Using Technology as a Means to an End: Tools to Increase the Performance of Community Development Extension Professionals

Skill Building

Technology and its related tools change at a pace that is often too fast for Extension Educators to determine which ones are useful tools and which ones are passing fads. This is complicated by an increasingly limited shelf life of some tools and technologies.

This presentation will is built on a philosophical belief that most Educators need tools that are on the early adaptor edge of Rogers' adoption curve. This is a step behind the technological pioneers that are often on the "bleeding edge" and jump at the chance to use any new gadget.

Using lecture, demonstrations, and dialogues, a fellow Extension CD professional that is not a technology or systems support professional will focus on tools that can be used to improve organizational planning, increase collaboration with peers that are located in different geographic locations, improve communications, help us reach more clientele groups and interact with them, and become more efficient and effective in handling large amounts of online information from websites.

Specific Tools that will be discussed include: weblogs, instant messaging, wikis, RSS feeds, podcasts, aggregate readers and browsers. Discussions on future tools (i.e., search functions) and on short comings of the tools (i.e., the possible loss of social capital by losing face-face meetings) will also be discussed. Attendees will also be prompted to offer input and suggestions on the tools and other related technologies. An underlining theme will be a focus on the uses of the tools versus the tools themselves.