I just had the opportunity to present a workshop at the National and Trans-Tasman Horticultural Science Conference on eExtension i.e. the use of Social Media and Web2.0 in Sustainable Agriculture, Natural Resource Management, and the Environment. Check out a longer post on THINKeEXTENSION.com
Below is a rather humorous however spot on analysis of social media. As an extension officer you need to be aware your clients are consuming web2.0 and / or social media content now and the trend is rampant. If you have not started e-extension activities with current projects or at least planned to incorporate e-extension in your next projects you are missing an important opportunity. In the comment section below let us know about your e-extension activities.
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Caring For Our Country Open Grant rounds were apparently released in last weekend’s Weekend Australian Newspaper, this news comes with a sigh of relief for many NRM workers. As staff of many NHT funded organisations around the nation are preparing for unemployment or know someone who is. The new federal government’s announcement means that many staff who would be leaving work next monday uncertain as to how long it might be before they next have employment. Will spend their final week of employment furiously creating funding applications.
Creating your own NRM blog now, sharing your nrm activity, your projects, the conferences you attend, and your aspirations will give you a presence in NRM online.
At present if a prospective employer / partner / collaborator googled “NRM” in your region would you appear?
Imagine what opportunities might come your way if instead of being reached through your employer or direct contact, propective employers and “would be” collaborators could find you on the web. If you are say a Rural Water Use Efficiency Extension expert imagine if everytime “Rural Water Use Efficiency” is googled or searched your name and blog come up. Before long you will be linked the Rural Water Use Efficiency field and interested parties will be able to find You easily
If you periodically publish blog posts about the activities that you are undertaking in NRM, you will rapidly build a series of articles which serve as a rich resume of your experience.
Imagine the interview panel when applying a new NRM postion (possibly funded by C4OC) recieves your resume which contains a link to your blog. Then upon visiting your blog the interview panel can not only read in detail about your experience but will see what an informed and proactive operator you are.
Should the selection panel come down to you and one other applicant for one position, both of you with similar qualifications and experience. Let’s say they visit your blog and can get a very rich picture of what you are about and what you can do and the other applicant has a dry old resume. That’s got to give you a competitive advantage.
Over the course over your NHT2 employment, you will have build goodwill in a network of NRM people (fellow employees, extension officers, funding people, landholders, all sorts of people). By maintaining a blog you can stay at the top of the minds of all those people in your network. Who are they going to turn to when they have opportunities to share?
Blogs, Podcasts, and other web2.0 tools are being adopted rapidly and consumption of web2.0 content is exploding. In the not too distant future every business, every NRM group and every NRM project will be using tools like blogs to communicate. Now is your time to get ahead of the curve. By setting up a blog now you will develop skills that will be considered highly desirable when seeking new employment or promotion.
Most likely you got into the NRM industry because you believe that we need sustainable agriculture, a healthy environment, or hopefully both in the future. By starting a blog the value of the projects that you have worked on, the workshops that you have held, etc can continue to spread their message 24/7 for as long as have the blog.
Imagine at some stage in the future you are required to run a workshop on say Integrated Pest Management for Tomato Growers and you remember running a similar workshop in the past. How helpful it be for yourself or your colleagues to refer back to your past workshop as documented on your blog.
Chances are you have been worked on projects or activities that involved many partners and stakeholders. By blogging about your current and past activities, you continue to honor that partnership. So if the Tomato Growers group wants to work with someone in the future, who are they going to want to work with? You, becuase through your blog you will be creating additional value for them above and beyond expectation.
Blogging is a good way of keeping information you need to share regularly at your fingertips, rather than typing out a description of a previous activity just direct people to your blog. A blog can act as a sort of online filling system and makes a great resource when writing press realeses, fact sheets, brochures, and belive it or not webpages (just to name a few).
Blogging is fun it’s like having your own magazine, and if you choose to add video and audio podcasts it’s like having a TV and Radio show as well. However it’s more than that. Blogging is also about having a conversation. You will meet interesting people, make new conntections and discover new worlds.
With some of the new web2.0 tools that have emerged in the last few motnhs and the way in which they converge and compliement each other, it has never been eaiser to share, slice, and publish information to a blog. For more information about effortless blogging keep reading eco2oh.
