I happened across a really neat thing today. Well, at least I thought it was neat. I have been trying to determine ways that we might be able to more closely link, at least visually, our county web pages with eXtension. We, like may Extension Services throughout the country, have a form of content management system in place which is used by all our county Extension offices. So, it becomes relatively easy to place a link on every county website. I figured that it would be a snap to put a link to http://www.extension.org. But, I had hoped that when we added that link, the eXtension web site would display our Texas Cooperative Extension logo.
So, today Wendy Wolfington implemented the link to eXtension on our county web sites, but I figured that the eXtension staff would have some work to do to make our logo show up. Imagine my surprise when I was testing that link from one of our county websites, and suddenly I'm seeing the Texas Cooperative Extension logo on the eXtension website. To make sure, I had 5 other people test this phenomenon, including one person off campus using a Verizon DSL connection. Every one of these 5 experienced exactly the same thing.
Well, in checking with Jason Young of the eXtension staff, I learned this works because when the eXtension web server receives a request, it checks for the location of the referring website. If it recognizes that location, it replaces the eXtension logo with the logo from the state of the referrer. This is cool!! I wonder if anyone besides me will notice.
Well, after not posting anything to this blog in almost two months, I am embarrassed when around a bunch of my IT colleagues here at the National Extension Technology Conference in Albuquerque. So, I figured I'd better get back at it.
But, the truth is that NETC always gets me charged up. This is now my 13th straight year to attend this conference, and it has never failed that I come away having learned a lot of new things. So, I will attempt to write about some of them here.
This afternoon, I was sitting in a session conducted by Kevin Gamble talking about various collaborative tools, one of which was Twitter. I had heard that it is a way to keep others up to date on where you are and what you are doing, but then I had never tried it out. Besides, just why in the world would I want to spend my time telling others my whereabouts; isn't there certain comfort in hiding sometimes? Then, I started understanding some of the value, especially in tight working groups, and thought I might oughta try it out. Before I left the session, I looked at my Blackberry, and there I found an email invitation from Anne Adrian to join Twitter as a friend. Well, how could I turn down such an invitation, so using that Blackberry, I clicked on the link, found myself completing a user name, email address, and password, and momentarily, there was the question: "What are you doing?" All I could think of was, "I am attending NETC." There it was: my first "twit".
In playing with it a little more later today, I happened to post a "twit" to my Twitter account. Of course, at that time, I still had only one friend--Anne. But I was quite surprised when less than two minutes after making that post, Anne walks by and comments to me about that posting. So, now I have 5 friends, have posted my picture and a preferred background, provided a link to this blog, and have invited about 6 more friends. I wonder what this ride will be like?
I'm sitting here listening to Beth Kanter's webinar on Web2.0, and see so many ways that Extension could benefit from using its various technologies. However, when I find myself in meetings where topics are discussed in which the application of a Web2.0 technology would really be useful, the mere mention of things like blogs, wikis, syndication, and other open, non-reviewed, and unedited delivery platforms just causes a lot of head shaking and strange looks. So, what does it take to open peoples' minds to these technologies?
Well, I suppose like many other technological changes, one needs to be happy with small baby steps and successes. And, often I find that these small successes are achieved by people one might least expect. Here in Texas, we have tried to convince subject matter specialists about how great a tool blogging might be, often to no avail. But, we are now starting to see county agents using this technology as a means of communicating with the people in their counties. That is quite exciting! Given enough time, maybe the idea will roll uphill.
But, I'd like to learn from others about suggestions you would have, so I have created a wiki page at http://collaborate.extension.org/wiki/Web2 where we can document successes and share ideas. Please use your eXtension ID to log in at that site and document your thoughts. Or, go ahead and comment on this blog, and I will capture your comment to post to the wiki.
Today I had the pleasure of getting reacquainted with the work of Mark Milliron, Director of the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) at the University of Texas at Austin. (Yes, I know, what's an Aggie doing touting the talent of a Longhorn?) I first became acquainted with Mark while he was leading the Global Learning Initiatives project for Oracle in 1999, and had lined him up to be a keynote speaker at NETC2000 in College Station, until his new job with the League for Innovation in the Community College prevented his attending.
Mark has a very keen sense of the place of technology in teaching and learning, and speaks to its various issues very widely and eloquently. He is a strong proponent of blended or hybrid learning technologies, not being concerned with what is the best technology, but how to make learning fun and engaging using the best combination of technologies. I may have to follow up future blog entries by addressing some of his specific points. In the meantime, I invite your checking out his blog at http://catalyticconversations.blogspot.com/.
Yesterday I read an article about the continuing debate about the validity of what one finds in Wikipedia (see Wikipedia Mulls Proof Of Credentials - Technology News by InformationWeek). Almost every time I introduce someone to the wealth of information in Wikipedia, I get the question, "Well, how do we know we can believe or trust that information if just anyone can post things to it?" The idea is, of course, that if we know or trust the author, then somehow the information that comes from that author is more likely to be "true."
The crux of the article stems around people trying to represent themselves as having certain credentials when they, in fact, do not have these credentials. But, the part of the article that caught my attention most was the response to this whole issue from the Wikimedia Foundation: "Content is, and have [sic] always been, judged based on its quality, and not the credential of the individual contributor. As such, the community is discouraging people from arguing from positions of authority. Arguing from authority to prove a point would never be accepted in academic paper and should never be accepted in Wikipedia."
So, hmmmm. Why do we spend so much time in higher education making sure that everyones' titles are exactly correct? Why do we find in our personnel directories that people with a PhD have a "Dr." placed in front of their names, but other employees don't have a "Mr" or a "Ms"? And, is it really as the Wikimedia Foundation argues that in reviewing academic papers, a person with a PhD carries no more weight than someone without? Somehow, that has not been my experience.
On the other hand, does all of this depend on the nature of the content? Would I really want to believe medical information provided by someone whom I did not know or believe was a fully qualified medical practitioner? If I see two documents addressing a particular issue, one written by someone who I knew received a certain level of training and education on the topic, and another written by a novice, I think I know which I would believe. But, this is the scenario where I can make a clear choice between what two individuals say. But, what if I had to make a choice between something written by a "qualified" person, and a whole bunch of novices (e.g., Wikipedia), then I'm not so certain.
So, this is where it is important to really look at the history of a document in Wikipedia. If all the content is authored by a single individual, I would stay clear of believing that content regardless of that person's credentials. But, if the content is authored by many, and if the basic tenets of the article have not changed considerably during the most previous several versions, then I am apt to think the content is more believable.
In any event, this really brings into question, again, what is the nature of "truth" in the flat world in which we live. Does it even exist? Who can we really believe? HELP!! This is confusing!!
