Download Conference Agenda (PDF)

All sessions will be held via Zoom.

Conference Opening Remarks

Jennifer Sykes, Outgoing NETC president |  University of Florida
9:45 AM – 10:00 AM (all times are in Central Standard Time)

Connecting IT Departments to Employees: Tech Training & Virtual Office Hours

Karen DiCicco, Mary Poling & Amy Cole | University of Arkansas System, Division of Agriculture, Cooperative Extension Service
10:00 AM – 10:45 AM (CST)

Do your employees complain about not getting enough help from your IT department? Do they ask for new tech skills and training opportunities and you’re not sure how to deliver them? Four years ago, our IT department started training on tech topics with a monthly Zoom meeting. This training has now evolved into a myriad of other formats which have become popular with employees statewide. Join us to see the evolution of how it started, where we are today, and learn how these training sessions have improved the visibility and reputation of IT in Arkansas Extension while setting the standard for employee education within our organization.

Break 10:45 AM – 11:00 AM (CST)

Motivate Your Mind with Healthy Habits in the Workplace

Molly Jameson and Amy Mullins  |  University of Florida, UF/IFAS Extension Leon County
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM (CST)

This session will provide practical tools for technology professionals and agents who spend most of their workday sitting at a sedentary workspace. Immobility and poor dietary habits can increase your risk of chronic diseases, obesity, back pain, and depression. Fortunately, there are many easy and practical techniques technology professionals can implement while at work to help to prevent these ailments. These include doing desk chair exercises, stretching, and more! This session will provide tools and tips that can easily be incorporated into a normal sedentary work week to improve diet, mood, physical health, and even overall productivity.

Break 11:45 – Noon (CST)

Climate and Carbon Data Visualization

Sujan Bhattarai | Prairie View A&M University
12:00 PM – 12:45 PM (CST)

This application is currently being developed for researchers at Prairie View A&M University. The researchers needed a platform for visualizing data generated by the weather station on campus. The weather station generates daily data including almost 200 different weather parameters. The architecture of the application includes an Angular app in the front end that talks to an ASP.NET Core Web API. The web API communicates with a SQL Server database to store and retrieve data.

Break 12:45 pm – 1:00 pm (CST)

Lessons Learned & Thoughts on the Future: A 40-year career in Extension and IT

Neal Vines | Virginia Tech
1:00 pm – 1:45 PM (CST)

I will be retiring on July 1, having spent 40 years in higher education and Cooperative Extension including 15 years as an extension agent, over 35 years as an IT professional, and 25 years as an IT director. Throughout my career, I have learned a great many lessons. Some through trial and error, many through mistakes, and a lot by leaning on my colleagues. During this session, I will share a little history of IT in extension, some of the leadership lessons I’ve learned, and offer some thoughts related to my vision of IT as a leader for Cooperative Extension and higher education. I will conclude with a discussion of where IT in extension and higher education is headed. What are the critical challenges we currently face, what is our vision for our profession, and what do we need to get there?

Break 1:45 pm – 2:00 pm (CST)

Sponsor session: IT Leadership & Engagement

Andrew Kniberg and Kim Keller | Office Depot &  Neal Vines | Virginia Tech
2:00 pm – 2:45 PM (CST)

This session will demonstrate how IT is engaging and helping drive change management. Learn how VCE and Office Depot’s public/private partnership is addressing content consumption/distribution- mobile engagement and providing enhanced user experience. Join us to hear how our strategic partnership is bringing accessibility (WCAG) and compliance content to a digital world.  We will also demonstrate a brand-new platform and a content hub for collaboration that includes a responsive designed layout for mobile and digital display. Learn how you can define a roadmap for IT to enable content transformation, accessibility, and best-in-class analytics!

Break 2:45 pm – 3:00 pm (CST)

Virtual Networking on Discord

Everyone’s invited!

3:00 pm – 4:00 pm (CST)

Join us for an “after hours” session for informal networking and a meet and greet via a separate Discord (www.discord.com)* meetup to get acquainted, catch up, or talk shop with the NETC board and your fellow Extension colleagues. There will be “rooms” for both large and small groups.

