Cooperative Extension and Technology

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Cooperative Extension and Technology

• Partners for the Future
• eXtension Education for Today
• Michael Lambur - Virginia Tech
• Kathleen T. Morgan - Rutgers University

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What is eXtension?

• An evolving, virtual, customer-centered
  educational environment that will provide the
  most current, objective, research-based
  information from the Land-Grant University System
  for anyone, at any time, on any device, and in
  any location.
• Founded on the principles of distributing useful
  and practical information from the entire
  land-grant system.
• It will minimize duplication and aggregate
  information through identifying the best of the
  best materials.

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Communities of Practice (CoP)
Communities of Practice are expected to actively
engage in content development and collaboration
with peers to create the best-of-the-best
materials for deployment in the Extension Web
portal of eXtension.
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What is a Community of Practice?

• A virtual network of subject matter content
  providers consisting of faculty, professional and
  para-professional staff, county educators,
  industry experts, clientele, and government
  agencies.
• They share knowledge or competence in a specific
  content area and are willing to work and learn
  together over a period of time to further develop
  and share that knowledge in forms of educational
  products and programs.

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What eXtension Delivers

• Articles of content with related images, video,
  or multimedia features
• FAQs and Ask an Expert (AnE)
• News
• Calendar Events
• Learning Lessons
• Decision Tools
• Live Online Chats
• Collaborative wiki
• Social networking tools

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Lets Look at the eXtension Public Website

• http//www.extension.org/

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Behind the Scenes Wikis

• The wiki is the application that is used to
  create content that is published to the eXtension
  public website.
• The wiki allows for flexible editing and will
  track user changes over time so no version of a
  document is ever lost.
• The wiki also allows you to enter metadata that
  will track your contributions in reports back to
  you and university administration.
• The wiki allows for collaboration of the entire
  community on a single article and will house this
  content for future edits and updates and easy
  republishing to the live site as needed.

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CoP Membership

• New members may contact the leadership directly
  by finding the leadership contact information on
  the CoP Wiki's Community Home page.
• However now leadership can login to
  people.extension.org and view the list of all
  eXtension ID holders who have designated their
  CoP and find new interested volunteers.

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Lets Look at the Wikis

• http//about.extension.org/

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Families, Food and Fitness Community of Practice
Vision The Families Food and Fitness Community of
Practices vision is to become a source of
research-based information for families as they
work to eat smart, move more and achieve a
healthy weight. Mission The Families Food and
Fitness Community of Practice will provide
education and skills to help families make
informed decisions about healthy eating and
physical activity by providing them with evidence
(science/research) - based information and
learning opportunities through eXtension.
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Families, Food and Fitness CoP
The multi-state, multidisciplinary eXtension CoP
will utilize the collaboration organized around
the three goals of this Families, Food and
Fitness Preventing Obesity CoP, which are for
the participants of the CoI to (1) Improve diets
(2) Increase physical activity and (3) Maintain
body weight in a healthy range and avoid excess
weight gain.
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Families, Food and Fitness CoP Content
Categories
Prepare More Meals at Home Move More
Everyday Enjoy More Fruits and Vegetables Portion
Control Re-Think Your Drink Tame the Tube
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Lets look at the Families, Food and Fitness
eXtension site

• http//www.demo.extension.org/families20food20fi
  tness

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Evaluating eXtensionAnd other Websites

• Google Analytics
• Tracks interactions with the website
• And its free!
• InstantSurvey
• Used to get feedback directly from website users

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Lets Look at Google Analytics

• https//www.google.com/analytics/reporting/login?c
  tuhttps3A2F2Fwww.google.com2Fanalytics2Fsett
  ings2F3Fet3Dreset26hl3Den-US

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Lets Look at InstantSurvey

• http//www.instantsurvey.com/login.asp

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Thanks!Questions??