Ellen Crawford, Ag Comm information specialist, was honored by the North Dakota Professional Communicators as the organization's Communicator of Achievement at its annual awards banquet April 27 in Bismarck. Crawford was recognized for her years of service to NDPC (including 13 years as treasurer) and the National Federation of Press Women, which she now serves as treasurer. The nomination also shared her accomplishments in the profession, including eight years with Ag Communication and 26 years with The Forum.

Crawford will be honored and compete for national Communicator of Achievement at the National Federation of Press Women conference in Arizona this fall.

Also at the NDPC conference, Crawford was honored for projects:

• First: News Reporting – Publication or Magazine - Rural Leadership North Dakota Creates Energized, Effective Leaders and NDSU Extension Easing Farm/Ranch Transition Worries
  
• Second: News or feature release - Unwanted Pets Give Students Hands-on Training
  
• Third: Reports – internal annual report -- North Dakota 2010 Military 4-H Partnership Corporate Report
  

In addition, Becky Koch received these awards:

• First: Website development/creation – for not-for-profit, government or educational – NDSU Extension Service Flood Website
• First: Audiovisuals – PowerPoint – Family Preparedness Educational Program for Extension Disaster Education Network
• First: Magapaper/tabloid – four-color – Livestock and Land Stewardship Ag Mag
• First: Manuals & handbooks – electronic – Family Preparedness Educational Program Leader Guide for Extension Disaster Education Network
• Second: Media kit – Winter Survival Kit Phone App information

To make sure your good work is included in the NDSU in the media emails from Anne Robinson-Paul of University Relations, please drop a note to Anne and your Ag Comm editor right after you complete an interview with regional, state or national media. Don't include regular county newspaper columns and radio programs, but do let us know about interviews where a mass media representative develops the story. In your email to Anne and your Ag Comm writer/editor, include who did the interview, the media company and some of the details of the story (what, who, why, etc.).

The Ag Comm writers/editors have divided responsibilities this way:

Ellen Crawford, 231-5391
Animal Sciences
Veterinary and Microbiological Sciences
4-H Youth Development
Health, Nutrition and Exercise Sciences
Natural Resource Sciences
Ag and Biosystems Engineering
Carrington REC
Central Grasslands REC
North Central REC

Rich Mattern, 231-6136
Plant Sciences
Plant Pathology
Food Systems
Human Development and Family Science
Agribusiness and Applied Economics
Langdon REC
Agronomy Seed Farm
Williston REC
Hettinger REC
Dickinson REC

Becky Koch, Director, (701) 231-7875

Sonja Fuchs (pronounced Fox) joined the Ag Communication department May 1 as Web technology specialist. Sonja will work with Bob Bertsch to help Ag faculty and staff with the Ag content management system, social media and other Web-based tools. 

Prior to joining NDSU, Sonja served as Web manager for Creative Kitchen; as a trainer and support/quality assurance coordinator for Sundog; as a trainer, instructional designer and client services specialist for Silverpop (Vtrenz); as marketing manager for Feed Management Systems; and as a content coordinator for Microsoft.

Sonja can be reached in Morrill 5B or at (701) 231-6403 or sonja.fuchs@ndsu.edu. Welcome, Sonja!

The primary goal for Ag Communication’s news and feature releases is education, but also appropriate for release to the mass media is information about faculty, staff and students, as well as events and activities sponsored or co-sponsored under the Vice President for Agricultural Affairs.

The news release guidelines are available on the Ag Communicate website under News and Editorial.

An example of what you will find:

Instead of a news release, Ag Comm sometimes sends out a tip sheet – a page with story ideas, background information, contact people and other information for reporters to develop their own stories.

Rich Mattern, Information Specialist, (701) 231-6136

For the past few weeks, the NDSU Extension Horticulture/Forestry team has been using the webconferencing tool Microsoft LiveMeeting for its weekly meetings with specialists and agents across the state. At a recent meeting, we noticed the images the presenter was sharing in LiveMeeting appeared blurred. Some users said they looked like impressionist paintings instead of clear photos.

The presenter was sharing the photos with the group using screen sharing in LiveMeeting. After some investigation, we discovered that while screen sharing works well for simple graphics and text, it is not great for detailed photos.

For the most recent meeting, the presenter inserted the photos he wanted to share into a PowerPoint presentation (one photo on each slide), then uploaded the PowerPoint to LiveMeeting. When he shared the uploaded presentation, the images came through to the other participants at a much higher quality than they did with screen sharing.

Here's a short screencast on how to use this method for sharing photos in LiveMeeting, http://youtu.be/KdTmnowfCW4.

