Genealogy Do-over Recap for Month #3

In March Our Genealogy Group had our 5th Annual All Day Workshop. But, it was also the time to do part 3 of Thomas MacEntee's Genealogy Do-Over. In month 3 the topics were to conduct a self interview and to conduct a family interview. . 

For my self interview, I originally thought I would just verify that what I had down in 

Family Tree Maker for me was correct. So, I checked it, and it is correct but, because, I'm not dead, 

I haven't had any military service, we have no children, and I'm not religious so there is no baptism information stuff listed, it really looked empty. 

My "self interview" felt lame.

At the Workshop, we had a session on interviews, and I gave a brief speech about StoryCorps. StoryCorps collects oral history stories and interviews from regular folks like you and me and stores them for all time at the Library of Congress. Recently, they created an app for your smart phone or tablet and it is an excellent way to capture that self interview or family interview for your part 3 of the do-over!  

If you have a smart phone or a tablet (and let's face it, you probably do) I encourage you to download the StoryCorp app. Once you get it, the app will walk you through all the steps. It is really easy to set up your own account. When you are ready, you can prepare an interview. If you are not sure what questions you should ask, the app gives you a lot of suggestions to choose from. You can click on the questions you like. Then when it is time to record (the recording is just audio) the questions you chose will be at the top of the screen, and you can swipe through them as you go along. If you already know what you want to talk about, you can just by pass all that stuff and go right to the interview. At the end of the interview, the app asks you to take one photograph. Then, you can choose to upload the interview to the Library of Congress, to a social media site like Facebook or you can decide to just keep it on your device and choose to share it only with your family. 

I found it best to do your "self interview" with the app as practice before doing the family interview. In the end it doesn't really matter though, because it is FREE! So, if you mess up you can start over! 

If you are a paid member go to OUR GENEALOGY GROUP and click on the "do over" section at the top of the page for exclusive content provided to us by Thomas MacEntee. 

If you are on Facebook and want to join the discussion or learn new tricks or just watch what others are doing in the the do-over Thomas MacEntee has a Do-Over group at HERE .