Last month, Colorado AgrAbility reported on its IT challenges. Staff would also like to point out that their two farm site assessors are just a bit still in the dinosaur age. All of the newer IT tools are not intuitive for them, so they really have to make an effort to adopt and use them. Colorado is a very rural state. Staff can put 600-700 miles a day on the work vehicle to see just one client. That forces them to think out-of-the-box in order to spend that time wisely. COVID has challenged them to be creative and think in directions never even broached before. A serious problem in Colorado for delivery of service is lack of bandwidth and internet connectivity. Staff have been required to research those issues before deciding on how to deliver their service recommendations. Offering to send materials by email won't work for many clients. Recommending telehealth for stress reduction, etc., will not work in many spots of the state. Having a high level quadriplegic client be able to access a pasture by getting him up into a combine in a bed lift and assuming he/she can use a cell phone to access help if a problem occurs in the lift is not realistic when they may be one hundred miles from cell service. CO AgrAbility needs to think about satellite phones.
So, the effect of these experiences over the past few weeks has resulted in changing how staff deliver education. They have always delivered 5-8 Winter Workshops by setting up a location in a given area of the state and traveling to it and delivering an in-person four-hour presentation. To make proper use of time, staff tried to also cobble site visits around their travels. It usually worked OK but not always. For the 2020/2021 workshops, staff are going virtual. Staff will, as before, contact Extension agents in the remote corners of the Colorado plains and mountains and ask them to host a workshop in a location that they know will get internet reception for PowerPoint presentations and live internet-based delivery of the training. It will then be archived on YouTube so that staff can share the links by phone or snail mail so that folks can view it at a location in their community or a neighboring one.
Submitted by Jim Craig