EDIC 5065 WK2 (Agricultural Resources)

1. www.usda.gov
The USDA is an important resource for anyone going into the agricultural field. It is a great place to find ideas about anything relating to agriculture. It can provide new information regarding animal safety/ health, also teachers can use this site to find lesson plans; the help is endless. From the USDA website students will be able to see the all the different aspects that encompasses agriculture. It will help to open their eyes to the fact that agriculture is not only farming. So this would be a god source for not only students but teachers as well.

2. www.ct.gov/DOAG/site/defult/asp
The Connecticut Department of Agriculture website, will come in very handy to a teacher living her in Connecticut. This website similar to the USDA site in the fact that all of those same resources are available, such as lesson plan help, animal health, food safety. However the one advantage about focusing in on this site is the fact that for the most part it is CT based information. This will allow student to find the rules and regulation that agriculturalist here have to fallow. Also it allows them to find new information regarding CT that has just occurred. For example, now that the "buy local" movement is still going strong you can find a full list of all farmers taking part in local farmers markets, as well as other state run programs that connect farmers and community members.

3. www.ffa.org
The national FFA website will not only be a great resource for students but for teachers as well. Because the FFA is such a big part of agricultural education, having access to the FFA website is impetrative, especially for beginner teachers. Here you will be able to fins out everything you need to know about the FFA. For example CDE's (career development events) change rules from state to national level, so by having the rules readily available to all, this makes the competition level across the board. Students can also use this as a guide to find out more about parliamentary procedure, which is how all meetings within the FFA, our organized. Also it can help give them ideas for different SAE's (supervised agricultural experience). Due to the fact that having a very strong SAE is so important, having ideas to bounce off of would be a great advantage to student who are struggling.

All of these websites would be great resources for student and teachers alike. It will allow teachers to become better teachers, because it will give them access to a lot of powerful information all in one place. It will also allow students to take there understanding of all parts of a good agricultural education program to highest point. It will also allow them to find out to answers to questions that they may have, is it was not answered in class. Having a teacher who will embrace these resources in my opinion is a good one, because they are keeping up-to-date with the ever-changing world, and ever-changing world of agriculture.