Cooperative Extension IT

Lisa Linfield has announced the summer session for WordPress training.

Registration is open for the following WordPress training sessions. These sessions are open to Cooperative Extension employees and support staff, and are offered free of charge. To view course details and to register, please use our online training registration system.  Enrollment is limited. Read more »

Cooperative Extension has deployed SharePoint as a solution for collaboration among its statewide faculty and staff.  Given SharePoint is a browser based collaboration solution along with its integration with MS Office, Cooperative Extension is seeing broad adoption of the technology.  But how well does SharePoint work with tablets, specifically iPads?  Do we have a mobile solution to increase efficiencies? Based on my experience so far, the answer is: almost, but not quite what I would like to see. Read more »

Photo demo

This was taken with an Android phone (Galaxy S) and posted via the WordPress app for Android phones. An app is also available for the iPhone.

XML-RPC must be enabled on your site (Settings/Writing), and the theme may/may not work well with default image settings, so you may need to tweek picture once it’s posted.

Over the past few months there has been a dramatic increase in the number of publicized and highly visible cyber attacks on various company and government websites. The news outlets have reported of attacks against Credit card companies, major electronics manufacturers, federal government entities, and a slew of other public and private websites.

Cyber criminals are taking advantage of this chaos and confusion by increasing the volume of Phishing attempts targeted at the general public. Some of these attempts seek to prey upon the misfortune of some of the aforementioned companies with targeted messages (ie: Your VISA account has been compromised. Please go to this website and fill out this form in order to reactivate your account!). Others seek to prey upon you by posing as your local IT or Service center, asking you for your username and password or other private information.

Neither the CES Helpdesk nor the UWEX Central IT service center will ever ask you for your username and password or private information via email. If you are ever in doubt as to whether an email is legitimate, please contact me directly, or the Helpdesk or Service center.

The following article from Microsoft goes into detail in regards to detecting and preventing Phishing attempts http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/phishing-symptoms.aspx

If you have questions please contact the help desk at 800.760.7610

Did you know that Cooperative Extension has three installations of WordPress? Which one do you or should you use?  That depends…

1. FYI – http://fyi.uwex.edu is a publicly accessible installation of WordPress whose purpose is to provide web space for educational programming content.  This is not for our business/administrative content (for example, you won’t find the Dean’s blog or agenda/minutes on FYI).
2. Counties – http://counties.uwex.edu is a publicly accessible installation of WordPress whose purpose is to provide web space for the county offices. Each county also has a corresponding URL of http://countyname.uwex.edu which “points” to its directory, http://counties.uwex.edu/countyname, with preference given to the former as the URL each county should advertise.
3. Coop Connection – http://blogs.ces.uwex.edu provides web space in 2 different ways. First, it may serve as an internal, password protected site for purposes of communicating with our colleagues, e.g. The Dean’s blog.  The second service it may provide is web space for administrative activities that do not contain educational programming content, but still need to be accessible to the public.  A good example of this is a conference site, e.g. WACEC or the Connections & Engagements Conference.  In cases such as these, the password protection is removed from the specific site so it is accessible to the public.

CE Tech Services recognizes that even with these definitions there may be questions as to which installation is the best one to use to meet your specific needs.  If you have questions about which one to use contact the CE Tech Services Help Desk (800.760.7610, 265-3895).

Update 3/31/2011: Lisa Linfield has created this nice chart to help explain which installation of WordPress should be used.

Many attempts to either capture private information such as username/password or to infect your computer with malware/viruses etc. are done by trying to get you to visit a web site that has special code on it that will infect your computer.

Most of us have been vigilant and recognize these attempts when the URL we receive through an email or other means is recognized as one we do not visit and doesn’t look quite right. Overall we have become pretty good at not clicking on these links (thank you).

With the adoption of Twitter and its 140 character limit, it is often difficult to send long URLs.  To work around this limitation many people are now using what are known as URL shortening services such as bit.ly, tinyurl.com and others.  For example http://bit.ly/fN4hbh is the bit.ly shorten URL that will take you to: http://fyi.uwex.edu/it (the home page for this blog).

While this method is effective for communicating long URLs and is becoming popular within email and other online communications (e.g. Facebook), it is also a means to try and trick people into visiting sites that can do bad things.

The lesson to be learned here is that we must continue to be vigilant. Is the link from someone you know? Were you expecting it?  If you are unsure, follow up with the sender before clicking.  By having up-to-date anti-virus/anti-malware software and being careful about shortened URLs, we can minimize the potential risk of bad things happening to our computers.

