Sessions about Distance Education and Instructional Design

Second Life is an online multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) that was created in 2003. This past year saw interest in Second Life as an educational environment explode as educational institutions scrambled to create a presence in this virtual environment. eXtension, in late 2006 acquired some "virtual land" with a group of like-minded educational institutions in a space called EduIsland, and an additional location on the teen-only grid to explore educational opportunities with youth learners. This hands-on and in-depth professional training session will introduce participants to the Second Life experience through some fun activities like virtual shopping, dancing, and sporting activities in addition to a tour showing educational tools being used. Skills learned will include creating your own avatar, changing your appearance, gestures, walking, flying, navigation, basic building, and scripting skills. Participants will explore both the adult and youth eXtension educational space, and learn how they can get involved.

Gaming has become a serious instructional tool for the classroom mixing play with learning, replacing textbook and lab assignments. The typical student today is exposed to a plethora of technological gadgets and information, opening a host of challenges and issues for the classroom teacher and parent today (balance fun/play with learning). Today’s student requires engagement, the issue is not that students are experiencing A.D.D. but E.O.E. (ENGAGE or ENRAGE me). Equally challenging is the development of a “serious game”. For Pest Private Eye and the Case of IPM the challenge was not only to promote engagement and learning but stay within the constraints of an “educational” budget. The CIT DEAL staff and the UNL Pesticide Education Office faced this challenge in a game pilot for Integrated Pest Management. This session the production staff highlights the challenges in the game development with the 3D environments, character animations, storyboarding, timeline and budget processes. In addition, discussion will include the next phase in the development process to move ahead from a pilot to a 2 yr grant funded project.

Delivery of audio information is transferred via the Internet to a participants desktop or laptop computer and then downloaded via a usb port into an mp3 player. The sample population participating in this pilot consists of 20 agricultural producers selected at random from throughout the commonwealth. The types of information that might be delivered in this way include agricultural weather notices, alerts, and alarms; general procedures to protect producers from all manner of terrorism attacks on the farm, Agri-related information from research and Extension Specialists from the College of Agriculture, Information from the office of Homeland Security and other pertinent audio information as necessary.

Videoconferencing, course management systems, lecture capture systems, collaboration software, screencasting - what are all these technologies, and what is the best use for each? If you're confused about DE/Communication tools and would like a brief rundown on their advantages and disadvantages, this session is for you.

As we move to position eXtension as a high-quality, interactive learning environment for our Internet customers, visibility of our resource-based content increases dramatically. Top quality, professional presentation of content is a must. This includes appropriate writing styles and editorial review of everything publicly available. Professional photographers, videographers and graphic designers can use their talents to bring content alive. As eXtension strives to present the best our land-grant system has to offer, we must capitalize on the professionals from the Extension system to enhance and add value to the content being developed in order for us to successfully compete in the Internet world. Our marketing claims "the best, most researched knowledge from the smartest land-grant university minds across America," and we know those minds have been relying on ACE professionals to make other Extension resources top quality! Come hear from some currently involved in eXtension, and find out how you too can share your expertise through involvement with this national initiative.

A panel of communications professionals—both faculty and staff—from several different universities will discuss ways of getting buy-in from, providing professional development opportunities for, and serving as a resource for faculty in communications efforts. The discussion will include research results that indicate faculty communications training needs, practical strategies, pitfalls, strategies, experiences, ideas, and other related topics.

To start-up or get funding for any communication or distance education project, Rule #1 is “Know Your Audience.” This workshop will take participants through a basic hands-on process for identifying issues and audiences. It will start with basic steps and end up with a fully developed potential impact statement that will guide on-going evaluation of their efforts. Each participant should bring with them or be able to characterize a specific start-up project. At the end of the 2-hours session you will have a set of tools for audience analysis and specific information that will improve the competitiveness of your individual projects.

Internet radio is an inexpensive alternative to airwave broadcast and allows you to get additional use from podcasting. It also can be quick, portable distance education and/or meeting tool that can broadcast to thousands of people simultaneously from anywhere you have a computer and internet connection. (note: I did a sparcely attended version of this last year. I think it was up against too many similar workshops and it will go better with NETC)

Listening is often the most important communication skill identified by business leaders; yet, we spend little time teaching it. In this session, we will be providing information about training resources for listening skills and discuss applying those materials to training Extension professionals and others. In addition, we'll go through a couple of training exercises and brainstorm means to make the exercises even more effective.

“I want to but don’t have time.” “I’m busy on that day”. “There’s no money in the budget.” Sound familiar? Extension employees tend to be short on time and dollars when it comes to staff development on new technologies. Understanding these issues, we began offering regular lunchtime opportunities at a distance (via. Breeze) to teach U of MN Extension educators and staff about technologies they can use to enhance their educational programs and increase productivity. We will share with you our format, a description of session topics, evaluation/findings, and materials we provide to Extension employees.

This session will showcase a collaborative effort between Iowa State University Extension and Texas Cooperative Extension (TCE) in "Moving Traditional Face-To-Face Programs Online". You'll learn about TCE's innovative model for helping content experts make the transition between delivery methods. Offered in one-day and two-day training formats, attendees are walked through the entire educational process: from concept to instructional design, from which software to use to software how-to's; and from promotion to delivery in synchronous and asynchronous formats. Take away ideas you can put to use right away, need I say that famous Texas phrase. "On a Shoestring Budget"!

