Going on vacation?

If you are leaving your email for an extended length of time, you might want to make use of the Vacation Responder for your NCSU email.

In gMail, it is found under the "General" tab in the Settings (click on the gear in the upper right corner).
You can set the date the message is to start and end.

This will make it so that when someone sends a message to you, they will get a response back telling them that you are on vacation (or whatever else you want to tell them). gMail will only send a message to the person once every four days.

It is good to indicate when you will be returning and when they can expect a response as well as who to contact if they need to immediate help.

Some messages you might NOT want to use can be found at: "Some of the Best 'Out of Office' Automatic email Replies"

Don't forget to set your eXtension Ask an Expert account to "away" as well. This is done from the "Settings -> Answering" page at: https://ask.extension.org/expert/settings/assignment.

And most importantly, don't forget to undo these when you return. Set a reminder in your calendar when you return.

How and why I use Twitter - An Ag Agent’s Perspective

We would like to thank our guest blogger, Paul McKenzie for today's article. Paul is an Ag Extension Agent,  with NC Cooperative Extension (Vance/Warren Counties). He provides educational programs in forestry, horticulture, pesticide education, and field crops.

By: Paul McKenzie, Extension Agent - Agriculture

Have you wondered if Twitter might be a good tool for your job? I’ve been tweeting for around two years now and find it quite useful. When I first started, I had no idea about it’s utility, but just decided to jump in since that’s where all the cool kids hang out. Here I’ll share what I’ve learned:

First, I’ll admit that Twitter does not accomplish for me what I hoped it would. I thought it would be a good method to market my programs and events. It’s not. My target audience simply does not use Twitter. In another county (especially an urban one) or for a different audience, that may be different.

But it accomplishes things for me that I didn’t expect.

1. It has connected me with some smart Extension people around the country who have interesting ideas and programs. 
2. It keeps me abreast of news about pests outbreaks.
3. It’s a great way to keep up with the fast-changing world of technology. 
4. I learn about new resources available that can help me do my job. 
5. It provides me with a “news-ticker” so I can see what’s happening in my community, state and around the world. 
6. It provides a platform for me to share my own ideas, successes and observations. 
7. Lastly, it provides another communication line to people that can help me. 

There are plenty of other uses for Twitter, but these are the ones that are important for me.

And that’s the “why”. If you are convinced it could be valuable for you, then you’ll need to know the “how”.

You start, of course, by signing up for an account and picking a username (mine is @pgmckenzie). You will also want to upload a profile picture. I recommend using a good close up head shot, maybe with some bright color (e.g. a shirt or hat) to make your picture stand out.

Next, you will want to start “following” people. You might start by following NC Extension people, such as @growsmallfarms (Debbie Roos) or @jeanineNCSU (Jeanine Davis). You can also look at who they are following to find others.

You may also want to follow news organizations, celebrities, and organizations in your field.

As you start to follow people, some of them will follow you back (basic Twitter courtesy). So now you’ll need to start tweeting!

I try to do at least one tweet every day, but others do it much more or much less. You can tweet about an upcoming program, a bright idea, something you’ve read, a picture you took, or a link to an interesting site. Just remember that ALL of your followers can read ALL of your tweets (and the general public as well).

Now here’s the tricky part. You need to follow lots of people to build up your own followers. That’s how Twitter becomes useful and interesting, when there’s lots of information flowing back and forth. But if you follow 50 or 100 people, it will be hard to keep up with all of their tweets. You do, after all, have a job to do besides reading tweets all day!

And this is where a web service like TweetDeck or Hootsuite can come in handy. These and other similar services allow you to organize your “feed”.

In my case, I have TweetDeck organized into three columns. The first column consists of my favorite tweeters. These are people and organizations who provide information that is especially relevant and useful to me. I don’t want to miss their tweets.

The second column contains the tweets of ALL the people I follow. It’s impossible to keep up with all of it, but I glance at it several times a day to see if anything catches my eye.