*The Discord server will also be up during the conference with text, voice, and video capabilities available for attendees to use for further networking.

Tuesday’s Keynote Speaker

Lois Brooks
CIO, University of Wisconsin, Madison

10:00 AM – 10:45 AM (CST)

Lois Brooks joined UW–Madison in August 2018 as vice provost for information technology and chief information officer. The vice provost for information technology and chief information officer (CIO) has direct and indirect responsibility for the entire sphere of information technology (IT) related activities on campus. In conjunction with advisory groups, this role oversees the development and delivery of IT services, IT security policies, and best practices.

Prior to joining UW-Madison, Lois served as Oregon State University’s Vice Provost for Information Services and Chief Information Officer. She also served for twenty-five years at Stanford University, most recently as Director of Academic Computing. During her tenures at Stanford and Oregon State, she co-founded the Sakai Foundation (now Apareo) and UNIZIN Consortium, serving on the Board of Directors for each. She also served as Executive Director of the Sakai Foundation.

She is active nationally in the higher education community, having served in leadership and governance roles with the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium, Educause, and Internet2. She holds a BS in Applied Economics from the University of San Francisco, an MBA from the University of California Berkeley, and an MBA from Columbia University.

Break 10:45 AM – 11:00 AM (CST)

Show Us the Money: Finding External Grant Dollars to Support Distance Education

Mariah Morgan and Bekah Sparks |  Mississippi State University Extension Service
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM (CST)

In this session, participants will work through the USDA Distance Learning and Telemedicine grant application. This grant was successfully applied for, and awarded to, the MSUES Center for Technology Outreach. The grant will fund the replacement of videoconferencing equipment in all 82 county Extension offices within the State. Best practices as well as key partners and stakeholder groups will be identified so that participants can begin putting the pieces of their own grant together. The next round of funding is due July 12, 2020.

Break 11:45 pm – 12:00 pm (CST)

Rapid Transition to Managing Remote Computers with Desktop Central

Mike Stanley | University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture
12:00 pm – 12:45 pm (CST)

The timeline for our Managed Desktop project was accelerated and altered by COVID-19. While the system we had deployed, Desktop Central, was fully capable of managing PCs and Macs on the campus network and at our remote Extension and AgResearch offices connected back to campus via our SHIELD VPN network, in mid March we found ourselves with 1500 computers taken home for an indefinite period of time. This presentation will provide an overview of our Desktop Central deployment as well as our success in adapting our management model to continue to keep our now-remote computers safe during the pandemic, as well as providing for ongoing management of computers at any location with an internet connection, whether connected via VPN or not.

Break 12:45 pm – 1:00 pm (CST)

Technology Matters & So Does Learning & Organizational Capacity

Teresa McCoy and Jared Morrison | The Ohio State University Extension
1:00 pm – 1:45 pm (CST)

What if you had the chance to build a new Extension unit? What if that unit’s mission is to focus on e-learning, educational technologies, social media, program development and evaluation, event planning, professional development, mentoring and onboarding, organizational development, and more? You recruit the team, chart your path, and begin developing products; then, out of nowhere, a pandemic! Members from this exact unit from Ohio State will chronicle the development which began in 2018, laying a foundation in 2019 and adapting to unprecedented circumstances in 2020. Learn about building the unit, lessons learned and successes, plus how our immediate and proactive approach during the COVID-19 pandemic provided crucial support, and our hopes for the future in Extension.

Break 1:45 pm – 2:00 pm

Sponsor Session: Modern Device Management

Saul Tijerina | Microsoft
2:00 pm – 2:45 pm (CST)

Overview of deploying and managing Windows 10 devices with Modern Management solutions.  Learn how, by leveraging tools like Microsoft Intune and Windows Autopilot (included in most Microsoft licensing plans of members), you can save on IT deployment costs and offer a seamless “zero-touch” deployment for your end-users.

Break 2:45 pm – 3:00 pm

Virtual Networking

Everyone’s invited!

