Sessions about Web-related Technologies

Many users today are preferring websites that provide information faster with a minimum amount of work necessary. Over the years, with the constant rise in bandwidth availability, internet users have became progressively impatient when browsing websites. Many users may simply give up on websites that take too long or direct them to too many pages. AJAX is a mechanism that gives users almost instant availability of information when it is requested within web pages without having to redirect the user to new pages. This presentation will focus on familiarizing the audience with AJAX and it's different uses in web applications.

A wiki is a type of social networking software that allows the visitors themselves to easily author and edit content. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring. This session will explore the Wiki phenomenon and introduce participants to a variety of Web sites using this technology to facilitate collaborative content development. This hands-on session is open to anyone interested in working in any of the wikis hosted by eXtension, or who wants to learn how to contribute to a Wikimedia project. The goal of this hands-on workshop is to create and appropriately markup a piece of content to share in the Extension Collaborative wiki. In reaching the goal, you will learn about wikis, and how to create an article/page in a wiki using the various features available which may include appropriate use of lists, links, and graphics. Each section of this workshop will include one or more short demonstrations to introduce and explain the topic, and then an assignment to allow the participants to practice and learn the skills involved for the topic. Educational applications of wiki technology will be demonstrated and explored.

Participants will gain knowledge of the Structured Query Language (SQL) and learn how to utilize SQL in their web applications. The session will demonstrate how to create a basic database-driven web application and will cover database design, creating SQL tables, SQL field types, table joins, aggregate functions, code reuse and best practices. Examples will be presented using the open-source MySQL database engine and the PHP scripting language. The concepts and basic syntax will be applicable to other database systems and scripting languages such as Microsoft SQL Server and ColdFusion. Code examples will be available for download after the session. No prior knowledge of SQL is required but participants should be familiar with web development.

Ever wonder who is viewing your web pages? Are you curious about how visitors find their way to your site and how long they stay? WebTrends is a commercial product that allows you to answer these questions plus many others. By analyzing your traffic logs, WebTrends can tell you which pages are the most popular on your site, which Google keyword searches are leading people to your site, on which pages people are entering and leaving your site (you mean they don’t always start at my main page?!?), how much time visitors are spending at your site, and a whole lot more! The Alabama Cooperative Extension System has been using WebTrends regularly for about four years to provide figures for various assessment and accountability reports regarding our web traffic. Come see how WebTrends can help you learn more about the traffic generated by your state’s web site. You may be surprised at the results!

Considering or using CMS on your website? Are you using CMS to its potential, or maybe you aren’t sure of its possibilities? Three panelists will explain how technologies can meet organizational goals, gain synergy for data-driven systems, evaluate electronically distributed media, and merge work flows by bringing together media/technology/content experts without major financial investments. Designed for web developers, writers, editors, publishers, designers, administrators, technologists, multimedia producers, photographers, and anyone interested in delivery of education/information. This session builds on requests from audience evaluations from the “Future of Publishing” and “Convergence of the Media” discussions in San Antonio and Quebec City.

Google Co-op Search is new free tool from Google that brings the power of Google search to your Extension websites (without advertising displayed). It is a near-perfect all-in-one search solution for Extension websites -- especially those that span multiple domains. University of Illinois Extension implemented Google Co-op Search in November 2005 and K-State Research and Extension is currently testing the product. This search tool can be set up with minimal effort. This session will demonstrate the process of setting up Google Co-op Search on your own websites and discuss implementation issues.

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.

Are you looking for a solution to manage your institution's Web presence and content? Come learn from the experiences of ACES, AU's College of Agriculture and UGA's College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences as we examine, demonstrate, and discuss the Adobe Publishing System. This is a scalable content management system with both client-side and server-side components. It utilizes Dreamweaver to develop site templates, Contribute Publishing Server to manage a user database, and Contribute to distribute template access and edit content. In addition, Contribute provides a means for site administrators to assign roles and restrictions to editors, a method to distribute specific content and editing capabilities, and an internal review and publishing system. Various techniques, troubleshooting, and tips will be provided.

Knock off the dust of those hours of old archived video or go shoot some new video, but combine them with PowerPoint to create great looking and educational web presentations. This session will demonstrate how to use Adobe (Macromedia Breeze) Presenter, Camtasia Studio, and MS Producer, to combine PowerPoint with stock, talking heading, and/or production video to create and deliver enhanced web based presentations. We will give detailed, easy-to-follow tips from beginning to end on how to use each application to combine these videos with PowerPoint. We also will compare and contrast the difficulty level, start up time, features of each, and expense to creating a final product.

Google recently purchased YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars, not because it’s a site where lots of videos are stored (Google already has Google Video), but because of the community surrounding the videos stored there. Entertaining videos spread not because a large organization decides to promote and market them but because people tell other people about them, videos are rated and highlighted and even more people discover them. Social networking—YouTube, MySpace, LiveJournal, Flickr, weblogs, Digg, del.icio.us—is one of the killer apps of the new millennium and it can be a way to reach non-traditional audiences. Key issues for discussion are what are these applications, how do they work, how do we become comfortable with these emergent technologies and their potential for viral marketing when we not only don’t control them, but can’t control them if we want them to work.

