Web Trainings & Seminars – Too Much ICT In India & The Philippines!?

Morning, noon and evening, we have all kinds of information & communication technology (ICT) activities, seminars & trainings; this is all the exciting agricultural extension we need! Isn’t it?

Many and exciting, yes, but not anywhere the complete Extension we need in Agriculture – they are essentially come-ons, patikims (feed-ons), indicators of what people can learn if the extension of knowledge happened by training– necessarily with (a) subsequent refreshing and (b) augmenting the knowledge gained by experience.

After any training, you cannot expect Mastery! Graduating, we only have a novice, a beginner.

Yes, further training must happen after the initial training!
Training makes one somewhat knowledgeable, not fully.

There are several public and private training institutions (and individuals in groups) in agriculture, and they all behave like that – after every training, they act as if they are completely done. And look for other people to train.

No wonder that, for instance, we have extensive monocultures of rice – we train farmers to plant a new, high-yielding rice variety – and nothing more!

What about rice plus fish in the same farm? (Don’t tell me it will be expensive and take a long time: you can produce a training video and simply replay it in subsequent trainings. Or upload it.)

I’m reading the essay of Indian aggie extensionist A Suresh titled “Blog 158 – Streamlining Public Agricultural Extension In India: Indicators Beyond Revenue Expenditure Considerations[1]” (30 August 2021, Agricultural Extension in South Asia, Aesanetwork.org). Mr Suresh is worried that Indian extension is being reduced in personnel because of the very visible “penetration of modern information and communication technologies.”
(top image from Indian website)

India is complaining of too much ICT in agriculture!?

“Calls for reducing staff strength in public agricultural extension services (are) increasingly visible in policy circles, mainly due to revenue expenditure commitments and penetration of modern information and communication technologies.”

What kind of penetration? I am a Filipino extension man, teacher with a BS Agriculture major in Ag Edu from the #1 state college in the Philippines, UP Los Baños, a self-taught digital worker and warrior, now armed with his own theory of Communication for Development (ComDev). Web trainings and webinars are only the beginnings of extension; extension people must continue the actual distribution of bits & pieces of knowledge that a genuine Extension System with a proper Knowledge Bank would present to the public.

Among other things, Mr Suresh points to “the importance of a personal farm-specific advisory appropriate to the specific strengths and opportunities at the farm level.” That, I would say, summarizes the need of farmers for elementary and continuing extension. With ComDev.

(Mr Suresh mentions some regular duties of extension people: “supply of agricultural inputs including seeds and fertilizers, quality checking and certification, disbursal of subsidies and other financial support, crop loss estimates.”)

Webinars and trainings are available to all, but each one is only the beginning of extension, not the end of it! Otherwise, the effect will be the same if you simply distribute a farming manual in the local dialect!@517

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[1]https://www.aesanetwork.org/blog-158-streamlining-public-agricultural-extension-in-india-indicators-beyond-revenue-expenditure-considerations/?fbclid=IwAR2hBwOhgzu7LJwHlk13Au1ADrrG24Kpm0hoZb3gJwdX_Sd7as4BuaVjK4E

For Me, A September Birthday Gift From Microsoft – Why Not, Bill Gates!?

The above composite image is a surprise – I did not compose it; Microsoft’s Windows 10 did! Magically. This is my unbelievable story.

I have been using for 2 years Windows 10 along with Microsoft Word 2016for writing, editing, blogging, desktop publishing, including cropping images. And yes, I have blogged at least 5000 long essays and desktop published at least 20 books with earlier versions of Word since 2005!

Much earlier: On Innocents Day 36 years ago, 28 December 1985, I started learning word processing – a girl helped me with an IBM desktop PC at the Director’s office of the UP Los Baños’ Farming Systems & Soil Resources Institute (FSSRI), with WordStar 1. She was grumpy – she told me, pointblank, “Mabuti ka pa, libre ang aral mo! Ako, nagbayad.” (Good for you! You’re learning free, while I had to pay.) I said nothing. I had requested the Director of FSSRI, my classmate Elpidio L Rosario, to tell her to teach me, and she had to follow orders. When she lent me the complete WordStar guidebook (I forgot how many pages), I began typing the instructions (I was already a fast typist at that time), and in a day or two I had my copy of the WordStar instruction manual – I returned the original with thanks. Thus I began to roam the digital world!

