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Family Storytelling With Steller

1/3/2018

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Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Like it or not, the children of today are a digital generation; they've known no other world. If we want them to connect with their family history, we must find ways in which to not only make family history relatable to their lives, but to also bring it to media in which they are the most comfortable, namely social media apps, videos, and websites.

Steller is a simple, free mobile application that is wonderful for sharing family stories across social media. The app allows you to construct family stories using a combination of photos, videos, and text, and then allows you to share your story through social media, or to embed the story within websites, as I have done below. The app itself is its OWN social media network; it is free for anyone to join and you can follow other users, view and 'like' their stories, and even comment on them! 

To begin using Steller, first you must download the app to your smartphone or tablet.* It is available for free from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Next you need to create an account, which you can do using either an email address or through your Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account. If you use an email address, you will see the right-hand image to create your username and password.

*There is no iPad-specific version of the app, but the iPhone version works just fine on iPads.
Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Sign Up Page
Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Email Sign Up Page
The main interface from which you control the app has five icons at the bottom that look like this:
Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Main Interface Icons
The house icon is your 'home' screen and shows you the stories of other accounts that you follow. The magnifying glass is the search feature, where you can search other peoples' stories by hashtag or just browse the different categories of stories. The lightning bolt shows your notifications, and the person icon is your profile page, where you can manage settings and see all of the Steller stories that you have personally created.

The '+' symbol in the middle is where you create your own Steller stories. When you click on it, first you must choose a layout for your story. There are 11 themes from which to choose. You can click on any theme and see a preview of what the page templates look like. Keep in mind that the content within these sample stories will be replaced by your own photos, video, and text, so you are really just deciding on the design elements like font and background color. (The story embedded above was created using the 'NICO' theme.) You can change a story's theme at any time - even after you start adding photos and text.
Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Choose a Theme interface
After you choose your theme, you are given the opportunity to upload up to 20 photos and/or videos into your story. I typically chose to just upload ONE photo to get started because the app automatically places your media into various random layouts, which I rarely keep as I work through the story. So, I upload one photo and am brought to a screen with these choices at the bottom:
Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Story-Creating Icons
These icons are pretty self-explanatory. When you click on the 'Pages' icon, you are able to delete pages by swiping upwards and you can reorder pages and change the theme very easily.
Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Delete pages by swiping upward.
Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Reorder pages by dragging pages to new location.
A couple of more tips: Layouts with text can be edited simply by touching on the text box, deleting the sample words, and adding your words. Some text boxes also give you the option to change features such as font size, color, and alignment, although not ALL text boxes give you that option. In the image below, the 'Title' text box gives you these options, but the text box below it only allows you to change alignment.
Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Text editing options
And even after you have added your photos to a layout, simply by tapping on the photo, you are given options to crop the photo or replace it with another.
Family Storytelling With Steller // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Photo cropping and replacement options
Steller has been around since 2014, but it really hasn't taken off in the same manner as Instagram. Making stories with Steller does take more time and thought than simply posting a few photos on other social media networks, but the amount of depth and emotion that you can create within a Steller narrative, in my opinion, far exceeds what you can do with other apps at this point. In the Steller story embedded above, I combined my grandmother's photos with her words that she recorded in a journal. I enhanced the story with documents from her military file. When I show this to my kids, I feel like I'm giving them more than if I were to just show them a photo or document - I'm putting it all into the context of a more human and creative way of understanding - a STORY. The simplicity of the app combined with the relative brevity of the stories and its digital nature means that children will not only love to scroll through these stories, but will be more likely to want to create their own ancestor stories using the app. (I have lots of ideas about how to utilize this app in teaching my children how to create and use timelines in genealogy research!)

I would really, really like to see more family historians using Steller to get the non-genealogists in their families more interested in family history. Let's face it, presentation and aesthetics matter when telling a story, not just to kids, but to everyone nowadays. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

©2018 Emily Kowalski Schroeder
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Five Ways Kids Can Use Instagram for Family History

10/1/2017

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5 Ways Kids Can Use Instagram for Family History // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
October is Family History Month! If you follow me on social media, you will see me resharing a lot of my old blog posts and ideas for getting  kids involved in family history, but I also hope to share some brand new idea with everyone, as well.

Over the past couple years, the use of Instagram for family history has received a lot of attention, and rightfully so. Instagram offers users the ability to not only share images with your followers, but also to share the stories of those images, in a micro-blogging type of format. Not only that, but Instagram allows you to use hashtags (#) to label your images, which makes it possible to more or less catalog your family history images with unique hashtags AND search others' hashtags for surnames, location names, or topics in family history that may be of interest to you.

