Children, Youth and Families Education and Research Network

Description: The 4-H National Headquarters and Land Grant Institutions across the nation partner with the Army, Air Force and Navy to provide predictable, quality 4-H programs and educational experiences to Military Children and Youth wherever they live. In addition, land grant university faculty and staff provide technical assistance and training to the military services in the areas of youth development and technology. Through the 4-H Military Partnerships, Military Children and Youth participate in 4-H Clubs on installations around the world and in their local communities. Military Children and Youth attend a variety of camp programs focusing on developing life skills and increase their awareness of the world around them.

Author: Nordby, Ann (24 more by this author)
Description: This technology trend highlights "Clickers" and their use for immediate tallying of opinions and responses by those physically present. Similar to the keypads used to record audience response on TV game shows, they can be a useful teaching tool, setting up a feedback loop reminiscent of Socratic method, even when the audience is large. Responses are anonymous, and you don't have the delays inherent in paper balloting procedures.

Description: Practical information on how to use technology for online learning, including using mobile technologies in your programs, and using technology for professional development

Author: Seger, ; Mark Light
Description: Research-based programming is seemingly losing its relevance in our technological world. Families and youth are now looking to blogs as a source of information; but blogs based upon reliable research-based information are lacking. This interactive session will teach the importance of blogging to expand programming potential. Leave with lots of materials including a CD of "how to blog" podcasts for beginners.

Description: Meridian is an electronic journal dedicated to research and practice of computer technology in middle school classrooms. It is published twice yearly by an interdisciplinary team of NC State graduate students representing a broad range of fields, from education to forestry. Meridian features research findings, practitioner articles, commentary, and book excerpts by educational researchers, technology designers, middle school teachers, and authors who wish to share and expand teaching and learning experiences with computer technologies in middle school classrooms and beyond.

Author: Dunham, Trudy (32 more by this author)
Description: Overview of the Scratch game development tool interface.

Author: Dunham, Trudy (32 more by this author)
Description: Hosting an Open House? Meeting with a potential funder? Explaining your project to local community organizations? Need to stay in touch with program participants and their families? This session focuses on how you can easily use technology to showcase your project and make a great impression with your collaborators! Tips and strategies on when and how to use different technologies, and how to organize your content in the right technology tool to get your message across.

Author: Dunham, Trudy (4 more by this author); CYFERnet TEam
Description: Skillathons are challenging, non-competitive learning-by-doing-stations that engage youth in a realistic situation and task to demonstrate their knowledge and skills. How to develop a skillathon and sample skillathons.

Author: Dunham, Trudy (32 more by this author)
Description: Social networking—it's social, creative, participatory and immediate, and more than high school pals and fan clubs. What is professional use? 80% of companies use social networking to find employees. Professionals use it to network, find experts, talk through ideas, search for jobs, and more! This workshop is hands-on exploration of sites and tools to give you strategies and skills for professional social networking. (Prep: Bring your eXtension ID; get one from people.extension.org)

Author: Barron, Brigid; Laura Bofferding, Gabrielle Cayton-Hodges, Carol Copple, Linda Darling-Hammond and Michael H. Levine
Description: The Digital Age Teacher Preparation Council composed of eighteen members from academia, industry, and policy assessed current practices in early education and elementary school teaching and have designed a professional development "blueprint" to advance the use of effective digital media in teaching and learning, with a special emphasis on instruction for underserved students. This report, Take a Giant Step, represents the Council's multi-sector action plan to enhance teacher education and a higher quality, 21st century approach to the learning and healthy development of children in preschool and the primary grades. The report sets forth several goals for the nation to meet by 2020, including advancing technology integration and infrastructure; a more robust professional training program for early education professionals; the expanded use of public media as cost-effective assets for teachers; and the establishment of a Digital Teacher Corps.

Author: Kahler, James (4 more by this author)
Description: Information on how to take good photos for CYFAR projects.

Author: CYFERNet Team, (14 more by this author)
Description: Recommended planning process for developing the Technology Utilization Plan, part of the CYFAR Sustaining Communities Project grant process. Resource includes the Technology Guiding principle, examples, strategies and planning resources to help you think through how to integrate technology throughout your program.

Author: Dunham, Trudy (32 more by this author)
Description: The ever-present cell phone and Blackberry don't have to distract from your conference experience - they can enhance it! Learn to use mobile technologies to facilitate your interaction with presenters, share opinions of a session, and meet others with similar interests. This workshop will orient you to the opportunities at CYFAR—from Twitter feeds, Facebook, and mobile-optimized agendas to Pecha Kucha, Flash Mobs and Text (SMS) Polls. (Bring your mobile devices with you.)

– Professional Development –

Description: AgNIC offers a number of different learning and sharing opportunities across subject areas. Please feel free to view the webinars, comment on the content, or suggest new webinars. The Agriculture Network Information Center (AgNIC) is a voluntary alliance of members based on the concept of “centers of excellence”. The member institutions are dedicated to enhancing collective information and services among the members and their partners for all those seeking agricultural information over the Internet. Most webinars relate to digital collections, technology, and use of information.