Do your logos and graphics look blurry when you add them to Word or PowerPoint? It’s time to change how you handle graphics! You will get the best quality images when you add your image using the “Insert” tab in your program rather than trying to copy and paste.

When you get a graphic emailed to you as an attachment, DO NOT double click on the file. The FIRST thing to do is right click on the file, select “Save As” and save the graphic to your computer. You can put it on your desktop or you can create a folder for your logos and graphics – either one works. Just be sure to put the graphic somewhere that you will be able to find it again. Save the files you download from the Internet here, too.

Next, open your Word or PowerPoint file. Click on the “Insert” tab across the top and select “Picture.” Browse to the location where you saved the graphic on your computer, select the file and click “Insert.” The image can now be resized as needed.

Why does this work better? Because when you double click a file to open it, it usually opens in a paint program or Windows viewer at a lower resolution. A copy and paste at this point means you are copying a lesser-quality image and getting less-than-great results.

So, start using “Insert” and say goodbye to copy and paste.

Deb Tanner, Graphic Designer, (701) 231-7891; David Haasser, Graphic Designer, (701) 231-8620

“Myself” is not a substitute for “me” or “I.”

You’ve probably seen a sentence such as this: “Please contact Jane Smith, Kate Doe or myself for more information about the workshop.” The “myself” is incorrect. “Me” is the correct word.

The best way to determine which is right is to delete the other people in the sentence. You would not say “Please contact myself.” You would say “Please contact me for more information about the workshop.” So the sentence should be: “Please contact Jane Smith, Kate Doe or me for more information about the workshop.”

“Myself” is a reflexive pronoun. Think of it this way: I look in the mirror and see a reflection of myself.

A reflexive pronoun always is the object of a sentence; it never can be the subject. A subject is the one doing something in a sentence, and the object is the one having something done. So if I pet the cat, I am the subject and the cat is the object. You wouldn’t say “Myself petted the cat,” so don’t say “Fred and myself petted the cat.”

Ellen Crawford, Information Specialist, (701) 231-5391

More faculty and staff are trying Live Meeting for desktop-to-desktop Web conferencing, and the feedback is positive.

Compared to Wimba, Live Meeting:

• is simpler to use when you're the presenter
• has a brighter screen rather than an overall gray look
• can be used with colleagues outside the NDUS Microsoft Online Services system
  
• can be joined with just the click on a link rather than going through multiple steps to get to a room.

However, Live Meeting:

• is not compatible with Mac computers
• doesn't include a participant-to-participant chat function.
  

Both Live Meeting and Wimba:

• can be used for webinars to share information
• can be used for collaborative work, such as writing or editing a grant together live online
  
• can be a free replacement for phone calls.

Learn more about Live Meeting and Wimba on the Ag Comm website.

Wimba questions: Scott Swanson, Electronic Media Specialist, (701) 231-7086

Live Meeting questions: Becky Koch, Director, (701) 231-7875

Twice in the last month, I've been involved in discussions about how many PowerPoint slides to include in a program or how long a slide should be on the screen. My answer: it depends.

In "Beyond Bullet Points," Cliff Atkinson suggests a formula that includes one main idea per slide rather than per bullet and plenty of effective graphics. During the eXtension webinar when a University of Wyoming colleague shared these concepts, I had one of those "ah ha" moments. Why animate when I want each bullet to enter the slide so people don't jump ahead? Instead, I should simply put each major point on its own slide with a high-quality graphic to illustrate it. Since slides are so easy to make and free, there's no excuse for cutting down the number of slides anymore. Use each one to communicate a key or supporting message to your audience and make them anticipate the next one.

Learn more and get resources on the Beyond Bullet Points website. University of Wyoming colleague Stan Skrabut's slides sharing these ideas are on Slideshare.

Becky Koch, Director, (701) 231-7875

Atomic Learning is an online resource with short instructional videos about many popular software programs and applications. Now available to NDSU faculty and staff thanks to Distance and Continuing Education, this resource can help you find quick answers to your technology questions.

Want to embed a video clip into a slide? There's a 1:53 clip that shows you how step-by-step. Want to see how to upload onto Flickr so you can share some of your photos in the Ag Comm Group? There's a 1:28 clip on uploading. Want to work collaboratively with colleagues in Google Docs? There's a 3:00 clip on inviting people as editors or viewers. And the list of software or Web applications and functions goes on.

To access Atomic Learning, go to the DCE Atomic Learning website, click on the secure URL, and login with your NDSU username and password. From there, you can either search or filter to find answers to your technology questions.

Becky Koch, Director, (701) 231-7875