UF/IFAS
Okeechobee County Extension Service
458 Highway 98 North
Okeechobee, FL 34972-2578
Phone: (863) 763-6469
E- mail: dfculbert@ifas.ufl.edu
May 23, 2006
Feature Article - for release the week of May 28, 2006
Dan Culbert - Extension Horticulture Agent
Website Offers Solutions – for your Life
Our world is getting smaller by the minute, and people are demanding help around the clock. A team from University of Florida has recently come up with a new website to help people quickly find answers to real life problems.
Extension Agents from our local office have contributed information to this effort, and have helped to review this new website. And at a recent event, University President Bernard Machen cut the ribbon and launched this new clearinghouse for all our web-based documents. Since marketing studies told us that Extension provides solutions to problems, the new web address is appropriately named SolutionsForYourLife.
Located
at solutionsforyourlife.com,
the site gives consumers and industry professionals a
one-stop source of information on family life, gardening,
agriculture, the environment and other topics. Massive in
size and scope, Solutions for Your Life is a gateway to
all our Extension, research and education resources from
UF/IFAS.
This is the first time such a comprehensive Web presence has been assembled, and we believe it demonstrates how a University can improve its public outreach. We’re really excited about this project and expect it to help Floridians improve their lives in many ways. Solutions for Your Life collects hundreds of how-to publications, educational programs, fact sheets and technical reports. It also links to Web sites for state and federal agencies, other land-grant universities and professional organizations.
The site includes timely feature articles, an events calendar, databases of frequently asked questions, jobs and contact information for each of Florida’s 67 county extension offices. It will be updated continually with new publications, links and photos.
Solutions for Your Life emphasizes material that could be useful anywhere in Florida. Information specific to Okeechobee County – such as schedules for local and regional workshops, meetings and volunteer opportunities – will still be available from our local county extension office and website.
The Web site isn’t meant to replace direct contact with Extension offices, but it’s the next best thing, and it’s available around the clock. In development for more than a year, Solutions for Your Life was created to meet consumer demand for better online access to extension resources. It has been designed for ease of use and visual appeal. It also complies with federal guidelines to make the content accessible to users with disabilities.
Okeechobee Extension Website
While many local residents do not use computers, technology is an important informational tool for many persons. We get e-mails from persons locally, throughout Florida, across the country and even across the world all seeking information about issues of importance to them. The world has gotten very small with this new form of communication.
A UF technology adviser recently reviewed how often our local website has been visited in the last year. According to him, ours is one of the most heavily visited pages among Florida’s county Extension websites. Over the past year, the equivalent of five visits by every person in Okeechobee County has been recorded by computers that track this kind of information.
To keep our local website in line with the new SolutionsForYourLife website, our look and content will slowly be changed in the next few months to accommodate the needs of you, our local user. Our office would love to hear from you on what kinds of computer-based information would be useful on our county website.
Likewise, if there is information that is not needed, we can just eliminate those pages with a few clicks of the keyboard. And if you find something that just doesn’t work, we want to know about it.
Take a look around the new Extension SolutionsForYourLife webpage and our own Okeechobee webpage and let us know if we can improve your ability to find information on this site. If you don’t have a computer, or need some help learning how to use one, visit the Okeechobee Library or come by our office – we’d be happy to show you around.
I’ve
placed more information on our Okeechobee
web page, http://okeechobee.ifas.ufl.edu.
If you need additional information on reaching Extension
resources via the Internet, please email us at okeechobee@ifas.ufl.edu
or call us at 863-763-6469. Local residents can stop
by our office at 458 Hwy 98 North in Okeechobee, and visit
our Okeechobee County Master Gardeners from
-30-
Trade names, where used, are given for the purpose of providing specific information. They do not constitute an endorsement or guarantee of products named, nor does it imply criticism of products not named. The Florida Cooperative Extension Service - Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer authorized to provide research, educational information, and other services to individuals and institutions that function without regard to race, color, sex, age, handicap, or national origin. Florida Cooperative Extension Service / IFAS / University of Florida. Larry A. Arrington, Dean Last update: 05/26/2006 . This page is maintained by Dan Culbert