As far as demographics, Instagram as a social media platform is far more popular with young people than Facebook. Just like with any social media, parents and guardians need to monitor their children's reach and usage on Instagram. If your child has their own Instagram account, I recommend setting it to 'Private' so that anyone who wants to follow their photos must first be approved.  BUT, even if your child does not yet have a phone or their own Instagram account, they can still participate in the activities below using an adult's account. In fact, choosing and posting family history images together on Instagram can be great bonding experiences for adults and children.

1.) Start a Kids Family History Instagram Club. For most kids, participating in an activity with peers makes it more enjoyable. Interacting with each other through social media is like second nature to kids in the modern world. Think about starting an Instagram family history club in which a group of kids can share their individual family stories, which, in turn, will help them learn more about each other.  Here are some types of groups that may be interested in this idea.

- Cousins​
- Scout group
- Youth church/synagogue group
- Homeschool co-op
- School history club or history/social studies class
- Local chapter of Children of the American Revolution or other children's group within any lineage society or ethnic heritage society

Decide on a unique hashtag for your group, so that members can find everyone's posts easily. The adult facilitator of the club can give the kids prompts to help them focus their posts. Examples of such prompts include asking the kids to post family history images related to sports, schools, holidays, military, hobbies, talents, heirlooms, occupations, etc. Kids within the group should be encouraged to 'like' and comment on one another's posts; you might find that they get some really great discussions going and it's a great way to build fellowship between members of the group.   

2.) Participate in the Genealogy Photo a Day Challenge. The Genealogy Photo a Day challenge was created by genealogist, author, and blogger and Melissa Dickerson, who writes at genealogygirltalks.com. You can follow her on Instagram at @genealogygirltalks. Every month, she posts a list of prompts for each day. To participate, post a photo relating to the day's prompt with the hashtag #genealogyphotoaday. Then, search for that hashtag, and see what others have posted. This is a great activity for sharing your family history with a broader audience and for discovering other family history-related Instagram users. Also, make sure that you follow the @genealogyphoto account, because this is where Melissa posts the lists of prompts for each month.

3.) Create 60-second Family History Videos. Did you know that you can post videos on Instagram? There is a catch, though; the video cannot be longer than 60 seconds. That's a challenge, and some kids will be motivated by that challenge. What can you share about an ancestor in one minute? Maybe you can talk about the story behind a particular photograph or heirloom. Perhaps you could discuss one reason why an ancestor may have moved to or from a certain area. Maybe challenge your child to write a short poem about an ancestor than can be recited in less than a minute and record him/her reciting it. Be creative - there are lots of possibilities.

4.) Create a Serial, Chronological Biography of an Ancestor Using Instagram Images. If you are a  homeschooler and use family history in your curriculum, this activity might be great for your kids, because it involves planning, research, and organization. Instead of having a student type up a written report about an ancestor, have them present it in images and short stories instead.

5.) Search Ancestral Places Using Location & Travel Hashtags. Lots of travel bloggers use Instagram to showcase their travels. Try searching for place hashtags or '#(place name)travel' or '#(place name)architecture'. Remember, place names in English sometimes differ from those in the native tongue. For example, Milan is Milano in Italian, Seville is Sevilla in Spanish, and Croatia is Hrvatska in Croatian. Try searching both versions. Tiny ancestral villages might not be represented in the hashtags, so try larger areas and regions, too, like 'countycork' or 'catalonia' to search more specific parts of nations.

Social media often gets a bad rap for too strongly influencing our children in negative ways, but we just have to find ways in which to help kids use it for positive purposes. Kids are crazy for technology, so why not use it?

​©2017 Emily Kowalski Schroeder

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Digitization Project? Get Kids Involved!

1/14/2017

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How To Work With Local Youth Groups To Accomplish Digitization // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
A few years back, I volunteered with a local county digitization initiative and helped prepare county probate documents for scanning. We removed the documents from envelopes, unfolded and smoothed them flat, and removed any metal staples, pins, or thread (!) holding papers together. The experience was a lot more interesting and educational than I thought it would be! Some of these packets had not been opened in over a hundred years, and it was really beneficial to me as a family historian to see how these probate files were arranged and what types of documents were included, even though they were not at all connected to my own family.

How To Work With Local Youth Groups To Accomplish Digitization // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
How To Work With Local Youth Groups To Accomplish Digitization // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
As I thought back over that experience, I realized that kids, from upper elementary ages through teens, very easily could do this, too!  And, like me, they could learn a lot about the sources they are helping to digitize.