With more and more Americans eating out, it is critical that all foodservice workers learn about safe food handling. Without proper training, workers might improperly handle food and as a result foodborne illness could occur. The National Restaurant Association (NRA) estimates that a single foodborne illness outbreak could cost a restaurant an estimated $75,000. Chinese is the third most commonly spoken language in U.S. foodservice operations, following English and Spanish. In many areas of the U.S., food safety educators only speak English and so it is difficult for them to effectively train Chinese–speaking foodservice workers. This website was designed to help food safety educators reach this important group — Chinese-speaking foodservice workers. The website is divided into two sections — Student Tools and Educator Tools. All materials are based on the 2005 FDA Food Code

America is badly “out- of- shape”, according to health scientists; and it's not just grown-ups, but young people, too. Researchers predict that, if things don't change, today's children will grow up to be less healthy than their parents! Eat, Move, Learn enables you to take up this important current issue while also addressing national academic standards for sixth grade science... all in a way that comes alive in the classroom. Eat, Move, Learn is organized around the idea that we must "balance" the energy we take in through our food and the energy we spend in physical activity. Eat, Move, Learn helps you and your class to analyze the problems of food and fitness, find promising solutions to energy imbalance, and design a study to test your ideas. Eat, Move, Learn consists of 4 modules and 13 lessons that a class can use sequentially or individually.

This session will showcase an exercise DVD developed for children that is an exciting story based adventure. Find out what it took to get this complex animation and live action project off the ground. We will discuss the production process we used from script, to storyboard, to filming an actor on green screen, a new keying process, an the integration of Flash and AfterEffects for the final compositing.

This session will be a collaboration among different states to identify tools needed to develop online, on-demand training programs to meet the needs of our clientele. Sharing resources between states will help all of us save time so that we each don't reinvent the wheel. One of our goals is to identify one central respository to point our clientele to these On Your Time Trainings. Come with your ideas and be willing to share your resources.

More and more Extension audiences have access to the Web. Extension research shows that response rate is significantly higher when using a Web survey, rather than a mail survey. This session will show how PSU Extension is training their staff to create on-line needs assessments and program evaluations that provide valid data. These data results then are turned into meaningful pie or bar charts.

The Extension Disaster Education Network (EDEN) has six online learning opportunities that use a variety of techniques for distance education. The train-the-trainer courses include leaders' guides, PowerPoint slides, handout materials, evaluations and more. Some courses feature narrated PowerPoint for an individual's learning. The courses are: * Plant Biosecurity Management * OnGuard: Protecting America's Food System * Ready Business: Preparing a Disaster Business Plan * Pandemic Preparedness for Business * USDA's Roles in the National Response Plan * Animal Biosecurity Management Come see how you can use these online learning opportunities in your organization.

Are you interested in offering instruction that students can carry with them? Podcasts can be used to present a completely virtual class or can be used to supplement classroom instruction. This hands-on workshop will have you producing your own audio and video podcasts (vodcasts) before you leave. The presenters will take you through the podcasting process from start to finish and then guide you as you record your own podcast or vodcast. The session will also cover how to get your instruction into the hands of your students. You will learn about some of the current research revolving around podcasting, the software (some is even free) that makes the process easier, the hardware needed, and practical tips to ensure a quality product. You will walk away with a reference manual of all that was presented and your own trial podcast. Come join us and add podcasting to your virtual instructional toolbox.

Our agriculture clients are becoming fewer and farther between, while their needs and desires for accurate and timely information have increased. As knowledge providers, our tighter budgets often dictate greater use of electronic communication and distance learning methods. PorkBridge was created to better utilize our capabilities and resources, while allowing flexibility and ease of active participation. Learn how faculty and staff from five states are working together to refine this "participate where you are with whomever you want, at the time that works better for you" six-part, year-long program. Each session speaker develops a PowerPoint-based presentation, which is edited, packaged for CD, and sent to participants. Registrants join the session via conference phone call (toll-free number) and follow the speaker's presentation on their own computer. PorkBridge logistics are coordinated at Iowa State University, its coordinator-moderator is from University of Minnesota, and expert presenters this year hail from five states. Current participants are from 10 states and one Canadian province, with backgrounds ranging from individual producer to veterinarian to feed company.

This eyes-on, ears-on, hands-on presentation will let participants experience what it is like to have a disability that prevents access to your information. Participants will also learn tips to make information more accessible for people who face language, mobility, hearing, and vision barriers. The session includes a brief discussion about requirements of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, Section 504, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, and Section 508 (which amends the act to include software and the Internet). Whether you're in a classroom, or creating print and on-line resources, these best practices in Universal Instructional Design will make your content clearer for all.

See the potential of web conferencing technology to extend the reach of Iowa State University Extension through rich media presentations and interactive sessions. Examples using this technology will include: Master Gardener Bioeconomy Education Open Forums Special Events (Special Olympics) Lunch and Learn Programs Human Resources Presentations Technology Training Series

Participate in this interactive session where we present, troubleshoot and solve five frequently occurring web conferencing problems. This session will focus on common client problems using web conferencing technology and strategies to help remote clients identify and resolve these problems. Sample problems are taken from Iowa State University Extension’s experience of hosting web conferences for the Land Grant System over the last two years.