I am currently undertaking a free course by My Horse University and there was a link to eXtension’s HorseQuest Learning Lesson: Equine Pasture Management.  I’m always up for more free horse courses!  Checking out the link, it turns out that there are about half a dozen free horse related courses that are on offer through eXtension Horses.

To undertake any of these courses you’ll need a Moodle account and Flash.  Further educating yourself about horses and their care and management is always worth investing in.  Doing so with a short course that you can put on your resume or maybe even gain a certificate from is that much more appealing!

Free Horse Courses through Extension Horses

You can check out the different lessons through the eXtension Horses page.  They cover:

• horse management:
  • manure management strategies
  • second chances for horses
  • sales fraud in the horse industry
  • horse’s best chance during disasters
• horse diseases: EHV-1
• horse diseases: pasture associated laminitis
• preparing to become a professional horse show judge

These topics cover quite an array of different horse areas.  In whatever capacity of the equine industry you are working – or plan to work – gaining further knowledge in areas can be beneficial.  Of course, if the topics above link with your desire to learn more about managing horses, horse health, equine pastures or competition horses, then the above will be even more beneficial.

As an added bonus, for those who complete the courses with a minimum score, they will receive a certificate as well as a digital badge for their Mozilla Backpack.  Of course, certificates and course completion dates can look great on a resume!  I always love free horse stuff, so why not benefit from this resource that I’ve recently come across?

“Great dressage demands more than skill; it engages a rider’s inner wisdom and his ability to communicate with a mount in the silent language of horsemanship.” ― Elizabeth Letts

I’ve recently been made aware of a heap of tools that we can utilise as educators in our classrooms.  As an equine teacher, some of them look like they’ll be really helpful!  We have a short video that is technically a PowerPoint slideshow that students watch at the start of each unit and answer a few questions before they start their materials.  This proves they are engaged and can access the content.  And I got to thinking about Screencast-O-Matic for Equine Business.

This is a free tool that you can download and utilise on your computer, phone or tablet. (There is a paid upgraded version).  It allows you to video yourself and/or your screen and add audio to it.  So for me, this seems a great tool for talking over the top of the PowerPoints we use.  Then students are able to engage in a visual manner and auditory.  Great! So how could this work for an equine business?

You can load any document on your screen and share it whilst talking through it.  This may be showing clients how to fill in a booking form for one of your stallions.  Or perhaps you’re an equine author and you want to introduce potential readers to the first chapter of your book.  As you read through the pages, you can record the screen and you reading it out loud and save this as a video.

It’s really intuitive and easy to use!  And once you’ve saved the video, you can upload it to YouTube, your video or have it stored on the cloud.  It’s up to you!

What information would you like to share with clients that you could develop into a video format with you talking over the top?  It could be a slide show of foals from your top stallion, photos of horses performing at competitions, you name it!  Or maybe as an educator you want to create video resources for students.  The time limit is 15 minutes but for a free application, this gives you ample to work with.  Check it out.

I love that there are free webinars relating to the horse industry!  And even better yet, for those who cannot attend those that appeal to them, My Horse University have an archive of previous webinars.  These are available free to download.  The latest webinar was focused on developing your personal horse network.

This was presented by Dr. Christine Skelly.  Dr. Skelly is an equine extension specialist for Michigan State University.  The horse industry is large and covers most countries around the world.  Networking can play a vital role in how your horse career pans out.  Of course, this is alongside your skill, aptitude and work ethic!  But being familiar with how to develop your horse network is a great skill to have.

Even as a horse owner, it’s important to have a network of horse contacts.  These may include farriers, vets, horse riding instructors, mates to ride with and other health care professionals.  You never know when they may be able to help you and your horse in your horse owning journey.  If you plan to be a professional in the equine industry, then this network becomes important in a different way.

This webinar was run on January 15 of 2019.  This is what MHU said about it:

“Feeling a little lost in the horse industry? With over 988,000 horse professionals in the United States, finding the right fit for you and your horse can be challenging. A supportive horse network will help you meet your equestrian goals and support your horse’s wellbeing.

This webinar will discuss what you should look for when choosing horse industry professionals. We will discuss qualifications and characteristics of horse industry professionals including veterinarians, farriers, riding instructors, trainers, stable managers, feed dealers and hay sellers. Finally, we will consider opportunities to get involved in the horse industry at a local, state and national level.”

You can access the archive where the Developing Your Personal Horse Network webinar will be available to download.  There are plenty of other recorded webinars that you can access for free, too!

At work we’re undergoing a change to the Learning Management System that we use to provide content to students. In the training that I had to undertake, there was a reference to H5P activities. Now I wasn’t familiar with what these were, so did a little search online and came across https://h5p.org/ where you can create and share rich HTML5 content and applications. Cool!  And of course I got thinking: h5p content for horse businesses.

So how does this relate to horses? Well the activities that you can create are varied. They may include:

• Check lists
• Drop and drag text or images
• Matching images in a memory game – I can already picture using this one to have students match the word bay with an image of a bay horse and cover the colours of horses
• Interactive videos
• Presentations with interactive slides

H5P Content for Horse Businesses

Perhaps you’re providing a horse related course. Maybe you want a presentation to promote a service or product that relates to horses.

These activities and applications that you create can be utilised in Moodle (the learning platform I use at work) on WordPress and Drupal. There are about 40 different activities and games that you can utilise to help put across some information or test someone’s knowledge on a given topic.

Now on their site, you can create a free account. I’m always up for free resources that you can use to create products or resources to benefit others! If you are big on online resources, then why not check out the H5P website and brainstorm how it could help your equine related business?