What Kids Can Learn From Digitization Projects:
*Kids learn about the documents and record sets they are digitizing through hands-on observation.

*Kids will understand that they are doing a service to the community and to family historians searching for information about their ancestors.

*Kids learn the value of using digitization to protect documents (and the information contained within them) from natural decomposition, fire, and water damage.

Would your local genealogical or historical society like to initiate digitization projects, but doesn't feel like it has the 'manpower' necessary to accomplish them? Would your group like to attract more young faces to its ranks and become more visible in your community? If the answer is yes, consider designing and implementing a digitization project in partnership with a local youth organization or school group.


Some school districts, scouting groups, and churches require or at least encourage kids to complete service hours,
and a project like this would be perfect for a teen who maybe doesn't want to volunteer in the local food pantry or church nursery. Perhaps even work WITH the churches and schools in your area to digitize some of their historical holdings that would surely be of use to family historians in your area. Our local high school has a history club and this type of project would be a perfect activity for them!

Don't think you have the technology to accomplish a digitization project? Check with your local library; many public libraries have both standard and oversized scanners, as well as laptops, available for patrons to use and sometimes even checkout. And library meeting rooms are great areas in which to meet and do the actual work of organizing and digitizing. (Just be sure to reserve those rooms far ahead of time so they are available.)

Not sure about how to make the digitized records accessible to your members and/or the community? Guess what - kids can help with that, too! For many teens, creating and editing webpages comes as second nature, and there are many easy-to-build-and-edit website services that would be a breeze for your society to maintain. The holding organization (library, courthouse, archive) may also help get the digitized database and images online.


Tips For Creating A Digitization Project in Cooperation With A Youth Organization:
*Decide what will be digitized and get permission to digitize from the holding organization, library or archive. 

*Identify and contact local youth groups you think might be interested in participating. Contact group leaders through phone or email and explain your vision.

*Plan an adult-only meeting with the leader(s) of interested youth groups sometime either at the end of the school year or during the summer before a school year begins. Determine what the leaders are looking for their kids to get out of the partnership. Decide on a project meeting location and meeting frequency (monthly, semi-monthly).

*Confirm that the meeting location and necessary technology are available and reserve those days and times as far ahead as possible. Recruit and sign up adult volunteer members from your group to assist and oversee during each meeting date.

*Attend one of the youth group's meetings and introduce your group and it's mission to the youth members. Clearly articulate the goals and purpose of the digitization project to the youth members. Explain to them what their jobs will be during the process.

*Consider an 'open house' style of project meetings in which participants can come and go within a designated time frame at their convenience. (It's not as chaotic as it sounds, once kids understand their tasks and the process behind the project, they will be able to jump right in at any time.)

​*Provide participants with (non-messy) light snacks or bite-sized candy. Participants will find their experience more enjoyable with food. 

*Be prepared to sign-off on service hours, if necessary. Create a sign-in sheet or perhaps a simple form that can be easily filled out at each meeting, so participants can return them to their group leaders. 
​

*Make it a yearly project, if possible. Youth organizations have a high-turnover rate; kids are continually 'graduating' out of groups and new members are always joining.

With good planning and an enthusiastic attitude, your society CAN successfully partner with local youth groups to accomplish great things towards preserving important pieces of your community's history.

©2017 Emily Kowalski Schroeder. All rights reserved.
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Classic TV on YouTube

11/13/2014

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This week, the children's television show, Sesame Street, celebrated its 45th birthday. My siblings and I grew up on Sesame Street and my kids still watch it, too. Television has now been around long enough that the parents, grandparents, and even some great-grandparents of today's children have fond memories of specific TV shows from their younger days. Thanks to the Internet and, more specifically, YouTube, we are able to share these shows with our children and grandchildren (for free!)

I grew up in the 80s, and virtually any sitcom, cartoon, or educational program from that era can now be found on YouTube. But, Grandparents, did you know that many shows from the 50s and 60s that YOU grew up with can also be found on YouTube?