Author: Dunham, Trudy (32 more by this author)
Description: Youth create a social issue video and post it on YouTube. A tweet, then retweets and more tweets. The video goes viral. That issue that youth care about is suddenly all over the net, and receiving broad traditional media attention. With a simple click of the mouse, youth voices are being heard - loudly. What's going on? This webinar is a discussion of the research and practice of youth civic engagement and what participatory cultures and social media mean for youth programming, civic engagement, and leadership. Youth are engagement in participatory cultures brings a new approach to addressing long-standing civic and social issues. This non-traditional civic engagement format has youth using new media to organize, to create content, and then to circulate that content around the world - click activism.

Author: Prensky, Marc
Description: Based on his recent book, Don't Bother Me Mom I'm Learning, Marc Prensky’s keynote talk at the 2007 CYFAR Conference presents the case-profoundly counter-cultural but true nevertheless-that video and computer game playing, within limits, is actually very beneficial to today’s 'Digital Native' kids, who are using the games to prepare themselves for life in the 21st century. According to Prensky, today’s youth are attracted to these games because they are learning important 'future' things, from collaboration, to prudent risk taking, to strategy formulation and execution, to complex moral and ethical decisions. Prensky’s arguments are backed up by university Ph.D.s studying not just game violence but games in their totality, as well as by gamers who have become successful corporate workers, entrepreneurs, leaders, doctors, lawyers, and scientists.

Author: Dunham, Trudy (32 more by this author)
Description: CYFERnet, SciGirls and 4-H collaborate to enhance the quality of 4-H Science and Engineering programs nationwide. Our focus for this online toolkit is to expand the impact of our face-to-face inquiry and design process programs and training through placement of key training components online. Our goal is to enable nonformal youth educators to be both comfortable and effective in facilitating the science inquiry and engineering design process with youth. The videos showcase the training process with hands-on activities and tips to enhance the implementation.

Author: Staker, Jay (12 more by this author); Holly Bignall
Description: Engage in web-based video/audio conferencing and learn to use the tool effectively and host an online seminar. Adobe Connect will be used as an example program to help understand ways to better serve clientele or foster communication within programs and communities. Learn tips and tools to make your presentation or meeting more effective. Additional options other than Connect will be explored as well.

– Programming Resource –

Author: Zuhars, Chris; Cindy Ray, Steve, Truby, Mark Otto
Description: Handbook to provide an overall understanding of videography by learning the skills and techniques necessary to create great movies. At the end of the handbook are attached a slide presentation, equipment needs and video production tips. Includes activities and skill building for scripting & storyboarding, filming, editing and rendering. Includes tips on working with specific software.

Author: Dunham, Trudy (32 more by this author)
Description: This page supports all who work with geospatial programs in 4-H and CYFAR, with opportunities for program staff and members to interact with experts and each other, build skills, share program ideas, and develop their programs. Links to valuable curriculum and program resources are also provided.

Description: The National Science Foundation CS Bits & Bytes is a biweekly newsletter highlighting innovative computer science research. Aimed at high school teachers and students, it emphasizes how computer science permeates and improves our lives and supports progress in many other disciplines. CS Bits & Bytes issues include profiles of the individuals who do this exciting work and include links to interactive activities and videos. You can check out the archive at this site, and/or request the newsletter be emailed to you.

Author: Dunham, Trudy (32 more by this author)
Description: Want to add a game development activity to your program but can't afford the cost and complexity of Flash? Here it is! Learn how to use the free software Scratch to easily create graphics, animations and simple computer games: including posting your games online. Get activity plans and contest ideas that you can use tomorrow in your out-of school program.

Description: Practical information on how to use technology for online learning, including using mobile technologies in your programs, and using technology for professional development

Author: Staker, Jay (12 more by this author); Kathleen Jamison
Description: The 4-H SET Mission Mandate creates an opportunity of awareness in staff and youth to learn SET using exciting computer technology tools. Engage youth in relevant, fun learning that focuses on the engineering process. The experiences include problem solving, communication, community service, and aesthetics. Come learn SketchUp, Alice, and West Point Bridge Design software and start engineering your program.

Description: This library is a free community resource to be shared and contributed to by users and readers across the world. The overall goal of the library is to provide leaders and managers (especially those with very limited resources) basic and practical information about business, management and organizations. Includes information on finances and fundraising for nonprofits.

– Research –

Description: Practical information on how to use technology for online learning, including using mobile technologies in your programs, and using technology for professional development

Author: Dunham, Trudy (32 more by this author)
Description: Most people today rely on the Internet for information and as a research tool. We have assumed that the best resources - the most relevant or authoritative, those most representative of what is going on today - are going to show up on page one of the search results. We have assumed that the search I conduct will result in the same result as the search that you conduct. New algorithms are tailoring search results to our past behavior, resulting in our being shown what the tool thinks we want to see, rather than a more objective list of what is available on the topic. Includes references to help you understand and think through the implications of these algorithms for our use of the Internet

Author: Dunham, Trudy (32 more by this author)
Description: We worry about sexting by minors. What it says about their sexual and relationship health. The short and long term effects sexually explicit photographs distributed by cell phone or posted online can have on their lives. While we should continue to worry and do what we can to prevent such behavior, a new national study suggests that the behavior is significantly less prevalent than was previously estimated. This brief reviews the new research findings and recommends actions by parents and youth workers to further prevent this behavior.

Technology Integration

– General Information –

– Professional Development –

– Programming Resource –

– Research –