Around 1987, at the headquarters of the Madecor Group, also headed by Pids Rosario, I met a common friend, Jerry A Canonizado (JAC) and I bragged that WordStar 4 was the best word processor. Pointblank, JAC said, “How can you say that when you have not even tried Microsoft Word 4?” Shame on me.

Afterwards, I tried Word 4 – and I never left Microsoft!

Like I just told you, I’m now using Windows 10, and I have in my folders a collection of accidental Windows 10 collages, 445 “individual” images. I put the word “individual” in quotes because, like the image above, you can see composite images that I did not compose, my Windows 10 did!

Above is my LumixFZ100 digital camera’s image of my desktop laptop’s external ViewSonic monitor. Onscreen, it says, “03:13 Tuesday, 17 September.” My God! That’s my birthday! (year 2019, image number P2140619, jpeg).

It’s not the first such image I have with exact time and date – the first Windows 10 collage I have in my folder is dated 21 April 2018, some 18 months earlier.

I have googled for – “Windows 10” collage images –  and saw too-formal, nice-looking images of shapes and figures. But none exciting as the one you see above.

Of course, when I work for my own blog or my own book, I must be excited. Those Windows 10 collages I have, accidental as they are, have directly provided me more impetus – and more fun – working with Microsoft Word in my blogging. Accidents happen, and these collages are the kinds that even Microsoft Corporation should welcome!

Microsoft, doesn’t Frank A Hilario deserve a special award for dis/uncovering a special talent of Windows 10? Thanks!@517

Introducing – Frank A Hilario, “The Happy Blogger Who Talks Trass!”

September is my birth month; on the 17^th, Friday, I will be 81 – and I must not forget to thank God! I have been asking Him to let me live up to 120 – at least 100!

The above image states the date (in 2018) and suggests “1940” when I was born. I am beginning to celebrate with a new blog, where you are reading this: Tradition, Science & Sense (Trass), https://traditionsciencesense.blogspot.com. This is the first essay of The Happy Blogger Who Talks Trass! (See outline of face above?)

The Hilarios are Roman Catholics. As was required by the parish priest at that time, the name of a newborn came from the Roman Catholic calendar, that of the saint that birth day, and the 17^th of September is the Feast of the Stigmata of St Francis. Localized, the name “Francisco Hilario” was registered in the archives of the Roman Catholic Church of my hometown Asingan in eastern Pangasinan.

“Francisco” did not last very long because in Elementary, when I wrote my name “Francisco Hilario” on top of the Grade 1 paper, the designated line-space was too short! Solution? My father Lakay Disiong (Dionisio Hilario) requested Mrs Bautista to change my recorded name from “Francisco” (9 letters) to “Frank” (5 letters), and she consented. Problem solved. “Frank” was the name of an American soldier who became a family friend during World War 2.

2021. I have been writing essays more than half of my life. Based on the “Multiple Intelligences” theory of Howard Gardner, I have Linguistic Intelligence, which I would consider “idea smart” rather than “word smart” – an essay is not a list of words as in a dictionary but a string of ideas expressed in one’s own manner or style of language.

I will tell you now how I discovered my smart. I attended a private high school, the HS Dept of the Rizal Junior College (RJC), located in the town proper of our hometown. Asingan is mostly Ilocanos, migrants from the Ilocos Region. Even before Grade 1, I had already found that I loved reading the Ilocano monthly magazine Bannawag, but it was in the RJC Library that I discovered I loved more the English language. The RJC had the whole downstairs of a medium-sized house turned into a library, full of books and magazines, British and American classics, and the American magazines I liked: LOOK, TIME, Newsweek, and the Reader's Digest. I particularly enjoyed reading the classics and the Digest.

In 4^th Year High, our Tagalog teacher Ms Constancia E Cruz gave a writing contest to find out who should be the Tagalog Editor of the RJC Newsletter proposed, and I won – surprise! This Ilocano won over the pure and lovers of Tagalog! When I found I had won, I said to myself, more or less, this: “So this is where my talent lies. I will be the best writer I can be!”

At almost 81, after blogging at least 5 million words since 2005, I can tell you that I fulfilled that self promise.@517