I did a quick YouTube search of some popular family/children's programs from the 50s and 60s and here is a short list of what I found:

Howdy Doody
The Lone Ranger
Gidget 
The Jetsons
The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show
Mr. Wizard
The Andy Griffith Show
Classic Mickey Mouse Club
The Shari Lewis Show
Huckleberry Hound
Leave It To Beaver  (the 1954 season of Lassie available for free on Hulu.com)
Lassie
Adventures of Superman
I Love Lucy  (select I Love Lucy episodes also available for free on Hulu.com)

Also, check out the website, Free-Classic-TV-Shows.com. Lots of old shows, including some pretty obscure series and episodes.
Introducing today's children to TV programs of the past is an easy, interactive, and fun way to get kids thinking about the past. Television history has become an important aspect of modern popular history and culture. Show them a black-and-white show from the 50s. Explain to them that TV hasn't always been in color. It will blow their minds that there used to only be three channels TOTAL; children today are used to having dozens of channel and show options. And don't assume that the children you know will find the shows boring or irrelevant to their lives. Last year, while on vacation, we stumbled upon an episode of The Andy Griffith Show. My six year old son was actually very interested in it, because the plot line involved Opie and some problems he was having with some kids from school. (He also LOVES all the slapstick stuff on Gilligan's Island!)

When you start showing kids television shows that meant something to YOU as a child, you are making a family history connection with them. Every child has a favorite TV show; it's something in life that we can all relate to. Don't be surprised if the kids then start asking other questions about your childhood - Where did you live?, Did you wear clothes like those kids in the show?, Did you have a bike like that kid in the show?, Who were your friends? What was school like then?, Where did you parents work?, etc. And all of a sudden, you have a budding family historian!

©2014, Emily Kowalski Schroeder. 
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Engaging Children in Family History With The Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner (and GIVEAWAY)

8/11/2014

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Engaging Children in Family History With the Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
**GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED**

​Disclosure: I was provided with a Flip-Pal mobile scanner in order to facilitate this review.  All opinions, ideas, and photographs remain my own.


Children are naturally drawn to and curious about new technologies.  They have no fear of gadgets and they seem to have an innate ability of learning how to use new technologies incredibly quickly. Of course, I am always searching for ways in which to get my kids (ages four and six) more interested in their family history and the people and events of the past who made them who they are today.  I thought that using the Flip-Pal mobile scanner would be a great way to use my kids' love of technology to get them more interested in looking at and learning about old family photos, scrapbooks and photo albums.  

Probably like many of you fellow keepers of family history, I have a box that looks like this.  Old family postcards, wedding invitations, random photos - some are ten years old, some fifty years old. Like all old pieces of family ephemera, they need to be digitized to ensure that they are protected in case of loss, decay, or disaster.  I thought, "Why not allow my kids to help me in the process?"  

I placed the battery-operated, cord-free Flip-Pal mobile scanner on the ground with the box of photos and asked my four-year-old daughter to join me. (Isn't it the truth that kids are most comfortable on the floor?)  She was immediately intrigued by this new gadget.  I showed her how it worked and pretty soon, she was scanning like a pro on her own! (It really is THAT simple to use.) As we scanned each photo, we talked about the people in the photo and about how old they were when it was taken.  Just this simple exercise of scanning old photos and postcards was exposing my daughter to decades of family history!

Engaging Children in Family History With the Flip-Pal // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Engaging Children in Family History with the Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Now, I have in my possession a family Christmas scrapbook that I made a few (ok, many) years ago using old holiday family photos.  It is over-sized, so it's really impossible to scan the pages on our conventional scanner that is connected to our desktop computer.  I had been planning for many months to make a trip to our local library to use their large scanner to digitize the scrapbook pages. 
Engaging Children in Family History with Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Not surprisingly, I haven't yet found the time to make it to the library. By myself. Without the kids. When the scanner was available. So, I thought my daughter and I would begin the task of scanning the scrapbook pages with the Flip-Pal mobile scanner.  The Flip-Pal comes with a 4GB SD memory card that is pre-loaded with EasyStitch software - for larger photos or documents, you scan different sections and then the software creates one high-resolution image using all the images.  My daughter was interested in helping me with this, too.

We scanned eight sections of this scrapbook page and here is the image after the software stitched it together.  The EasyStitch software really did a great job; the image quality compared with the original is just about perfect.

Engaging Children in Family History with Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
EasyStitch Scan // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Aside from the wonderful applications related to old family photos and scrapbooks, there are many other uses for the Flip-Pal that, as a mom, I can think of in my daily life.  Here is a sampling of other items I would scan.  Imagine how much clutter you could rid yourself of!

