Saturday workshop: Eval-utionary Tech

Eval-utionary Tech: Free Digital Tools That Rock Our World

with Madeleine deBlois, M.S.Ed., Sc.D., and Terrace Ewinghill, MEd, University of Arizona Community Research, Evaluation, and Development Team

This workshop showcases some of our favorite free digital tools to help evaluators focus on the information, not the futzing. We'll give an overview of the platforms/tools, and give participants a choose-your-own-adventure chance to try out the tools that interest them.

This workshop is a practical skill-share of the online tools that we personally use and love. We know there are many options out there (and we home to hear about some new-to-us ones from the audience), but we want to highlight the specific ones that have truly helped us at different stages of the evaluation process. Participants will need laptops and an internet connection to participate. Objective: To share what works: We will highlight specific websites and apps that our team loves —from finding secondary data for Arizona communities to creating better charts and visuals.

Participant Take-aways:

1.        An Expanded Digital Toolkit: Participants will leave with knowledge of specific digital resources and data sources that are applicable to their evaluation work in Arizona and beyond. Tools we plan to cover include: MAG Interactive Maps (https://maps.azmag.gov/) for accessing and wrangling data that can inform needs assessments, Lucid Spark/Zoom Whiteboard for online community engagement, DataWrapper for beating Excel at its own game, and Canva for data visualization/infographics.

2.        Practical Experience: By the end of the session, participants will have hands-on familiarity with at least one new tool, lowering the barrier to adopting new technology in their daily practice.