Officers:

Chair: Rhonda Conlon, NCSU
Vice-Chair: E. Jenell Sargent, TSU (until August)
Secretary: E. Jenell Sargent, TSU
PLC Rep: Nina Boston, Arkansas, Michael Bratcher, NC A&T State University

 

Attendees:

Dwayne Hunter , Oklahoma State University
Nina Boston, University of Arkansas
Fred Piazza, Louisiana State University
Anne Adrian, Auburn University 
Jenell Sargent, Tennessee State University
Larry Lippke, Texas Cooperative Extension
Lalit Rainey, NC A&T State University
Ken Pruitt, Clemson
Ray Kimsey, NC State University
Dan Brook, Mississippi State University
Rhonda Conlon, NC State University

Dustin Hiatt - Host (Iowa State)

Agenda Items

I. Roll Call

Agenda has been posted on the PLN wiki.

a. Minutes from October and February meeting will be posted at: http://srpln.msstate.edu/rc/it/it.htm

Rhonda has found out that Jamie Profitt is leaving his position in Kentucky and Richard Phelps from Kentucky will be the replacement.

II. Report from PLC Representatives - PLC conference call - Nina Boston & Michael Bratcher - Michael is not present

Nina: Conference planning committee meeting for the August conference in Louisville. Paul Warner has agreed to do the greeting. Mark McElroy will do a presentation on the broadband connection in Kentucky. Paul Coriell suggested that we have him as a speaker. Larry Lippke will speak on the CECP transition to eXtension. Archer Davis is the Congressman from Alabama we are waiting on confirmation as the Keynote speaker. Backup person is in the works in case Archer Davis cannot accept. That person would be the mayor from Louisville. Vendors are being invited to provide funding. Mostly waiting on confirmation.

Rhonda: Are the committee meetings occurring at the same time period as last year?

Nina: It looks like each committee will be more involved. The new member orientation on Monday night will be changed to reflect the actual action items. This way the new members will understand it better. Will be distributing a template for the action items so the committees will know exactly what they will need to do for each committee. Still in the planning process. Greensboro North Carolina looks like it will be the location of the next PLN meeting in 2008. Program Staff Committee has asked to have a declared night but there will not be a mandatory declared night for all participants.

Rhonda and Nina: It sounds very democratic. This conference sounds like it will help with the state reports.

III. Election of Committee Vice-Chair (Kappie Mumphrey replacement)

Rhonda: Vice-Chair to replace Kappie Mumphrey.

Ann: See if we can have Rhonda stay on another year. Then select a new secretary at the August meeting.

Rhonda: Declined due to other commitments

Nina: Not sure how it has worked in the past.

Fred: We have had people in the past

Nina and Rhonda: We have suggested having Jenell Sargent serve as the Vice-Chair and the Secretary until the August meeting in Louisville.

Rhonda: The proposal is that Jenell Sargent will serve as both and will be the IT-PLN Chair in August.

All: Vote: All are in agreement.

IV. Review Plan of Work (POW) - Currently our POW consists of the following items:

I. CECP Modules

•  Information Security (Kappie Mumphrey)

Rhonda: We are not sure who was the co-leader at LSU for the Information Security Module. Fred will check to see if she left it behind. Looking for suggestions.
Larry: Jill Henson is serving as the information security person and thinking about contrast and compare courses that are developed in the CECP module.

•  Acrobat (John Toman) - John Toman is not available. We may want to table this, as none of us have extensive experience with this.

II. PLN IT and eXtension

A. Report on issues related to CECP transition to eXtension (Larry Lippke and Fred Piazza)

Larry: Two major phases and things to accomplish. Extension staff and Ron Brown has discussed.

1. Platform (Template) - So that the Community of Practices can put courses online.

2. Develop a nationwide equivalent to generate interest and enthusiasm about CECP.

3. Selecting a learning management system (LMS). - We looked at the features for the users. Selected the system based on the survey. Over 145 people responded to the survey and from that information selected the most prevalent functions that were needed. Created a nationwide panel of people to help select the LMS and CECP expansion. Settled on Angel and Moodle as the selected LMS systems. Based on the fact that a lot of people were thrown in the middle I made the decision to go ahead and decide on Moodle of course with feedback from them and their support. Waiting to hear from the panel before we proceed; but it looks like the best choice. Center for Distance Learning Research at Texas A&M University has agreed to do the installation and the training for eXtension at large. Will try and have a LMS by the end of May; maybe focus on one course for each of the committees. The follow-up will be developing the Professional Development Project.

Nina and Larry: Larry will be giving a brief overview of the Moodle CMS at a group PLN presentation in August. He will try and make it happen.

Dwayne: Is Texas A&M going to be hosting Moodle?

Larry: The hardware will be hosted on eXtension. The support of this LMS is expected to needed additional assistance. Because Moodle is on-going project there will be a great need for support.

B. Recent eXtension Involvement update (group)

Nina: Reporting on the project that they have started about getting the Master Gardener to use Jabber. There are issues because most of them have dial-up. If you set up a chat room for each of their group then they believe that it will be helpful.

Rhonda: Getting more use of wiki technology at NC State because we are moving our Extension Intranet to a wiki. Having Beth Raney attend our annual Extension conference to do a wiki training session that will include eXtension Collaborate wiki and NC Cooperative Extension wiki. She believes that using a wiki will be a big cultural change within the NC State extension community.

Larry: They do like the fact that very few people will be involved in their projects.

Rhonda: Trying it out with people with all types of experience. Has other groups informed their staffs about the other types of community projects? For example: wikis, de.li.ci.ous; blogging; etc.

Larry: Has googled to see if any of the Administrators are using any of this type of technology.

Rhonda: We have an internal wiki; but we are also trying to involve everyone in the eXtension Collaborative wiki which would be great for usage with broader groups.

Ann: There are people who are still not sure who are the eXtension representatives.
Who are the experts and how willing are our clients ready to be involved.

Larry: They are planning on providing a presentation on how best to reach our clients via the latest technology.

Rhonda: One of the things that we are doing is helping to change the way people work.

Ann: Said something about the social networking - she does have an account.

Larry and Rhonda: They are trying to use Secondlife for different types of meetings.

Fred: They have moved from Secondlife Adult to Secondlife Teen.

Ray: He was at a university where some colleges where teaching with Secondlife so it has some interesting possibility.

Larry: Maybe have this on the agenda about Secondlife - Kevin and Ray are involved in a three hour session at NETC about SecondLife.

Rhonda: What are the tools that are available? Let's tag things that are important.

Ann: One of the things that she is trying to do is survey from Extension is what is out there and what are people using and how are they using the tools.

Rhonda: The web is really moving in this 2.0 direction and see that we need to really be out front. This seems to be the direction that we are going with these types of projects.

Ann: Oregon State is looking for people to lead the way in these types of projects.

Rhonda: We will keep this on the agenda and look for someone to help us with the different technologies. All were in agreement.

III. Disaster Planning survey update (Nina?)

Nina: Retrieved the survey and removed some of the questions and left it pretty much open-ended. And let's get it published and the feedback of what needs to be added or changed.

VI. Adjourn

Rhonda: Maybe meet for informal breakfast at the ACE-NETC meeting in Albuquerque , NM. In June.

Next meeting will be in July 12, 2007

Meeting adjourned at 10:09 a.m.