ICT for Agricultural Extension: Building Global Connections While Sustaining Local Communities
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The document discusses the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to support agricultural extension work. It provides examples of how Cornell Cooperative Extension has used technologies like online learning platforms, videoconferencing, and mobile apps to deliver educational programs across New York State. While ICT increases access to information and opportunities for collaboration, challenges remain around digital literacy and universal broadband access. The document advocates for inclusive, sustainable ICT models that respect local knowledge and engage new technologies like mobile and social media.
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ICT for Agricultural Extension: Building Global Connections While Sustaining Local Communities
- 1. ICT for agricultural extension Building global connections, sustaining local communities Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Agriculture, June 2011 Montevideo Uruguay Paul Treadwell, Cornell Cooperative Extension, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
Editor's Notes
- TIC para la extensión agrícola: la construcción de conexiones globales, el mantenimiento de las comunidades locales
- From telephones to xerox and fax to mobile, the use of technology has been integral to extension education efforts. Rapid reproduction of information
- The challenge is to understand technologies and their impacts on learning and community Equitable access by a digitally literate population is essential to achieving a balance – understanding the tech and how to make use is necessary to give voice to all, to counter a one way push of data/information and marketing. The promise of technology is not fulfilled by merely opening access to information and data. Dialogic encounters – hearing and engaging other voices and co-creating – are necessary for a robust and fully realized utilization of technology for education. Questions of veracity, trust in information found online. Shifts in visible knowledge production, exposing or surfacing some of what was previously “hidden” or off the radar
- Small farms = $250,000 or less in sales of agricultural commodities per year Milk is New York’s leading agricultural product Milk sales account for one-half of total New York agricultural receipts New York is the 3 rd leading milk producer in the USA Milk production in 2007 was 12.1 billion pounds (5.5 billion kilos) with a value over $2.4 billion Other livestock include: cattle, hogs, pigs, sheep, lambs, chickens, turkeys Fruits (valued at $333 million) Apples (rank #2 in USA) Grapes (rank #3 in USA), wine and juice Tart cherries, pears, strawberries Vegetables (valued at $648 million) Cabbage (rank #2 in USA) Sweet corn (rank #4 in USA) Snap beans (rank #4 in USA) Onion, tomato, pumpkin, cucumber, squash, pea, etc Field Crops Corn, oats, wheat, soybeans, hay, potato, dry beans Maple Syrup Ranks #2 in USA Floriculture Crops Mainly bedding and garden plants
- La Extensión Cooperativa de Cornell sistema educativo permite a las personas para mejorar sus vidas y comunidades a través de asociaciones que ponen la experiencia y los conocimientos de investigación para trabajar. Experience and research knowledge
- Parallel narratives of extension work: Technology Transfer Participatory Extension Tension inherent in the mixed models at work organizationally Tension also in participant groupings – large ag vs smaller operations, etc Issues of who controls – agenda, research etc.. Extension educators must Understand and be trusted in the farming community in which they work Have cutting edge subject matter knowledge Use different teaching techniques for different audiences Be linked to faculty at the University "We have developed the institutions on public funds to train the farmer and give him voice. These institutions are of vast importance in the founding of a people. The folk are to be developed in themselves rather than by class legislation, or by favor of government, or by any attitude of benevolence from without." Bailey, L. H. (1916). Ground-levels in democracy . Ithaca, N.Y.
- “ This College of Agriculture was not established to serve or to magnify Cornell University. It belongs to the people of the State. The farmers of the State have secured it. Their influence has placed it here. They will keep it close to the ground. If there is any man standing on the land, unattached, uncontrolled, who feels that he has a disadvantages and a problem, this College of Agriculture stands for that man.” L.H. Bailey L. H. Bailey – 1904 First dean of New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell Advocate of state support for colleges of ag Botanist In 1908, Theodore Roosevelt appointed him to chair a presidential Country Life Commission. Always promoted a robust rural culture, not just ag focused but all elements of rural life – and the active engagement of rural people in democratic life
- The goal is to promote sustainable practices that will provide economic benefits to landowners and communities while preserving forested areas so they continue to provide ecological, economic and public health benefits to the surrounding human population.
