By: John Dorner, Information Management Agent
I received the following questions (below in italics) from Doug Clement, County Extension Director. He's asking the right questions! And I thought it would be good to share his questions and my answers with other Extension professionals. The comments below are just my opinions and probably quite different from anyone else you might ask. Please share your opinions, tools you would recommend and comments!!! Especially if they differ from mine!
Ideally, you'd create a print version and an online version so the customer can get it in the format they prefer. Ideally, this would be done via style sheets in the HTML code for the web site, so you could post it once and have a print version look appropriate on paper without all the navigation links displaying.
If you think the audience is going to want to print the materials, then PDFs are probably the best option we have available to us at this time. Otherwise, putting the content on our website in content pages would probably work fine for static content/factsheets type information. You can create as many pages as you like using the NCCE Web Site application.
If there are a lot of materials, then another option would be to create a 'web site' for the class. Using something like http://sites.google.com/ or even pbworks would make sense for that. The problem with moving your content off our site onto another site is the loss of identification. I think it is important to have as much as possible on the NCCE web site and maintain that style and marketing ability.
Another tool I think has a lot of potential - if you wanted to foster discussion between the participants before/after the workshop - is a tool like Ning - http://ning.com. See: http://ncsuwebdev.ning.com to see what can be done with a Ning group.
I think a wiki would be the best option for the minutes - http://pbworks.com/ is the one I've used a lot and really like. It is VERY easy to learn/use (and free). This would enable easy transition to future secretaries and let multiple members of the group be able to contribute to different parts of the website.
IMHO, the paper and money savings is the least advantage of putting this information online. The real advantages are the collaboration, the ability to keep everyone updated, the ability to reach new audiences and bring them into the discussion/learning process and most importantly, continuing the discussion after the face-to-face workshop.
I'll be happy to work with you in any way to help decide which tools to use and in implementing them!
Information presented here is provided as a general information resource. Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation, endorsement nor support by Extension IT.