Jeff C. Weblog

This was a great course. I learned a lot along the way.

Some of my favorite discoveries or exercises were the ones on picture sharing and slide set sharing. I also liked learning about RSS and about web conferencing. All are very useful and practical.

This program was good. It has already affected my everyday work. For example, through this course I learned about slideshare.com. So, I created my own slideshare.com account, and I linked it to my faculty webpage. Then, I can share extension slide sets with others. That has been kind of neat, and it tracks the number of times people view the slide sets. Also, the web conferencing thing was useful. I will be involved in a web conference in November for the first time. After completing the web conferencing assignment, I learned about how to do this, and I feel confident about it.

Unexpected outcomes or take-aways from this course that surprised me... Well, the fodey.com thing this week was pretty cool. I don't know about all these cool websites out there. I think I can use it to make extension stuff more fun. One unexpected outcome was slideshare.com. That is going to work out pretty well for me, as I can simply post all of my extension presentations over my career on there. Also, Flickr was pretty neat. I didn't expect that site, and I really thought it was neat how we could link pictures to maps, etc.

I am not sure what could be done to improve this course. I didn't complete as many of the "optional" assignments because I am always busy. However, I feel that I may have missed out by not doing so. If I get time, I might go back and do that. Overall, it was very good. The amount of time that it took per week was about right. I wouldn't mind having a course that took the same amount of time per week, but went for twice as many weeks.

If another enrichment course of this nature were offered in the future, I would definitely participate. For me, I don't have the time to sit and browse the web to learn about all of these unique things. It is more useful for me to spend the time and take these courses. While it takes a little time each week, I think it will actually save me time in the future and allow me to be more creative. Overall, great course. Thank you for putting it all together.

Jeff C.

Posted by coult077 at 4:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hi Amy!

Well, today I did week 10. It was very easy to set up a meeting, and required little to no skill. It was pretty self explanatory. I liked having a separate Pod box for both chat and notes. It was kind of neat to be able to post something that the whole group could read, but also keep personal notes. I went ahead and uploaded a powerpoint presentation. I was very surprised that it would only allow me to upload a presentation saved as .ppt (not .pptx). I am finding these sorts of issues quite often in my life, as it seems that only about half of the world is using the new microsoft office software. This is frustrating, especially for powerpoint presentation because the .pptx file size is a lot smaller, making these files easier to send via email, etc.

Overall, I think the online meetings have great potential. It would sure be great for Extension, as it would save the cost and time of traveling to meetings at a specific location. However, it would require that the people have access to internet. For example, state faculty could hold a planning meeting with regional extension educators located throughout the state to plan future programming or research projects. Another nice thing is that it eliminates the cost of phone conference calls, and that it eliminates issues associated with conference calls (such as echo on speaker phones when people forget to mute it, etc.). Another nice thing is that it allows you to integrate web cams. Overall, there is great potential here. With the rising cost of fuel, travel, etc., and increased demand/pressure on employees because of budget/staff constraints, web conferencing is something that we need to be pursuing.

Overall, this was a really great week 10 exercise.

Thanks!
Jeff

Posted by coult077 at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I read about UM chat. I really like the idea about virtual office hours. What a great way to best utilize student and teacher time (i.e. students don't have to travel to the actual office hour location). I also liked the idea about having group discussions outside of class. This would be a really great way to engage shy students. One nice thing about UM chat is that students have to long on so that anonymous chatting is not possible.

I also went to the twitter public timeline page. This was kind of weird. Specifically, I went to the NPR link. It was interesting that there were lots of news updates, but that none of them were very informative. However, they were short and to the point. If I had all of these going to my cell phone I wouldn't get anything done during the day. Overall, I would rather just visit a website.

Twitter for academics was an interesting read. I definitely liked the fact that it promotes classroom conversations. Overall, this article was quite entertaining. Specifically, I liked that you could track a celebrity or a professional, or even a word. It was neat how they gave the example of tracking the name of a specific conference that they would be attending in order to network with others. This is great. Definitely lots of possibilities for communication presented this week. Overall, the best thing from this week was the idea for virtual office hours. I wish someone would have gave me that idea 5 years ago!

Posted by coult077 at 3:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Online social networking is an interesting topic. There is a lot of potential to meet new people, and there is great potential to share yourself with others. However, as a new faculty member, I am not sure how useful it would be for me to create and maintain my own facebook site. My time is probably better spent doing research and writing Extension publications. However, if there could be a smaller version of facebook, such as "CFANS facebook", then maybe this online networking thing would work out better on the college or university level.

I guess I am just a little concerned about time management. There are so many possibilities now with the internet, but when one gets involved with new things such as facebook, one needs to realize that it is another thing to eat up time. For people (especially new faculty) that are already pushing the amount of hours spend working in an attempt to make tenure some day (and subsequently having less time to spend with family and friends), I don't know if the whole "online social networking for work" thing is worth the time. For high school and college students who have more free time, I think online social networking has more potential. But, maybe it doesn't take much time and effort to develop and maintain an effective online networking site. I don't know because I don't have one.

One interesting observation is that many of the faculty web pages (at U. of MN and other universities) are out of date. Because of the lack of "upkeep" of many of these sites, I question the usefulness and participation of faculty in online social networking. However, as new faculty from the computer generation continue to take positions at the U of MN, maybe online social networking could really take off among faculty members.

I have been here since April and I have met some people. However, I wish there was a better way to meet more people, especially people that I could collaborate with. While I have already met a number of potential collaborators, I am sort of disappointed because I haven't been able to build many collaborative working relationships yet. Maybe this will happen over time, but I'm not sure. I wonder if online social networking could help this?