- ICT as disruptive, back to idea of dialogic encounters mediated by tech, promise/opportunities for participatory co-creation ICT amplifying relational networks, no real purpose in and of itself but embedded in practices and expanding connections, access to info/knowledge – communities of practice and the social media thing begins to become apparent. "New technology can thus either support or negate the active participation of the peasants as truly co-responsible elements in the process of change." from Education for Critical Consciousness
- Moodle – open source lcms From a constructivist point of view, people actively construct new knowledge as they interact with their environments Large percentage of course are grounded in interaction with the physical world, with Moodle serving as the social learning hub where participants can come together, engage in dialog and reflection and learn. Extensive developed support for new participants (learners) and also new instructors Moodle as distributed community of experts supporting the software and its use Challenges of bandwidth Unique element of ‘blended’ learning – in our case the examples of grafting, illustration as teaching concrete, tangible skills through a virtual medium.
- Forest Connect example Journal of Extension article: http://www.joe.org/joe/2010december/a2.php Ability to engage worldwide audience Recording and reuse Bandwidth issues Variable participation/meeting size from 2 to….110 in our case Used for education and also collaborative development of new programs and programming Adobe connect = $$
- "Technical and scientific training need not be inimical to humanistic education as long as science and technology in the revolutionary society are at the service of permanent liberation, of humanization." Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the oppressed . New York: Continuum.
- Unique for it’s acceptance as valid method of re-certification for pesticide applicators Content/modules created by a team of experts who would previously have to travel to conduct face to face training – technology has expanded access availability. It is a solitary learning expereince
- Established in conjunction with a regional program Flg program engages users across a variety of media and uses multiple tools/pathways to interact with its user base.
- Collaborative tools used Regional collaboration Remember McDaniels Hints of dialogic encounters – being an emerging field, new knowledge is coming from multiple sources, pathways – researcher, practitioner, tradition and expereince Integrated some data collection ( data as opposed to knowledge) about new crops, etc Delivered structured learning through moodle, included practitioner stories and knowledge delivered via video clips
- Multifaceted program, face to face, online through web site, publications and online course New instructor training – identification of new instructors from pool of program participants – not just extension educators but practitioners as instructors.
- SoilWeb (iPhone) Free GPS-based soil search application that accesses USDA-NCRS soil categories based on your present location. Information about soil chemical and physical properties, suitability for various uses and crops. PureSense ( iPhone and Droid ) Helps farmers in drought-stricken places monitor how much water is in their soil at various locations and in real time. Monitoring stations placed throughout growers’ fields send data through the Internet every 15 minutes, and the PureSense application allows the grower to access that information in the field. AgWired (iPhone) Agrimarketing news, filtered by key word categories, from the ZimmComm News Network and its agwired.com online community of farmers, ranchers, agribusiness, farm groups, ag media, freelancers and advertising and public relations agencies. Includes podcasts, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos and Flickr photos.
- Crowdsourcing Previously existing practice and programs that have made strong use of technologies, both established and emerging, to increase participation Beginning to be tied to/ integrated with online educational programming
- Job opps Sustainable by small use fee and sale of school supplies
- The hope is to create a technology enabled learning network that connects producers/smallholders to other producers and producers to consumers across distance and difference to build a transparent system of production and consumption that sustains multicultural understanding, the sharing of problems and resources and helps build new pathways for innovation and sustainability
- Agriculture happens in a context. Strong sustainable rural communities are mixed economies, agricultural with other production – crafts, for example Womens involvement in production- issues that raises, plus and minus
- What is digital literate? Ability to evaluate resources one finds online, ability to engage in the range of activities which comprise online culture, including production of content, confdence ion ability to engage with others and shape discourse.