Susan Kistler on 40+ Low-cost/No-cost Tools for Evaluators

My name is Susan Kistler. I am the American Evaluation Association’s Executive Director and I contribute each Saturday’s aea365 post. At AEA’s annual conference in Anaheim earlier this month LaMarcus Bolton and I gave a demonstration of low-cost/no-cost tools for evaluators. We shared great tools that we’ve used, ones recommended by colleagues via aea365, and also got great suggestions from the audience.

Rad Resources: The PearlTree below has links to over 40 low-cost, no-cost tools.

Hot Tip – To get the most from the PearlTree: Click back to the aea365 website  and find the November 19 post if you are reading this via email (yes! It’s worth the click), then click on any of the Pearls to connect to that resource. you’ll notice that some of the pearls have little trees on them – that shows that they are nodes for subtopics. For instance, click on the pearl labeled “Free Photo Sites” to find links to multiple free photo sites as well as to two previous aea365 entries about free photo sites. Use the little [ -……..*……..+ ] slider at the bottom right to change the size of the pearls for easier reading.

Want to see this PearlTree full size? You can view it here on the PearlTrees website (you may need first to close the PearlTrees encouragement to download its iPad/iPhone ap).

Hot Tip: Many of the tools were recommended by the audience (check out the ‘Attendee Recommendations’ pearl node). We seem to have misplaced one of the flipchart pages with audience suggestions – if yours isn’t up there, OR if you just have a great low-cost/no-cost tool to recommend, add it to the comments please and we’ll grow this resource. We’ll also be reaching out to colleagues to get aea365 posts related to some of the tools for which we don’t yet have fuller narratives. See one up there without a linked aea365 post and that you use regularly? We’d love to hear from you!

Hot Tip: PearlTrees make a fun, green, easy, way to share materials related to a presentation or to a project. Joining PearlTrees is free and it is super easy to use.

Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org. aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators.