youth development – Extension Foundation

Unlock the Power of Game-Based Learning with New Mexico State Learning Games Lab – Register Now for Our Exclusive Webinar

Research highlights the efficacy of game-based learning in educating youth. A team at New Mexico State University’s Learning Games Lab is applying that research, using their expertise in game-based learning to make food safety education exciting for the next generation of food handlers and enthusiasts.

Youth prepare food for themselves and their families and may have careers in the food industry. It’s important that they learn about safe food handling, cooking, storage, and when food is unsafe. Cue Theme Park Kitchen, an interactive online learning game designed to captivate and educate youth about food safety practices. Players can engage in different themed kitchens to serve delicious and safe meals to customers. It’s a redesign of “Ninja Kitchen,” launched in 2011 to teach kids food handling skills. The game’s designers focused on improving the game’s cultural sensitivity, working with youth to create a more inclusive reboot. The team’s work was supported by the New Technologies for Ag Extension program.

Sign up to attend an upcoming webinar where team members will share strategies about using gamification in education. It’s slated for Wednesday January 31st from 12-1 p.m. EST. This exciting one-hour event will explore how gameplay fosters behavior change, and how the Learning Games Lab created Theme Park Kitchen using inclusive design for learning. Team members will share ways that educators and Extension professionals can use the game in formal and informal educational settings. Participants will also have an opportunity to test the game for their own use.

To learn more about the project, read this feature story about the team’s work. You can also take a deeper dive into the project’s specifics by reading a publication written about by the team: Teaching Youth Food Safety: A Game-Based Experience , available in the Extension Foundation’s library.

January 24, 2024/by Aaron Weibe

New Publication Available: Teaching Youth Food Safety – A Game-Based Approach

News, Publications

The Extension Foundation (EXF) has issued Teaching Youth Food Safety: A Game-Based Experience, a publication written by a team from the New Mexico State University Learning Games Lab.

The publication details how the team is addressing food safety through game-based learning. Their ideas ties into research that indicates youth prefer to learn about food safety topics through interactive educational tools. The publication details how the team developed “Theme Park Cafe”, a food safety game for youth. In the game, players engage in different themed kitchens to serve delicious and safe meals to clients. It’s a redesign of “Ninja Kitchen,” launched in 2011 to teach kids food handling skills. In this publication, the game designers talk about increasing the game’s cultural sensitivity, working with kids to create the reboot, and other elements of using gamification to teach educational content.

This new game, one of several food-related projects funded by the New Technologies in Ag Extension (NTAE) 2022-2023 grant program, is part of a growing trend in Extension: using multimedia products to educate and engage diverse audiences.

The authors of the publication are: Barbara Chamberlin, PhD; Matheus Cezarotto, PhD; and Pamela Martinez, Ed.D, all from New Mexico State University.

This publication was produced through the New Technologies for Ag Extension (NTAE) program. NTAE is a cooperative agreement between USDA NIFA, Oklahoma State University, and the Extension Foundation. The goal of the New Technologies for Ag Extension (NTAE) grant is to incubate, accelerate, and expand promising work that will increase the impact of the Cooperative Extension System (CES) in the communities it serves, and provide models that can be adopted or adapted by Extension teams across the nation.

You can learn more about the team’s work in this recent feature article – Leveling Up – published in October 2023. The team also wrote about an alternative to full game design – the game jam process – in an earlier publication. You can access that publication here.

The Extension Foundation has released two dozen publications this fall, including the 2022-2023 NTAE Yearbook, which presents the work of dozens of Extension project teams from across the U.S. in a lively magazine format. You can find the entire library of publications (now numbering nearly five dozen) here.

December 14, 2023/by Aaron Weibe

New Publications Available in Extension Foundation Publications Library

Announcements, News, Publications

The Extension Foundation has added four new titles to its publications library. These brief publications – written as magazine-style feature stories – share project work funded through the New Technologies for Ag Extension (NTAE) program, a cooperative agreement between USDA NIFA, Oklahoma State University, and the Extension Foundation. NATE’s goal is to incubate, accelerate, and expand promising work that will increase the impact of the Cooperative Extension System (CES) in the communities it serves, and provide models that can be adopted or adapted by Extension teams across the nation.

Each of the publications is excerpted from the New Technologies for Ag Extension 2022-2023 Yearbook, an 83-page magazine, which shares how these grant projects improve human, environmental, and community health.

Una Educación Sobre la Educación shares the story about a team of Extension educators at Iowa State University who have developed ¡Salir Adelante! Caminos a Nuestro Futuro” (Pathways for our Future) to give Latino Iowans tools and support to reach their hopes and dreams for education to help their families thrive. In this publication, the educators talk about the kind of support Latino families need when it comes to navigating the U.S.education system and the results this program is having in Iowa.

Seguridad de Pesticidas details exciting work from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The institution has offered the Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP) to Nebraska farmers since 1993. In 2020, a team created an online, asynchronous version of the course and applied for NTAE funding to translate it into Spanish, to better reach Latinx farmers. This publication discusses the growing need for pesticide safety instruction among Spanish-speaking farmers and what PSEP educators hope to accomplish with this audience.