As the use of social media within Cooperative Extension continues to grow the issue of policies related to its use has started to emerge.  This post is to specifically address UW-Cooperative Extension’s position on the use of social media in the county Extension office.

UW-Cooperative Extension does not have a specific policy as it relates to the use of social media in the county office. It is recognized that most county offices depend on county IT resources.  Therefore it is county IT policy that should be followed. We do encourage county administrators and IT staff ato gain an understanding of the professional and educational uses of social media sites such as Facebook that faculty and staff throughout UW-Cooperative Extension are leveraging  and work with them in a way that allow them to use such sites.

We do have a general policy on the use of 3rd party applications which the use of social media does fall within, but does not address the specific issues that may arise with social media.

Click to download: Third Party Application Guidance and Policy

If a county does not have a policy on the use of social media the following resources may be of benefit:

• Designing Social Media Policy for Government (free 8 page guide, .pdf)
• Social Media Governance Database – database of policies for government, non-profits and others

We see this as an area that will continue to grow. We believe that responsible, professional, educational and scholarly use of social media is possible and encourage our county based colleagues to engage in its appropriate use.

Twitter gets a lot press, but is it a service that is worth your time to invest in using it?  Certainly tools that integrate Twitter with other services such as your Facebook and WordPress site help make your tweets more visible and increase the probability that your tweets will be read.

Understanding who and how Twitter is being used can help inform you as to whether or not it is worth the effort to integrate into your educational programming. This research overview article from Pew Internet & American Life Project, presents some interesting findings:

• Eight percent of the American adults who use the internet are Twitter users.
• Half of these Twitter users basically never listen to a word anyone else says.
• It  is particularly popular with young adults, minorities, and those who live in cities.

There is more information in the article related to demographics and usage along with links to view the full report, and their methodology which will help inform your decision to use (or not use) Twitter.

Resource links:

Who Tweets. Overview report by Pew Internet & American Life Project

8% of online Americans use Twitter (full report)

Pew Internet & American Life Project

We are migrating County web sites from Contribute over to WordPress, starting in May. The purpose of this email is to both provide you with the opportunity to pick a date for your migration, as well as go into further detail as to what this process will encompass.

Scheduling

We will be scheduling 3 – 5 counties for migration per week. Please select both a primary as well as two alternate choices for which week you would like to be scheduled

May 17, 24 (Monday may 24^th is a mandatory Furlough day), 31

June 7, 14, 21, 28

July 5, 12, 19, 26

August 2, 9, 16, 23, 30

September 6, 13, 20, 27

October 4, 11

In addition, we will need for you to designate someone in your office who will be the County migration liaison for this migration. This person will be making the final decisions in regards to the architecture, layout and content of the new site. We advise that this person both have a familiarity with WordPress, and be computer savvy.

Details

Responsibilities of the County Migration Liaison (CML):

The CML will be working closely with CE Tech services staff in order to determine the look and feel of the new County WordPress site. As a group, the CML and CE Tech service will determine which content on the County Contribute site needs to be migrated, and which content needs to be instead archived and stored on DVD. The CML will help CE Tech Services determine how to configure security ‘roles’ for county Cooperative Extension staff (ie: Admin, Author, Editor). Lastly, the CML will work with his or her colleagues in reviewing the new site and getting it prepared for launch.

During the week you are scheduled for migration, our staff will be working with the County migration liaison in migrating your site over to the new system. We will be working with you to get as much of your migration completed during your scheduled week as possible, but it will ultimately be the responsibility of the county Cooperative Extension office to complete the migration.

Cooperative Extension faculty and staff integrate technology into their educational programming in many different ways and to varying degrees.  So how does one identify a) if the integration of technology is successful and b) the necessary services that support the use of technology are in alignment to support, enhance and facilitate that use?

To answer these questions a three step process is being implemented.  The first is to establish an understanding of  a) what technology is being used, b) for which purpose is it being used, and c) identify barriers to the use of technology in educational programming.   The second study is to identify what it means to successfully integrate technology within Cooperative Extension educational programming.  Based on these two studies, current policies, practices and curriculum related to helping integrate technology into educational programming will be reviewed and revised as needed.  At an appropriate time yet to be identified, the modified policies, practices and curriculum that are put in place will be evaluated to see how well they support the successful integration of technology into Cooperative Extension educational programming.

The initial data collection used this survey, though it was done electronically using Zoomerang.

Integrating Technology Survey