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Tags: eco2oh, web2.0, blog, blogging, NRM, NaturalResourceManagement, CaringForOurCountry, C4OC, NHT
As web 2.0 grows (which it does every minute), Natural Resource Managers will have more and more e-extension tools to tell their sustainable agriculture and environment stories. As the general population consumes more and more rich media butcher paper workshops alone are not going to cut the mustard. Does this mean the end of the shed meeting “no way jose”. It may just mean that growers leave a shed meeting (horticultural extension stable) and that night when the fire up their home computer. They may just find an email from the extension officer who was running the meeting. In the email there might be a link to a wiki containing the day’s notes and a slick online presentation of images from the workshop and key points. It might just be that for your next shed meeting or extensioneffort, that you use A N I M O T O to create follow up presentation.
What is A N I M O T O?
ANIMOTO is a very cool web 2.0 application that allows users to effortlessly create an online video. Using Cinematic Artificial Intelligence Technology, A N I M O T O takes images up select from your computer or online photo hosting site e.g. flickr, and automatically edits them into a very cool video. You can select a music track of your own or use one from their online library, 5 minutes later A N I M O T O has created your online video which you can download, export to Youtube, Myspace, Facebook or a load of other sites, or embed in your own website (check out the vid below).
I made this vid in less that 10 mins, best of all it was absolutley free. Like so many web 2.0 applications you can try this baby for free or you can have unlimited access for a year for US$30. May that US$25 is you use my promo code when you sign up or sign up from one of the links in this story. (disclaimer: if you do this I would recieve 3 months premuim membership free).
Check it out, have a play! It is so simple to use and you could be an e-extension guru by using A N I M O T O to create a follow up presentation from your next shed meeting, water quality improvement plan meeting, leading sheep project, paw paw growers workshop, Landcare meeting, …. you get the idea!
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Tags: AN I M O T O, e-extension, web2.0, video, online video
In Australia we can them Catchment Care Groups in North America they sometimes call them Watershed Association, either way many of the issues are the same and so are the solutions. In fact this morning I discovered just how parallel.
Through twitter (read a web 2.0 microblogging site) I discover thedublab as he is know in the twitterverse or Dave Riddell to you and me. It turns out Dave is Education Director: Environment and Sustainable Development Research Centre, University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, Canada.
Dave has been using some e-extension namely online video to tell catchment or watershed stories also. However the parallels don’t end there Dave used iMovie to edit his catchment video like I do to edit video for Better Burnett - a catchment recovery program by the Burnett Catchment Care Association.
Anyway check out some Dave’s doco work below or visit his blog . He is an interesting chap and is doing some great work.
The Canaan-Washademoak Watershed
If you are not yet using google earth in your NRM, Landcare, or Ag extension, you may be missing a very valuable tool. Google accesses very current data so imagery over most parts of the planet are pretty good, and in other places brilliant. If you aren’t familiar with google earth, can I suggest you check out some of the video etc at the homepage to get an idea of what can be done. For Better Burnett, (a catchment recovery program that eco2oh is contracted to coordinate, staff use google earth to discuss funding proposals and coordinate onground activity.
Below is a link to a video discussing some of the new features of google 4.3
so the good folk at APEN, held a great workshop giving extension staff everywhere a little taste of e-extension. lead by our fearless leader mr john james we conquered web conferencing, podcasting, wiki’s, e-surveys, email discussion lists, and so much more. the stand out for me on the day was the landholder initiated drought stories e-books that are part of the pioneering Leading Sheep program.
any way you want to know who won the competition, right?
oh yes that’s right we had a competition. i was lucky enough to be one of the webinar presenters on the day. i talked about some of the web 2.0 and e-extension projects i had been involved in. in an effort to encourage people to dive in to the whole sphere of web 2.0, i held a competition, a 9 day challenge. the participants had to do three things to go into the draw to win a 12 month premium subscription to a PBWiki.
the three task were as follows;
being the busy people extensionists are there were not an overwhelming number of entrants. however there were enough to warrant tearing up pieces of paper and the dropping them in a hat.
i am very pleased to say.
and the winner is …….
congratulations melina i will contact you shortly with details for collecting your prize.
thanks to all who participated, commiserations to the other participants. perhaps consider subscribing to this site i am in final stages of preparing some material to introduce a range of web 2.0 concepts. so if you would like to know more about starting a blog, recording a podcast, or creating some online video for you agricultural or natural resource management program stay tune to eco2oh.com
