Helpful Tools: AEA365
Yellow and white background with white and yellow paperclips
Welcome back to our Insights! In 2024, we will be sharing a series of helpful tools, resources, and deep dives that focus on informal STEM education (ISE). These will include websites, podcasts, research briefs, news on emerging technologies in the ISE space, and other items that we think you’ll find valuable.
In this edition, we’ll be highlighting AEA365.
AEA 365 is a tip-a-day blog for evaluators to discuss their practice. This helpful blog is hosted by the American Evaluation Association, a professional organization for evaluators. Each post is authored by an evaluator who wants to contribute their professional knowledge to the larger community. With posts ranging from social work to data visualization, AEA365 has content available for any evaluation interest area.
Themed weeks, including some on STEM education, often make their appearance. For example, the week of January 7-13, 2024, was dedicated to Social Impact Measurement, and June 25 - July 1, 2023, was dedicated to STEM Education and Training. Check out this post on STEM career interest from that week.
If you’re an informal STEM education professional, you might be able to find some useful content to inform your evaluation practice. While some of the posts might be too subject matter-specific for non-evaluator audiences, many contain really useful information on topics like shared instruments, collaborations, and capacity building.
You can also search previous posts via the tagged AEA Topical Interest Groups on the home page. Just select your area of interest in the drop-down, and it will automatically redirect you to all the related posts. You can easily scroll through post titles to find the article most relevant to your interests.
A screenshot of the AEA365 blog, with the search category function highlighted.
AEA365 is open to any evaluator with professional knowledge to share, which means if you’re active in evaluation, you can submit your own evaluation tips and tricks for publication!
Check out these tips on mapping location data I contributed several years ago.
A screenshot of the AEA365 blog post by Sarah Dunifon, on tools for mapping location data.
If this seems like a tool you might use, consider subscribing to the blog or searching the archives for past posts that might interest you.
Hot tip: if you subscribe to the blog, consider creating a rule in your email inbox that routes anything with the word “unsubscribe” into a special folder entitled “newsletters.” This is an easy way to avoid being flooded with content, and you can choose a time to batch the task and read the newsletters together - maybe with a hot cup of coffee. This is what I do, and I love this system!
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