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)

New Mexico State University has joined iTunes U. In this session we will showcase NMSU iTunes U, its content thus far and the development process. We look at how easy it is to upload and maintain content though iTunes U. We will demonstrated using an ipod by downloading material from iTunes U onto an ipods. iTunes U allows universities to distribute, and control access to educational audio and video content for students within a college or university using Apple's iTunes Store infrastructure.

With most content is being published in XHTML for web consumption, creating alternate representations of content (pick your syndication XML standard) seems anathema to the latest software developer cult doctrine: DRY -- Don't Repeat Yourself. Squirrel hunting aside, microformats provide a set of simple, human readable, open data formats that provide syntactic sugar for XHTML that put the Semantic back in the Web.

The hyper-access afforded by new communication technologies is leading to information overload, and problems with dealing with always being "on". Next generation collaborative work tools can help knowledge workers to be more efficient, and also to work effectively with their colleagues both near and far. This session will explore a number of free and light-weight collaborative tools that didn't exist just two years ago. These are the tools being used to help define Web 2.0 and the Read/Write Web. Highlighted will be technologies for group authoring, presence, virtualization, and attenuation. Innovative application of tools like the presence software Twitter and Flickr, collaborative writing and brainstorming tools such as Google Docs and Spreadsheets, social bookmarking applications such as del.icio.us, and attenuation tools such as BackPackIt will be demonstrated and discussed. The focus of the sessions will be on enhancing team effectiveness, and technology mediated problem solving and idea creation. Steps for adopting and using these tools will be discussed with an emphasis on understanding your personal social network.

Piggybacking on the famous New Yorker cartoon about internet anonymity ("on the internet, no one knows that you are a dog") today's web vendors know a whole lot about you, but they don't really know you, and they likely don't have the information that you wanted to give them. In this session, I'll touch topics such as online reputation, identity/profile management, and OpenID - and talk about ways that Extension IT and communication groups can help make our people known, protect their profile information at the same time, and use those same identity systems to provide opportunities for interoperability across institutions and applications.

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.

See for yourself how customized online systems can vastly simplify, speed up and improve the submission and peer-review of publications. Janet Byron, managing editor of the University of California's California Agriculture journal, will demonstrate how editorial staff, authors, associate editors, and reviewers use the Berkeley Electronic Press EdiKit system to submit and vet manuscripts, request reviews, send decision letters, and maintain an editorial record. We will also look at ScholarOne's Manuscript Central peer-review system, and open-source journal software. Such systems can be customized for books, extension publications, and other peer-reviewed content. Are you currently using an online system for peer review? During the Q&A, please share information on the system that you're using. Please upload peer-review information to share with your colleagues at: http://acepeerreviewinfo.wikispaces.com/space.menu

SolutionsForYourLife.com (SFYL) was developed not only as a Web site, but also a resource for all sixty-seven Florida Extension offices. Once the Web site was launched, county offices needed to get customized SFYL templates for their office Web sites. How did we do it? A statewide training session on a program called “Contribute” ensued. This is a software program that makes editing Web sites much easier than using full-blown Web authoring programs, thus making it more inviting to support the new look of the Web site and its template. To maximize the efficiency of the training the sessions were scheduled in conjunction with another set of already scheduled classes. This session will explain the logistics of training, software issues, teamwork, the importance of buy-in, knowing your audience, and meeting their needs.

Discover how easy it is to create electronic 360 degree photographs for the web or a computer. The software, Photovista, is easy to use and enables you show others a 360 degree view of a room or object. You can put the 360 degree photographs together for a complete tour of a building and surrounding area.

Section 508 requires that electronic and information technology be accessible to persons with disabilities. In keeping with this regulation, web sites should be designed with accessibility in mind. In this seminar, we will provide and overview of the Section 508 standards and how they relate to W3C Guidelines for web accessibility. We also will describe and demonstrate ways to implement accessibility requirements through the use of markup, CSS, and LIFT (a server-based tool that dynamically generates customizable text-only views of web sites).

Getting traditionally-minded Extension educators to embrace the web as a key educational delivery tool can be difficult, if not downright impossible. This presentation will cover how a team of communicators and web developers combined their sense of good timing with technology grant funds to help Extension faculty in one county office reinvent their county Extension website. The effort resulted in a more informative and user-friendly website that offers greatly enhanced educational delivery and information marketing opportunities. But even more important was the team’s success in helping Extension faculty and staff overcome some obstacles and prejudices about audience identification. Team members will describe their roles in the design and implementation of this web development project and how they worked closely with faculty and staff to help them rethink their use of the web. Ultimately the team intends that this will be a model project that all other county Extension offices in Oregon can learn and benefit from.

WSU-DAS delivers to growers and crop consultants via the Internet a knowledge-based framework for Integrated Pest Management (IPM) of tree fruits. IPM programs are becoming too complex with new information, tactics, and materials to be described statically. Information for IPM needs to be dynamic, available in real time with forecasts. DAS dynamically combines weather data and phenology model output from the WSU AgWeatherNet with knowledge-based guidelines recently developed by WSU researchers with access to pesticide efficacy data on targeted and other pests and impacts on natural enemies from the WSU Crop Protection Guide database. The DAS is also linked to an on-line version of Orchard Pest Management, an IPM manual for WA growers. The goal of DAS is to provide information in a timely and organized fashion, but is not designed as a decision making program. DAS was beta-tested in 2006; the main part will be open to the public in 2007. At this time models are implemented for nine insects, one disease, and one storage disorder with one insect, three disease, and one bloom model under development.