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!
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.
*There is no iPad-specific version of the app, but the iPhone version works just fine on iPads.
Sign Up Page
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Email Sign Up Page
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The main interface from which you control the app has five icons at the bottom that look like this:
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.
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.
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:
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.
Delete pages by swiping upward.
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Reorder pages by dragging pages to new location.
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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.
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.
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
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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