In terms of Extension, I suppose online social networking has potential to link different interest groups together. For extension educators, it would definitely be a great way to share new information and pictures with large groups of people, but blogs and regular websites might be better for this.

Also, I thought the assigned article was interesting, especially since it showed that so many kids are doing this kind of stuff. I knew the percentage was high, but not this high. That is definitely a great thing for them.

Posted by coult077 at 12:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I explored Google Docs. It has great potential because a number of people can work together on a single project without having to go through the work of sending email and having to upload files. One nice feature is that it automatically sends out notices when documents have been edited. This has lots of applications in Extension. For example, Extension staff from different parts of the state or country can easily work together on a fact sheet or article, even when they are away from their office and only have access to a hotel computer. Another great advantage is that it is a way to securely back up you work and keep things organized.

I also looked at Picnik. It is great and it has a neat feel to it. It is nice because it can be linked to other sites where your photos are stored, such as Flikr. For people working together in Extension, there are many uses here. One possible use is that one person could take photos and post them online, while another person from a different part of the state could edit the photos and put captions under them, etc.

Probably the neatest site that I visited was Slide Share. I checked out the Slide Share link from the U of MN forestry guy. It was great how he had all of his slideshow presentations in the site for people to view. One of the nice things about this is that slideshows could not be downloaded, and thus stolen or modified by others. So, this site provides some level of security that we wouldn’t have if the slides were posted as a powerpoint of pdf on an individual’s website. Another very neat thing about this website is that it tracks the number of views for particular slideshows, and allows readers to place comments under them. I assume that the owner of the site would have to approve the comments. The comments are nice because they allow feedback! Because this site tracks the number of times a slideshow is viewed, Extension people have a record of their effectiveness of outreach for given topics. This is extremely important, because we constantly have to document “our� value for promotion and tenure. I think that I will definitely use this idea for sharing my presentations.

Overall, it appears that there are tons of options out there for being progressive at Extension in the 21st century. We need to adopt these technologies as our audience becomes more computer savvy.

Posted by coult077 at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I checked out the wiki sites under week 6. I really enjoyed the Wookieepedia site. It was neat to have an entire wiki site dedicated to a single topic. I was surprised to find out that this site is related to Wikipedia. I also checked out the Thomas Jefferson site, among others. The advantage to the Thomas Jefferson site was that only certain people could edit it. This is nice because it makes the articles more credible.

Wikis have great potential for Extension. For agriculture, there could be different wikis for specific crops, etc., and they would be great for promoting collaboration between Extension staff throughout a state our country. The opportunities are endless. However, in Extension, we would probably want to regulate who can edit the wikis. I really enjoyed learning about wikis. I think they are a great way to promote collaboration among specialists.

Posted by coult077 at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just subscribed to a podcast for the first time. It was an ESPN radio show that I like. It is great when you subscribe to it through bloglines because it gives you all of the shows automatically on your account. It definitely makes it easier to stay informed, and it eliminates the need to go to their website to hear it directly. One nice thing is that it eliminates pop-ups that would occur if you went to the site directly. I wonder if I can link this to my cell phone. The neat thing hear is that you can listen to podcasts while you catch up on news in Bloglines.

I am now starting to see the advantage to Bloglines, as you can route your podcasts and news clips all to the same site. This saves you a lot of time because you don't have to go to the individual web sites. The disadvantage is that you don't get the glammer (advertisements, new links, games, etc.) that the actual web sites offer. So, while blog lines is neat and efficient, it does not have entertainment appeal that the actual websites offer.

For future sessions, one thing that I am really interested in is cell phones and wireless internet. Now, most people have phones with internet capability. How can we merge that in with the stuff we are learning now in this class? Also, another interesting thing is that we now have the capability to have wireless internet almost anywhere, if we can link it through our cell phone. It would be useful to learn about this too, but these things might not be within the scope of the class.

Anyways, I enjoy the class so far. It is forcing me to explore the technology and actually realize all of the possibilities that the internet has to offer!

Posted by coult077 at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I checked out Flikr. The pictures that they have on that site are amazing! In never knew this existed. It has all kinds of possibilities for Extension and personal life. For example, crop consultants around MN could take pictures and upload them on Flikr and then link them to a map. Then, Extension educators could respond to their questions about crop problems. I also thought that the MN forestry collection was neat and was a great teaching tool. What a great way to learn weed or insect identification!

I really liked how you can upload pictures and control who has access to them. I also like how people can put a post on your picture. What a great way to stay connected with others that are so far away.

For people that travel a lot and take pictures on their trips, the mapping feature is really nice. If someone is looking for a hobby, this looks like something that could be fun.

Posted by coult077 at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I just set up an RSS aggregator using Bloglines. I used the Bloglines "Quick Picks" option to select sports. It was really neat how this option selected the best feeds from the major news sources such as ESPN and CNN. At first it seemed like information overload, but it is nice to just see headlines posted without having to sort through distracting advertisements.

I think RSS has great potential for Extension. It is a great way to distribute information rapidly. I think the most difficult things about using this new technology will be to educate the public about how to use it, and then make them want to keep using it. While RSS is nice, it is one more thing to check each day. For this reason, I almost prefer email alerts rather than RSS unless I have additional time.

Posted by coult077 at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hi,

My name is Jeff Coulter. I am a new faculty member on the St. Paul campus (just started in April). I am taking this course to learn more about new communication technologies. So far it seems fun. If the course can provide useful information and teach me new things without getting too complicated, I will be happy.

Jeff

Posted by coult077 at 8:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)