- Important receipts
- Your child's artwork (Yes, even the over-sized ones with the EasyStitch software!)
- Your child's award ribbons, certificates, and/or merit badges
- Recipes that you've printed out or torn out of magazines
- Ticket stubs, postcards, maps, brochures and other memorabilia from family trips
- Greeting cards that you have received from family members

Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner Giveway

Engaging Children in Family History with Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
This giveaway is for one new Flip-Pal mobile scanner (includes the SD card pre-loaded with the Flip-Pal Toolbox 2 software, SD-USB adapter, and four AA batteries installed) valued at $149.99. One-year limited warranty.  Good Luck to you all!

Liability Disclosures, Rules, and Policy Statement:
No purchase necessary. This contest is open to residents of the U.S. and Canada aged 18 years and older.  The contest will begin at 12:00 a.m. EDT 8/12/2014 and end at 12:00 a.m. EDT 8/20/2014. The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning.  Rafflecopter will randomly choose and winner and that winner will be announced on this blog within 48 hours of the contest's end time.  Void where prohibited.  All entrants agree to release of liability of the sponsor, Emily Kowalski Schroeder and the Growing Little Leaves blog.  Winner will be shipped prize directly from manufacturer.

​**THIS RAFFLECOPTER GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED**
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Introducing Old Technology

6/30/2014

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Introducing Old Technology // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Lately, I've been thinking a lot about ways in which to help children understand what life was like in the past - to make the past more concrete to them.  When you really think about a child's current life span - 4, 5, 6 years - you start to realize how limited their view of time is, which, of course, means that they don't have much of a reference point regarding changes in history and technology.  But if we, as the older adults, show them tools and technologies from the past, it can spark an interest in how people lived before their time.  And then us savvy family historians can start talking about WHO in our families lived during those times and actually used those tools and technologies.

Kids. Their natural curiosities literally make them gravitate towards anything that looks or works differently from what they are used to in their everyday lives.  This curiosity oftentimes makes them much better than adults at figuring out new technologies, but why not direct their interest backwards in time, instead?  The kids and I visited my parents last week, and like many others of their generation, they had some older technology around the house that my kids had never really encountered before.  Now, to most of you reading this, what you will see in these photos will be nothing special to you - a record player, a rotary phone - but to most children, these items are literally history in front of them.

My son and I went down in my parents' basement where they keep their old records and record player. Now, records are sort of enjoying a bit of a renaissance and becoming more popular again in certain circles, so some children today ARE growing up with record players in their homes. My husband and I do not have one right now, so this was something new to my son.  I found an album that would be of the most interest to him, and I showed him how to use the player.  Not surprisingly, he was very interested in how the sound went from the record, "through the needle," and into the speakers.  He enjoyed looking at the album 'art,' and while he was doing all this, I was explaining to him that THIS was how his grandparents and great-grandparents listened to music in their homes.  I told him that this album was even older than me and he seemed pretty impressed at that.

Introducing Old Technology // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Introducing Old Technology // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Introducing Old Technology // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
Having him explore the rotary phone was fun, too.  My husband and I do not even have a land-based telephone line at our house - we use mobile phones all the time - so my kids are not even aware of having phones that you can only use at home.  And the people who they do see with 'home' phones - like their grandparents - have wireless handsets, so even just the concept of a phone with a cord is novel to the kids.  Add to that equation a funky-looking circular dial and, to the kids, this thing looks like something from another world.
Introducing Old Technology // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
My son picked up the receiver and heard a dial tone.  He asked, "What's that?"  (Again, not something he has ever encountered in his life.)  We showed him how you had to put your fingers in the holes and move the dial in order to reach a certain number.  Then, I called this phone with my mobile and, boy, did that ring startle him!  (You forget how loud those ringers really are on these phones.)  And, again, I explained that this was how people made telephone calls before mobile phones.  You had to be at home and you could only move as far away from the phone as the cord would let you.  Sometime, I am going to find a photo of an even older phone and explain to him that you'd have to ask a telephone operator to connect your call!
Introducing Old Technology // GrowingLittleLeaves.com
So, as you can see, you don't need truly antique items around your house to begin on conversation about the past with your children.  Start teaching them about your OWN past before you start to tell them about great-grandma.  Of course, if you DO have true antiques from the past, I'm sure the kids would love to see and hear about those, as well.  My parents use an old cast iron pressing iron as a door stop, and next time we visit, I'll show it to my kids and tell them that people used to have to heat the entire iron near the fire or on the old stove if they wanted to get the wrinkles out of their clothing.

©2014, Emily Kowalski Schroeder. 
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    Emily Kowalski Schroeder

    Founder and Author of Growing Little Leaves

    Emily Kowalski Schroeder / Founder and Author of GrowingLittleLeaves.com

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