FROM THE EDITOR'S DESK

My dear readers of Journal of Extension Education,

Have you heard of owl pellets? The regurgitated (coughed up through the beak), indigestible parts of the prey, which the owls swallow, are called as owl pellets, as per the Barn Owl Trust, that functions from the UK. How are these owl pellets relevant to agricultural education? It is interesting to know that Shoulders, Baker & Myers (2017) had created a successful communication programme to share agricultural education research to teachers, inspired by the owls and their pellets. Like an owl, this team would take complex things in agricultural education, internalize them (mentally rather than physically), and repackage them into easier-to-manage "pellets" for use by the teachers to enhance the student experience in their agricultural education programmes.

The Owl Pellets team followed a model which had the following steps:

1. Set Your Goal: The potential goals to focus the communication efforts in an agricultural education programme (by an Agricultural University, for instance) would be Programme goals, Student goals, Community goals and Agricultural industry goals.

2. Identify Your Audience: Every decision the planning team makes should be based squarely on the programme goals and target audience. Without this focus it is easy for the team members to lose their way in terms of delivering a product that actually matters.

3. Create a "Home Base" : It is critical to create a home base to house all of the elements of the communication campaign. This team had chosen to use Wordpress.com, to post their infographics, podcasts, and engagement pieces all in one place.

4. Create Sharing Accounts: If the home base is the keystone of the bridge, the platforms (e.g.social media sites) where one can share communication material on are the stones that complete the structure.

5. Establish a Publishing Calendar: One of the best ways to keep the audience engaged is to keep the content in front of them every day by identifying the item to be posted, who is responsible for creating it and who is responsible for posting it, from the Owl Pellets team.

6. Produce Content and Build your following : Produce relevant content directly tied to the goals, be clearly applicable to the target audience and identify the format & equipment/software for the content.

The development of a successful communication programme out of "regurgitated owl food", has a few lessons for us when we intend to share key messages by "pelleting" them in a format that suits the audience needs. JEE readers could visit https://owlpelletsforag.wordpress.com/ to have firsthand information on this owl pellets concept.

Well. We had discussed the core competencies needed for extension professionals put forth by Prof. Murari Suvedi (along with Dr Ramjee Ghimire) of Michigan State University, in a past JEE editorial [JEE 29(4)] and we are happy to publish his paper on the ways and means of revitalizing agricultural extension training, in this issue of JEE . This JEE issue is a Conference Special carrying select research papers presented at the International Conference on Extension for Strengthening Agricultural Research and Development (eSARD) organized jointly by Extension Education Society, Coimbatore , ICAR-ATARI, Bengaluru and ICAR-JSS KVK, Mysuru. I do hope the JEE readers find them, interesting.

Do send your feedback to editorextension@gmail.com

D PUTHIRA PRATHAP
Chief Editor