Hello, my name is Patricia Rogers. I am Professor of Public Sector Evaluation at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University) in Australia and write a blog with Jane Davidson at http://genuineevaluation.com/. I’m particularly interested in evidence-based policy and practice for complicated and complex interventions which require a range of methods and research designs. I often need to communicate across disciplinary and geographic distances, and record and organize useful snippets of information or examples, so I am sharing four rad resources that I find very useful.
Rad resource 1: Delicious social bookmarking http://delicious.com/ It allows you to easily bookmark useful URLs, including pasting in up to 1000 characters of notes, adding tags and sending it to colleagues. You can choose to save it privately or make it accessible to others. You can also search what other people have tagged – for example, using ‘complexity’ or “theory of change”. I have found lots of useful information through this.
Rad resource 2: LiveScribe with Smart Pen. http://www.livescribe.com/ Take notes and record the detailed words at the same time (obviously with permission). Play it back easily by clicking on the words. Upload it to share with colleagues. Particularly useful for those times when in conversation something is explained very clearly and well, and it is great to capture it and be able to go straight back to the specific point. Just make sure you keep track of the very expensive pen!
Rad resource 3: skype. http://www.skype.com/ No cost voice and video calls, easy instant messaging and quick document transfer. I use this a lot for long distance collaboration and it really has made the world a smaller place.
Rad resource 4: World Clock http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ Check the time for an international meeting or set up a customized clock with the cities you need. Invaluable for organizing real-time conversations and teleconferences.
This contribution is from the aea365 Daily Tips blog, by and for evaluators, from the American Evaluation Association. Please consider contributing – send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org.
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What about adding MS SharedView? This is free and works well in conjunction with Skype. I used it yesterday in a UK-India link up, where we were looking at a graphic model of how a theory-of-change sould be changed. It was on my computer screen, but I was able to share it with the other person, and even allow them to edit it, though it was on my computer. I could refer back to past emails on Gmail and share that search with the other person. You can control what you share and who controls the screen
Hi Patricia:
These are very helpful resources! When I first heard about Skype I thought it sounded too good to be true, but I’ve since used it on several projects, and its great and works pretty much just as described!–Nicole