THINKeEXTENSION

It’s hard to say when it started, but it has. It’s not easy to say who is doing it, but people working in Agriculture, Natural Resource Management, Watershed Management, Catchment Care, Landcare, and Environment are! And it’s not easily defined, but let’s try.

What is Extension?
To answer the question what is eExtension? We probably need to start with a shared understanding of how we might define Extension.

For possibly the single most important professional discipline on the planet (if you consider Extension to enable Sustainable Agriculture and a healthy Environment), there are a range of definitions. Check out this useful summary of Extension definitions at Answers.com. I like to think of Extension as “an act of “enabling positive change” to Agriculture and Environment”. One of my favorite definitions is;

Extension [is] a series of embedded communicative interventions that are meant, among others, to develop and/or induce innovations which supposedly help to resolve (usually multi-actor) problematic situations. Leeuwis, C. and van den Ban, A. Communication for Rural Innovation: Rethinking Agricultural Extension (3rd Edition), Blackwell Publishing

For the purpose of this discussion can we accept that we are talking about anyone who is through their vocation or voluntarism is doing something to improve Agriculture or (hopefully and) the Environment.

What is eExtension?
The first person I heard use the word eExtenson was John James, then APEN president. When asked me to do a presentation on the ways I had been using eExtension in NRM. John was organsing an eExtension workshop to be delivered to APEN members in 4 locations simultaneously (a first for APEN) and an eExtension exercise in itself. The organising wiki (a wiki is an easy to edit website designed for collaboration) included a page to discuss a definition of eExtension.

eExtension can then be defined simply as the use of electronic technologies (especially Information and Communication Technologies or ICT) to enhance face-to-face (f2f) and paper-based interactions. These technologies can be as simple as teleconferences or as complex as wikis and blogs.

During a recent workshop presentation to the National and Trans-Tasman Horticultural Science Conference I created a definition to reflect the changes that had taken place between the 2007 APEN presentation and the 2008 AuSHS workshop.

eExtension is the use of Web 2.0 and Social Media tools in engagement, knowledge sharing and creation, and community cultivation of Sustainable Agriculture, Natural Resource Management and Environmental Stakeholders.

Since then I have been trying to come up with a shorter cocktail party or elevator pitch definition (to save people the embarrassment of staring at the ceiling half way through an explanation twice as long as “War and Peace”).

eExtension is the use of Web and Social Media tools to share and create Agricultural and Environmental knowledge.

Still looking for something more precise, so if you have a definition that takes less that 30 seconds to spit out and hits the nail on the head, please share it in the comments below. So rather than spend all day trying to draw hard lines around the big concept, let’s dive in and have a look around at Social Media and Web2.0.

What is Social Media?
Like eExtension the road to defining Social Media is paved with many attempts to define a communication movement, that morphs and expands by the nanosecond and represents a fundamental shift in modern society.

Ben Parr, “a regular writer and contributor for Mashable.com, one of the top authorities in social media and social networking” defined social media as;

the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings in more efficient ways. Source: www.benparr.com

The ensuing converstation via friendfeed (an aggregation service for people wanting to have their various Social Media feeds in one place) is a lesson in Social Media in it’s own right.

Not a day maybe an hour goes by without some new Social Media application being created. Regardless of how you define there is a massive chunk of the global population participating and that number is exploding exponentially. Some of them are in your target audience!

What is Web 2.0?
Alright it is very easy to be confused by Web2.0. Many people the web world have argued about. So I will provide some reference for anyone who is keen to have all the background. However just remember you don’t need to know how a fridge works to have it cool a drink for you.

Web2.0 describes a trend in the way Web technology is delivered. Yep it’s as amphorous as Extension, eExtension, and Social Media so strangely they make great bed fellows. The best way to think about Web2.0 is consider some of it’s features.

• Highly Interactive i.e. comment, tag, and share information easily.
• Rich Media can include photos, videos, and audio flies.
• Highly Connected and portable. e.g. photos uploaded to Flickr (photo sharing site) can be added to a blog with 2 clicks, or a blog post on one site can automatically link to another blog that has referenced it.
• Easy to Use i.e. you don’t need to be a programmer to maintain a blog, upload a video, or create a social network.
• Often Free, this still blows me away. So many Web2.0 sites and applications are free to use.

If you would really like some more detail the rabbit hole starts here. Wikipedia’s compact definition, Tim O’Rielly credited by many as the first to coin the phrase Web2.0 in 2003, and debate about the term.

One last cautionary note: Web2.0 is rapidly being replaced by Web3.0 or the Semantic Web (which is a set of protocols and coding languages that will make connectivity even better). It might have been wise to exclude the term Web2.0 from my original definition because it will date very quickly. But in the 80’s I thought shoulder pads in men’s jackets were cool, so we all get wiser with time.

Fortunately defining Social Media and Web 2.0 tools is not a requirement using them in a simple or sophisticated eExtension strategy. So let’s look at some examples of how people are using eExtension.

Some Examples of eExtension.
The Beat Sheet is an Australian website, set up with a free blog service (blogger) by a group of Integrated Pest Management entomologists and extension officers with the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries. The blog offers grain growers in Queensland and northern New South Wales expert advice about current pest issues.

Agriculture Online- Ag Comm 350 is a laboratory for Agriculture Communication majors at  Ohio State University, to experiment with blogging, podcasting, social networking, online video and other social media tools. This website is based on a free wordpress blog.

Staff at Burnett Catchment Care Association in Australia use a wordpress blog, Better Burnett as a platform to deliver updates, share photos, audio and video podcasts and raise awareness about a vulnerable turtle via Facebook a very popular social network. Disclosure BCCA is a client of eco2oh and THINKeEXTENSION.

Australia’s CSIRO publish reqular video and audio podcasts about research breakthroughs and progress on everthing from Astronomy to Health and Well Being.

What is eExtension again?
It’s about you using digital tools in an integrated and deliberate way to communicate with your Extension audience, with other Extension or Research people, with stakeholders or with the broader public.

Like any discipline there are tools and techniques which are light years ahead of others, fortunately an integrated and effective eExtension strategy is not difficult to develop, implement or use. In fact most of the techniques THINKeEXTENSION shares are free or low cost and can be implemented by anyone “who can send an email or create a word document“. Which is a good thing because the future of Agriculture and the Environment might depend upon it.

Coming Soon - State of eExtension Report.
As a means of documenting the changes that are taking place in the way Agricultural and Environmental Extension is being delivered. And to provide the Extension Sector worldwide with some indicators with which to inform their decision making about eExtension. eco2oh (my Extension business) has been working on a State of Extension report. We are analyzing over 1000 websites and applications to provide a snapshot of eExtension worldwide and to find trends and best practices. The report is in the final data gathering phase and I expect that it will be available for download in the next few weeks. If you would like to be added to an early bird list to receive notification the moment  the report is available please, please put your name and email in the form provided on THINKeEXTENSION.com.

If you have made to the end of this rather long post thanks for sticking with me. Obviously many of the topics discussed here attract a wide range of views and as eExtension is an emerging discipline I expect to hear some different arguements. I welcome them in fact, I would love to know what you think.

If you work in eExtension and are using Social Media tools or thinking about using Social Media tools, please tell me about your experiences in the comments section below.

Tags: eExtension, Extension, Agriculture, Environment, Blog, Podcast, SocialMedia, Web2.0