Ideas for You - The Bottom Line

Ideas for You-The Bottom Line

The Board of Directors, editors, business staff, and all associated with the Journal of Extension are proud to present this first issue in our new format. The Journal will now be published four times a year-Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. With the increase in size, we'll be able to give you 30% more content each year. This means we'll be publishing one of every three manuscripts we receive instead of one of every four.

Now that 1984 is behind us and 1985 is well under way, we at the Journal look forward to the challenges and opportunities facing us as we communicate with you through these pages. This issue contains many ideas that should cause all of you, as Extension professionals, to give serious consideration to:

• What we're doing now.
• What we might need to do in the future.
• How we're using existing hardware and communication technology in our programs.
• How we're working with others-both professionals and volunteers.
• Our strategies for helping our changing audiences learn.
• How we can more effectively report what we're doing.
• Many other ideas and resources available.

The content of this issue may look like it's hardware and technology oriented; that we're being carried away with "high tech." It's obvious that we continually need to evaluate the resources we can use to help create those learning-teaching situations where our clientele have an opportunity to acquire information, evaluate its usefulness to them and their situation, acquire skills in using information, and evaluate the consequences of using the information. In short, our evaluation of new educational technologies should be based on the extent to which each can help put information into the educational framework and which will help clients learn.

Since many of these technologies don't require us to speak directly to clients, an additional challenge is how to achieve the "high touch"-which has always been an Extension trademark-without eyeball-to-eyeball contact.<

As editor, my bottom line for each issue is a question: Has the information in this Journal changed your thinking about your work, your feelings about your work, what you do, or how you do it? If the answer to any of these questions is "yes," then those of us involved feel our efforts have been worthwhile.

Roger L. Lawrence

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I would like to welcome Patricia Buchanan as editor of the Journal of Extension for 1985-87. After working at this assignment for two years, it's especially satisfying to know that the person who will replace you is as qualified as Pat is. Her experience at county and state level Extension work, plus her work with the National Association of Extension Home Economists, gives her a special background that fits exactly with the primary readership of the Journal...namely those Extension staff members who have direct programming contact with clientele. I'm sure Pat will find the assignment challenging, educational, and rewarding. Best wishes, Pat, during 1985-97.

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