3:00 pm – 4:00 pm (CST)

Wednesday’s Keynote Speaker

Jennifer Sparrow
Associate Vice President for Teaching and Learning
with Technology at Penn State

10:00 AM – 10:45 AM (CST)

Jennifer leads a dynamic team of more than 95 learning innovators at Penn State.  Teaching and Learning with Technology collaborates across the entire institution to transform teaching and learning in positive and enduring ways.  The work is grounded in the values of accessibility for all learners, reliability, and credibility of all work, and strong partnerships with faculty, students, staff, and vendors that enable new ventures in teaching and learning.

She champions for the following strategic goals: innovation in teaching and learning with technology, strategic opportunities for faculty development, the advancement of flexible, active learning spaces, research in the scholarship of technology-enhanced teaching and learning, and inspiring excellence in teaching and learning with technology at Penn State and beyond.

Jennifer’s current service includes roles on the EDUCAUSE Board of Directors, Unizin Board of Directors, IMS Global Higher Education Board, and the Women’s Leadership Group for the United Way of Centre County. Sparrow teaches for the Bellisario College of Communications and she has been integral in the development of the Center for Immersive Experiences, the digital fluency project at the PSU Greater Allegheny campus, and the Center for Arts and Design Pedagogy.  During her tenure at Penn State, she has successfully developed four unique learning spaces: the Dreamery, a co-learning lab; the Maker Commons; the BlueBox Classroom, an experimental teaching space; and the Immersive Experiences Lab, supporting the creation and consumption of virtual reality, augmented reality, and 360 videos.

Jennifer received her bachelor’s degree from Smith College, her master’s degree from Florida Gulf Coast University, and a doctorate from the University of Central Florida. Jennifer is the winner of the 2013 EDUCAUSE Rising Star Award.

Break 10:45 AM – 11:00 AM (CST)

Taking your Extension Education Online

Alison Holland |  University of Minnesota Extension
11:00 AM – 11:45 AM (CST)

Do you want to expand your reach (and/or keep teaching during COVID-19) but don’t know where to start? Have you given online courses a go, only to wonder why people don’t complete? There is a great deal of agreement that online learner engagement and course completion rates are often low, especially in the non-credit setting. There is research and there are “best practices” on how to engage online learners in traditional online courses, but what about informal learning? Online audiences not seeking credit or certification look elsewhere for information, seeking flexibility in educational content and opportunities for interaction. With examples from academic research and real world application, we’ll talk about the ways people learn online informally in daily life and what that means for designing and evaluating effective outreach education today.

Break 11:45 AM – 12:00 PM (CST)

Layered Networks & COVID-19 -Technology Supporting Resilience and Response at Cornell Cooperative Extension

Paul Treadwell | Cornell Cooperative Extension
12:00 pm – 12:45 pm (CST)

In many ways, Cornell Cooperative Extension has been positioned for over 100 years to meet the challenge of sudden rupture in our daily lives during COVID-19. The abrupt shift to remote work and the ability to continue educational programming during this time is the result of two networks overlaid and re-enforcing each other during a time of crisis. The human infrastructure, developed over 100+ years and functioning across the state of New York, is a crucial and distinctive feature of the Cornell Cooperative Extension system. The technological infrastructure has seen rapid growth and changes over the past several decades and the adoption of technology across the CCE system, while inconsistent, stabilized a potentially disruptive crisis and permitted work to continue. This session will explore how pre-existing human and technological networks were interwoven during the COVID-19 crisis to support, and in some cases extend, the educational mission of Cornell Cooperative Extension in order to respond to emerging community needs.

Break 12:45 pm – 1:00 pm (CST)

Going Live: Using Facebook Live to Grow Community Engagement

Rachel Pienta | University of Florida
1:00 pm – 1:45 pm (CST)

After shutting down in-person operations due to COVID-19, the presenter used virtual tools to connect with clientele. Going live on Facebook five days a week for six weeks grew clientele engagement and maintained a virtual connection to Extension programs despite social distance measures. In this presentation, participants will learn how to prepare for live broadcasts that will inform and engage clientele.

Break 1:45 pm – 2:00 pm (CST)

Closing Remarks & Awards Presentation

Michael Mauton, Incoming NETC President | Iowa State University
2:00 pm – 2:45 pm (CST)