The Teckle Data story
Early Days
In 2009 Hot Chocolate Trust became part of Inspiring Scotland’s 14-19 Portfolio. Inspiring Scotland challenged us to up our game around monitoring and evaluation and supported this by paying a database developer to work with us for a week.
Tony Vile of CCS Datacare came for a week and stayed for seven years! Tony built an initial tool for us in Microsoft Access and gave sustained pro bono support, working with youth workers to design and improve the database application around their developing ideas and practice.
The difficult second album
This unusual collaboration was crucial to Teckle Data’s distinctiveness and effectiveness and attracted interest from lots of other organizations. Some even bought it from us. But we and they were increasingly finding that we needed functionality in an online world that didn’t sit easily with Tony’s ingenious, original build.
So we made a proof-of-concept…
A local digital design company Blue2 gave us pro bono advice and one of our youth work volunteers, who was also a Games Programming graduate of Abertay University, built a new version. This focussed on one module of the database application for individual support of young people, and used Google Firebase to store and access the data securely while the app was developed in javascript utilising the Webix UI library and framework.
We learnt a lot.
The game-changer
In 2021, with support from the Scottish Government’s Adapt & Thrive program, we employed an Applied Computing graduate. Dylan Keningale worked with Hot Chocolate Trust’s Director Dave Close, with pro bono advice from Alan Dickson of DataSparks, to create the exciting tool that Teckle Data has become.
– Gillian Lindsay, Kinross-shire Youth Enterprise
“Deeper Dive into Teckle Data” Films
One young person’s Journey
Follow one young person’s real youth work journey – see how outcomes are made in real life.
What’s important?
Who gets to decide what matters when it comes to evaluation?
A young person’s perspective
How do young people feel about their Teckle Data “journeys”?
Introduction to Teckle Data
Coming soon – a quick look at what Teckle Data looks like and why.
Want to learn more?
We love talking about evaluation, from debriefs to databases, bad experiences to innovative solutions. In fact, we’ve taught ourselves not to over-share: no one wants to be stuck in that conversation throughout a whole conference lunch break. Here are a couple of ways you can find out more though…