e-Commerce Initiative expands regional training plans with workshop, new teams
On July 19-21, 2010, 19 Extension educators and three guest speakers gathered to address the expansion of e-commerce for a National e-Commerce Extension Initiative workshop hosted by the Southern Rural Development Center.
With the program in its seventh year, the SRDC, located at Mississippi State University, organized this workshop in Atlanta, Georgia to promote the Initiative's ten e-commerce learning modules and Web site.
"Since launching the Initiative in 2003, the SRDC focused much of its energies in producing a wide array of high quality educational products," SRDC Director Bo Beaulieu said. "We now want to focus on building a national network of Extension educators who can accelerate the adoption of e-commerce strategies."
To build this network, each Regional Development Center Director identified Extension professionals from the region who support e-commerce advancement to form four new regionally based teams. Each team will host e-commerce workshops and other training activities, using $25,000 from the Initiative.
Initiative coordinator Shannon Lane Turner said, "It is our hope that the teams that are now working together will be the new champions of the Initiative by getting the word out about the resources that we have available to the larger Extension community in their region."
During the workshop, these teams received instruction from the learning module authors to develop a better understanding of the theory and application behind successful e-commerce strategies.
Workshop participant David Lamie, an Associate Professor at Clemson University, said he hoped to gain "a more complete understanding of the full array of existing curricula available, plans for future development of curricula and other programmatic resources, and most importantly who else is interested in this emerging program area."
This knowledge remains important to his work for Extension in rural communities facing economic challenges. "E-commerce and Internet access are increasingly essential components for rural community economic and social success," Lamie said. "Much of my program focuses on encouraging rural communities and regions to grapple with evolving their community and economic strategy portfolio to include knowledge economy approaches."
In addition to presentations from current curriculum authors, the meeting also included a presentation from Jabari Simama who read from his book Civil Rights to Cyber Rights: Broadband and Digital Equality in the Age of Obama.
Simama, an expert in the importance of technology adoption, posits that broadband should be approached as a civil right. "Public access to computer equipment, training, and knowledge is the means by which many minorities obtain self-reliance, self-actualization, community networking, communications and empowerment," Simama wrote. "Bridging the digital divide is the strategy. Economic empowerment is the goal."
Beaulieu said the first of its kind workshop was a success. "We received a good bit of feedback about how the workshop participants planned to take the material available and customize it for their target audiences."
In addition the new regional teams, the Initiative is also expanding its Advisory Board to include more regional representation, developing two calls for grant proposals for new e-commerce learning modules and workshops, and releasing four new e-commerce products over the next several months.
