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.
]]>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?
]]>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.
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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!!
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On the other hand, a couple of weeks ago, I viewed some early work being done at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi on providing simulation based nurses training. This is some really neat stuff with the goal of providing greater learning experiences for an understaffed profession. I suspect this is training that we must insist be organized. Do you really want a Google person in charge of your medical care?
So, to structure or not to structure, that is the question. However, I think the answer is "to structure AND not to structure. People learn in different ways--all we can do is strive to meet them where they are with the information in the format that they want.
Today while giving some thought to the design of a CMS we are adopting, I was looking at the defined structure, agency and department pages, layouts, channels, customer communities, etc., but at each step of the way, I kept thinking "What happens when a Google Person lands on this page?" If someone starts with the institutional "home page" and follows the prescribed navigation to the topic of interest, then each page viewed is taken in the context of those which preceded it. But, when the Google Person lands on a page, there is absolutely no context; the page stands alone. So, everything that is visible on that page needs to be self-explanatory in some way. We cannot use pronouns, for example, to refer back to prior pages, because there likely are no "prior pages."
Having said this, I think there really is room for both Google People and University People all on the same website, provided we structure the web pages properly. For example, if a Google Person looking for some specific information through a Google search lands on one of our websites, we should be able to immediately capture that person's interest through the other things found on that site. Such things as related articles (the Amazon approach), facilitating followup questions with the article's author, assessing the credibility of the content, and even conducting further onsite searches should keep the Google Person in our website house a little longer. If we want visitors to stay awhile, we really have to consider what it will take to delay their immediately clicking the Back or Home buttons. Having a side dish or dessert available on each page should help.
While I am just getting started in this endeavor, I would encourage your checking out Kevin's blog and Mitch's blog. You'll find a lot of interesting and thought provoking material at those sites; and you will learn a lot as well.
So, as we look to how Extension specialists and Agents deliver education in the future, we really need to understand that the world we are now reaching is a Google world, where people don't bookmark our agency websites, but use search engines like Google and Yahoo to look through easily searchable "open" repositories like wikis and blogs. We also need to consider that we may not be the sole and ultimate experts on our content, but that our customers may have experience that tempers our knowledge. These wiki and blog platforms accommodate collaboration with our customers in ways never before seen, and we need to foster those collborations. Ready to catch up with the New Web?
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Yet, surely, it is recognized that a PC connected to a network creates a security risk to everyone else on that network. If that PC is not managed properly and securely, then everyone else faces increased information security risk. One thought that has occurred to me is that when it comes to information security, the only thing different between the professor and the IT support technician is the relative amount each knows and understands about information security. Theoretically, because the IT support technician is able to focus on such security issues, then he is supposed to be more knowledgeable of security, but I would argue that is not always the case. We have all seen people performing the IT support function that scare the dickens out of you by some of the actions they take. In some cases, they are no more capable of "administering" a PC than the ordinary, "dumb" user.
So, what to do? How about requiring an information security "license" to be granted PC administrator rights, regardless of role in the organization? Should there not be some competency level which all PC administrators should have? What if we allow the professor (or anyone for that matter) who wants administrator rights to his computer to participate in specified information security training, as well to pass a certification exam? What if we require the IT support technician to pass this exam as a requirement of getting and retaining his job? Of course, all the training in the world will not make people implement or exercise what they have trained to do, but surely such system would have the likelihood of improving our information security status while providing a mechanism for those wanting administrator rights to their computers to earn/obtain them. And, better yet, it creates an incentive for people to learn more about information security. Want the same privileges as your co-worker? Well, have I got a deal for you! Just take this training and pass this test.
BINGO!! This is where syndicated feeds (RSS or ATOM) come into play. Those of you using GroupWise can use a program called GWRSS, which is a syndicated news reader that places messages in your GroupWise mailbox. Whenever a new article is put into a blog, the news reader finds it and creates an email message out of it. This same reader can also capture new postings to our wiki, as well as AgNews.
However, if you are willing to use an independent news reader, then I suggest you try out Google Reader (http://reader.google.com). Like other Google products, the price is right: FREE. All you need is a Google account. And, the set up is relatively easy once you have this account. Go ahead; try it. And create a link to tceblogs.tamu.edu/mt/larry/atom.xml.
]]>A few months ago I was asked at a New Employees Orientation about this kind of requirement. Of course, I gave the normal spiel about how important it is to protect one's information resources, how if someone gets your password to one system, then they have the password to all systems you access, and how there are even tools like KeePass that they can use to keep track of them all. But, in the end, I admitted that (1) I had no way to know whether someone was using different passwords except to ask them, but then (2) they are under no obligation--in fact they are under a prohibition--to tell me what they are. So it all comes down to the person and his/her conscience and what risks they are prepared to take. We can require passwords to be changed, but since there is no linkage between Novell, GroupWise, FAMIS, LeaveTraq, NEO, etc., there is certainly nothing that prevents them from all being the same.
So, how loud is YOUR conscience?
]]>* A smaller percentage of content is branched e-Learning.
* A larger percentage of content is shorter more user navigated modules of
documents.
* PDFs are evolving as the primary file format accessed by users in many
settings.
* PodCasts are quite difficult to integrate into many LMS tracking
systems.
* Users are wanting to see the ratings of specific content choices by
colleagues within their companies who have similar positions.
* Content is being developed by more people, fewer instructional designers
and leveraging non-instructional documents with greater frequency.
So, do we really need an LMS? Hmmmm.
]]>Okay...I like this using of the Wiki for project status updates so much, I filled in my user page and have made another project page for the Self Assessments stuff. It, the Bookstore one, and any future ones can be found through http://tcewiki.tamu.edu/wiki/User:Collectonian (so you only have to visit one page ;-)
Neat idea. Now I can quit walking down the hall to ask her what is happening. I can even look at the page histories on that wiki and find out when she last updated it.
]]>So, here is the beginning. I have no idea where this journey will take us, or whether this blog will last past the first few days, but I will certainly give it a try. Welcome aboard.
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