Building Grantsmanship Capacity.The Southern Rural Development Center created a program to teach teams of 1890 land-grant university professionals and community members how to find, apply for, and manage grants to fund projects that address under-resourced communities’ most pressing needs. This publication briefly describes who participated in the training and what they learned.

Alabama Master Naturalist and Underserved Communities. Educators at Alabama Cooperative Extension System have launched a free online, asynchronous component of their “Alabama Master Naturalist” certification course. This publication talks about initial results, and how this new layer of naturalist training has helped the program reach underserved communities.

The Extension Foundation carries dozens of titles in its library. Four to five additional publications are slated to hit the shelf each week through the end of November. Sign up to receive publication notifications here. You can find the entire library of publications here.

November 13, 2023/by Aaron Weibe

Extension Foundation Releases Five New Titles

News, Publications

The Extension Foundation has added five new titles to its publications library. The brief publications – written as magazine-style feature stories – share project work funded through the New Technologies for Ag Extension (NTAE) program, a cooperative agreement between USDA NIFA, Oklahoma State University, and the Extension Foundation. NATE’s goal is to incubate, accelerate, and expand promising work that will increase the impact of the Cooperative Extension System (CES) in the communities it serves, and provide models that can be adopted or adapted by Extension teams across the nation.

Each of the publications is excerpted from the New Technologies for Ag Extension 2022-2023 Yearbook, an 83-page magazine, which shares how these grant projects improve human, environmental, and community health.

“Pollen Power” shares the story of “Pollinator Superheroes,” an animated series created by the National Pesticide Safety Education Center and its partners (including Pawnee Nation College, Nebraska Indian Community College, and Prairie View A&M). The series is intended for Native American elementary students in Nebraska and Oklahoma—not only to inspire youth to identify and protect bees, bats, and butterflies but to reinforce to them that their actions, cultures, and native languages matter. This publication describes the series and how multiple partners collaborated to create it.

“They Can Do Hard Things” details a program developed by a team from Utah State University, designed to help youth build confidence in their ability to survive adverse childhood experiences and thrive in any circumstance, through activities that push them out of their comfort zone in a safe and supportive environment. This publication describes what the team learned as they created the program and why this kind of youth development is so important.

“Teaching Money Matters” explores the work of the Financial Literacy Team at West Virginia University Extension. Their curriculum teaches children and adults basic financial concepts and risks, so that they are empowered to make the most informed decisions about how to save, invest, and manage debt. This publication documents how the team worked with its NTAE advisors to increase the flexibility of the curriculum and equip Extension educators to teach the material in a way that meets the unique needs of individual communities.

“Breaking the Cycle”. Educators at University of Nevada, Reno Extension created a program called “Heart & Hope” to provide a safe place for domestic violence survivors to learn skills for creating healthy home environments. In this publication, team members talk about the critical need for this service and how they work with this sensitive population.

“Leveling Up” shares the story of the innovative work being done by a team at New Mexico State University’s Learning Games Lab. “Theme Park Cafe” is a food safety game for youth created by the team. It enables players to engage in different themed kitchens to serve delicious and safe meals to clients. It’s a redesign of “Ninja Kitchen,” launched in 2011, with an aim to teach youth food handling skills. In this publication, the game designers talk about increasing the game’s cultural sensitivity, working with youth to create the reboot, and other elements of using gamification to teach educational content.

The Extension Foundation carries dozens of titles in its library. Four to five additional publications are slated to hit the shelf each week through the end of November. Sign up to receive publication notifications here. You can find the entire library of publications here.

November 6, 2023/by Aaron Weibe

Juntos Publication Now Available in Spanish

News

“El Programa Juntos: La trayectoria de un programa de Extensión al servicio de una comunidad en crecimiento” is available on the Extension Foundation bookshelf in a flipping book format. This publication is a Spanish translation of the Juntos eFieldbook produced in 2021.

The Juntos program focuses on educating high school Latinx students and equipping their families with the knowledge, skills, and resources to ensure high school graduation and increase college access and attendance rates. In the publication, the team shares how they are expanding the program beyond North Carolina.

The publication provides information about the history of the Juntos program and helpful case studies. One section explores strategies that the Juntos team used to amplify the voices of immigrant youth. The publication includes a section on digital communications where readers will find ideas about how to effectively use social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, blogs, and email marketing programs such as MailChimp in their Extension work.

The publication’s author is Diana Urieta, MSW, the National Director of Juntos and the program’s co-director.

The project was supported by a grant from the New Technologies in Agricultural Extension (NTAE) program. The team was supported in their work by the Extension Foundation.

Additional titles have recently become available in the Extension Foundation library on topics such as creating mass media campaigns, game-based education, wellness in “tough times,” innovating curriculum, prescribed fire, emergency preparation and response, understanding food labels, and building farm and farm family resilience. You can find the entire library of publications here.

A note about our Publications:

After listening to the feedback of our Cooperative Extension partners, the new Publication bookshelf serves as a replacement for our old eFieldbook library. We greatly value and appreciate the feedback we received, including eliminating a LinkedIn login to access titles on the bookshelf. All titles are publicly available on our Connect Extension platform. Titles that were on our former eFieldbook bookshelf are in the process of being migrated.

May 11, 2022/by Aaron Weibe