Friday webinar will teach you how to use free Google Tools to punch up your business and data reporting and graphics

A hands-on digital workshop on Friday, May 13, aims to teach journalists how to use free Google Tools to strengthen your reporting. The workshop goes from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET and costs $10. It's presented by a partnership of the Society of Professional Journalists and the Google News Initiative and is sponsored by the Mid-America Press Institute. Click here for more information or to register.

From the website: "In this hands-on workshop, SPJ Google News Lab trainer Mike Reilley will show you how to use free Google tools that can help your newsroom build interactive charts, maps, visualizations and more. Tools we’ll cover: Google Flourish, Google Dataset Search, Google Fact Check Explorer, Google Trends, MapChecking.com, Google Earth Studio, Earth Engine Timelapse, Public Data Explorer, advanced search, data scraping with Google Sheets and Google Flourish. Prior to the session, set up a free account at http://flourish.studio. Participants will receive handouts with exercises, links to tools and more."

Using those programs, Reilley will teach participants easier ways to scrape data from websites or PDFs and turn it into graphics (some interactive); how to scrape and track both real-time and historic stock-market data; and how to tell visual stories with satellite data, maps, and more.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Set up a free Google Earth Studio account as soon as possible, since Google must approve applications before granting access.