Reinforcing social learning beyond video: lessons from the sasakawa global 2000 rice videos in kamwenge district, Uganda

The study assesses how social learning was triggered and reinforced through video-mediated extension as used by Sasakawa Global 2000 (SG 2000) from 2007 to 2010 among rice farmers in Kamwenge district, Uganda. A longitudinal study involving six focus group discussions and 100 semi-structured interviews were conducted in August 2015 to February 2016, and later 21 key informant interviews in June 2018 to generate data from farmers. While thematic-content analysis was used for the qualitative data, SPSS v.18 was used for quantitative data analysis. Results indicate that video-complementary extension methods were non-discriminative as evidenced by the diversity of farmers who participated in the demonstration sites, field days and exchange visits in terms of age mix and level of education attained. Furthermore, use of videos in extension is more effective when combined with other complementary follow-up extension methods; thus, deepening social learning among farmers. For effective scaling-up of the impact of video-mediated extension messages, use of complementary extension methods such as demonstration plots, exchange visit and field days offer greater opportunities for developing more localized videos for farmer learning. However, this requires pragmatic retooling of extension workers to effectively document local videos on the interactive learning that occurs in these complementary extension methods. Int. J. Agril. Res. Innov. & Tech. 9 (1): 66-72, June, 2019

Participatory evaluation and selection of improved haricot bean varieties at liben district, lowland agro ecology of Guji zone, Oromia regional state, Ethiopia

The activity was conducted in Liben district to evaluate the yield performance of improved haricot bean varieties. 25 pastorals and agro pastorals were selected from Measa kebele with collaboration of Liben Pastoral and Agro Pastoral Office, Zonal Mobile Supporting Team and kebele leaders. The 25 pastoral and agro pastorals were grouped into one PAPRG. Then 25 PAPRG members were regrouped into three experimental pastorals and agro pastoralists. Training were given for PAPRG members. Exchange visit was arranged to share experience on the work each PAPRG. Haramaya, Awasa Dume, Ebado varieties were evaluated with standard check variety. Descriptive statistics and direct matrix ranking was used to analysis the data. Local variety give the highest yield (31kg/ha). PAPRG criteria for haricot bean production was market demand, color, disease/insect reaction, drought resistance. Accordingly, Ebado variety was preferred by PAPRGs based on marketability while Local check and Awasa Dube were selected as first and second respectively based on drought resistance, number of pod/plant, higher yield and resistance to insects. Haramaya variety was susceptible to insects. Pastoralists and agro pastoralists should use Ebado variety to increase their income and local variety for household consumption.

Teaching the uses of Italian verb forms to Slovene speakers

Goethe's paradoxical aphorism concerning our knowledge of complex phenomena could be used to identify the feelings which may prevail at two different stages oflearning a foreign language, at an early and at an advanced one. So, for example, it is not surpris­ ing when our students, back from an exchange visit abroad, complain about having felt blocked by their thorough structural language awareness, noticing at the same time that some other foreign students showed off their fluency and richness of vocabulary, while calmly violating certain grammatical conventions. 1 Such self-conscious learners seem to miss their past lack of inhibitions, when they still naively thought oflanguage differ­ ences principally as neatly observable dissimilarities in language forms, feeling that their present awareness of more hidden foreign-language properties is rather a disadvantage in communication; so much so that they wonder whether it would not have been better to have invested all that time and energy into the acquisition of the lexicon instead.