The third column contains my own tweets. That helps me keep up with how often I’m tweeting.

And that’s really what you need to know to get started. I hope you’ll give it a try. I would love to see more NC Extension Agents using Twitter, as it would be a wonderful platform for us to have an ongoing and useful conversation about the great work we all do.

Narrate your work

By: John Dorner

For the last few years, I've been advocating "narrating your work". For all of my career, I've advocated sharing and letting others know what you are doing. With tools like blogs, Google+, Twitter, and Facebook this is much easier to do.

Why?
I'm constantly seeing examples where the agent/educator/secretary (correction, that should be "adminsitrative specialist" now) in one county doesn't know what their colleague in the next county and certainly not more than a county away are doing. So many times, we are all creating the same wheel. Each of us starting from scratch and working on our own. What we end up with are a bunch of small wheels that don't get us very far. If we were to work together, we could work on one really big wheel that would travel far and fast. But, the first step to working together is to know what others are working on.

By sharing what projects you are working on, your successes, your failures and your frustrations with others, you will be surprised by how much help you will be offered. Help could be in a link to a useful piece of information, a piece of advice, a document, presentation or spreadsheet someone from someone who has been there before or maybe just a kind word.

I'll wager the time you spend sharing what you are working on will be recouped many times over by saving you from recreating a small wheel that has been created by someone else. You can spend your time on starting at their end point.


Most county extension offices have regular (weekly even) hour or two hour long meetings just to let everyone in the same physical office know what the others are working on. If we were all 'narrating our work' these meetings could be eliminated or changed to collaborating on projects where we needed to work together.


How?
Find where your colleagues are already narrating their work and join that network. Just ask the people you look up to where they get/share their information. Or you can search Google+, Twitter or Facebook to find people talking about what you are interested in.

If you can't find a network of your colleagues, start one! Pick a tool and a colleague or two that would be interested in sharing together and just start sharing (and following your colleagues). I promise you will develop stronger relationships with these people. Then others will want to join. Welcome and encourage them! The more people in your network, the stronger and more beneficial it is to all.

Dedicate just 5-15 minutes each day to share what you are doing and read what others are sharing.

Which tools?
If I were starting today, I'd look at Google+ and Twitter first. Facebook has more people, but for my 'narrating my work' or 'personal learning network' there seems to be a lot more distractions (more chaff than wheat) in Facebook.

Twitter is probably the easiest to use and tools like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck make using it very easy. Also, there are apps for your smart phone and you can use text messaging to send and receive updates. With Twitter, you are limited to posts of just 140 characters.

Google+ is much more robust and easier to have longer discussions. Google+ Hangouts let you have face-to-face conversations with up to 10 people. Google+ Communities are great ways to share with (and receive help from) people you don't know yet.

Blogging is a great way to share your knowlege and thoughts, but is limited on receiving feedback.

Bottom line
No matter how you choose to create your network and share, you will receive much more than you give!

Even if nobody is following your posts, narrating your work helps you organize your thoughts. That by itself is a powerful tool.

If you have any questions or need help getting started, let me know!!!


Related reading:
Making Collaborative Work Work - Harold Jarche
http://www.jarche.com/2012/03/making-collaborative-work-work/

How Narrating Your Work Helps You Become More Effective by Saving Precious Time - Luis Suarezhttp://www.elsua.net/2012/08/16/how-narrating-your-work-helps-you-become-more-effective-by-saving-precious-time/

Mobile Apps

Jim Segars with Texas A&M AgriLife Extension (TAMALE) created a list of mobile applications that were of interest to their agents and specialists.

This may be helpful to you as well. There is no review of quality or any recommendation for any app intended or implied in this resource. The resource is online: http://extensionemployees.tamu.edu/resources/mobile-apps-catalog/

If you have a mobile device, this may be of interest to you.

Feel free to share apps you use and find useful for your work in Extension.