Knowing how to help them begins with knowing how to find the right bridge for them to the help they need. Learn more…

BeeAware of BeeHealth: June 20-26 Is National Annual Pollinator Week

BeeBlog: i-Three Issue Corps member project on Pollinator Planting
Information: http://articles.extension.org/bee_health
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/BeeHealth/videos?shelf_id=1&view=0&sort=dd

Learn Webinar Tests New Webinar Capacity with 480+ Visitors

Utah DNRMay Forestry Lunch and Learn: Pruning
(Sponsored by Utah State University Forestry Extension, Utah Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands)

eXtension’s Recent Video Highlight

YouTubeMaster Gardeners Promoting Mental Health in Pittsburgh (produced by eXtension)

 

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i-Three Corps News Newsroom Tools and Services Webinars

eXtension Month in Review – April 2016

John Stepper at NeXC2016April, 2016:

April was another busy month for eXtension, with emphasis on evaluating the effectiveness of every component of the NeXC2016 event held in San Antonio at the end of March. We spent April following up on all participants’ comments and using their responses to plan eXtension’s work ahead.

Evaluation of NeXC2016 Indicates High Participant Satisfaction

Paul Pangaro working sessionNeXC2016: From Innovation to Impact was designed to be an innovative conference, providing a highly interactive, hands-on approach to fostering innovation, transferring skills and introducing both professional development participants and i-Corps members to new ways of thinking. Learn more…

eXtension Innovation Project “Virtual Communications Camp” Fills First Session

Becky and BobFive teams of Extension professionals have been selected to participate in the first Virtual Communications Camp. Developed and taught by Becky Koch and Bob Bertsch, Ag Communications professionals at North Dakota State University, the camp is the culmination of an eXtension innovation project awarded in June 2015 and is based on a successful in-person camp they have been hosting for the last four years. Learn more…

“DroneSinger” Represents eXtension’s Unmanned Aircraft Learning Network at NIFA Science Festival

Victor with droneHe sings, he dances, he does comedy and ventriloquy: he’s Victor Villegas, Technology and Media Support Coordinator at Oregon State University Extension and a co-leader of eXtension’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems in Agriculture Learning Network. Villegas’s highly innovative approach to educating children and adults alike about drones may be unorthodox, but it works. Learn more…

Change and Opportunities Webinar

WebinareXtension is in a period of transition, adding and revising tools and services to meet the needs of today’s Extension professionals for education and strategies to increase impact and meet the constantly changing needs of their communities of service. If you were unable join us for this webinar the recorded version on YouTube is available here.

New Directions Call for New Position: Chief Operating Officer

As the scope of eXtension’s initiatives expands, need has developed for a Chief Operating Officer to oversee and coordinate projects, assignments and overall workflow. This is a half-time, virtual position: the candidate selected can work from anywhere in the U.S. Learn more…

eXtension’s Recent Video Highlights

YouTubeSTEM in the Mosque (produced by eXtension)
Refugee Garden (produced by eXtension)

eXtension CEO Christine Geith’s “Fly on the Wall” Talks
Steve Ehrmann on Impact Assessment
Shane Bradt on Storytelling and Mapping

 

Categories
Announcements Information Newsroom

New Position Posted: eXtension Chief Operating Officer

eXtension Seeks Part-Time Chief Operating Officer

eXtension Foundation logoThe eXtension Foundation, a part of the Cooperative Extension System, is seeking an outstanding individual to serve as Chief Operating Officer on a part-time (.5 FTE) appointment. Experience working virtually is a plus because eXtension operates as a virtual organization. The person in this position can work from anywhere in the United States. This individual will have an overall strategic and operational responsibility for eXtension Foundation programs and services and will manage key staff leaders. The COO provides leadership for the Foundation’s strategic planning process and implements strategic initiatives. The eXtension Foundation, is a 501(c)3 organization supporting Extension professionals nationwide. Deadline for applications is Wednesday, June 1, 2016.

A detailed position description can be found here: https://www.extension.org/coo-position-announcement.