Moms Guide to Technology

A hazy day on the lake

Here’s a summer project to enhance your relationship with your teens and to enhance their online research and budgeting skills. 

 The fact is, teens’ digital life is dominated by texting & gaming. While more than half share content online, the girls are most likely to post pictures and the boys are more like ly to post videos.  

While teens love the internet, they spend far less time browsing there than adults.  Are they getting as much out of the internet as the time they are putting in?  Do they see the correlation between what they do online [their digital life] and what they can do in their analog life?  Here’s an idea for a practical exercise in how the internet can help them make plans and how you can all enjoy family time together.  Allow your kids to plan a summer family getaway.  Let THEM make the plan, with as few limitations as you are comfortable with and let their imaginations go wild. 

There’s lots of help online to plan a vacation with teens, just search “Teen Travel”.   Or Put it in their hands and let them plan a getaway from scratch.  Some things to consider:

• Pick the weekend, including days & dates, up front.  When you go makes a difference in availability, rates, etc.  This has to be one of the basic guidelines.  For example, you might say, leaving Thursday, July 29^th at 7pm and returning Sunday, August first at 7pm.  Let them know they don’t have to use the whole time [may want to save a night’s hotel stay by leaving Friday morning], but that’s the ‘vacation’ window.
• Give them a budget.  Make it realistic.  This will be the single most important driver to the getaway they choose.  Depending on the age of the ids, you may want to give them clearer guidelines on the budget which can help:
• Is it a competition or a team project.  Decide if you want each person to come up with their own idea to research, budget and present to the group.  The advantages are that you will get more choices and you may want to vote on one for this trip and hold onto the others for future getaways.  Or you may want to use this as a team-building exercise and have each kid assigned a part of the trip to research and report back to the group. In any case, make it THEIR project.  Mom should not be leading the project/assigning tasks. 
• Parents always have veto power.  State that right up front.  It’s still your job to say yeah or nay, considering family finances, safety and your goals as a family.  Use this veto power sparingly. 

 Budgeting  — This is one thing they may never have done before.  They’ll need basic guidance.  The budget will be key in determining whether they choose flying the Concord to France or driving to a nearby lake, or something in between.  Give them an outline like this:

 Walk them through some of the things they’ll need to look up online:

• Mapquest a driving vacation.  How far is it?  What’s the average price of gas?  How many miles to the gallon.  Multiply to find the cost.
• Are pictures available that they can show to the rest of the family when they make their presentation? [If everyone is making their own plan?]
• Activities you can do when you get there.
• What’s the ‘Plan B’?  If they pick an amusement park, what else is there to do in the area if it pours rain that weekend?
• Don’t forget the multiplication.  If the admission to an attraction is $40 and there are 4 people going on the trip, they’ll have to plan for $160 not $40 for the activity.
• Suggest they make notes on additional considerations.  For example, if their plan involves fishing, do you need fishing licenses and what will that cost.  Will you pack the tent or bring the tent?  If they want to rent a lake house, what’s the security deposit? 

 Finally, don’t start the project unless you are willing to follow through.  This is a teaching/learning opportunity with the bonus benefit of some great family time at the conclusion. We recently took an weekend lake trip, which was about 4 hours drive from our house.  We found an inexpensive hotel that took pets, it was clean and had a friendly staff, indoor pool open until 11pm with a free breakfast in the morning.  We stayed 2 nights and rented a pontoon boat one day [no dogs allowed] and stayed out on the lake all day, swimming and fishing, talking and playing cards.  A quick getaway that we all agreed was the best vacation we had in a while.   Enjoy your family.

If you have a portable scanner, people are generous sharing pictures.

I started researching my family in earnest about 15 years ago.  

Most people have some level of interest in where they come from, we can’t help it.  Rice University biologists published a study of amoebae in 2006 concluding that they could not only recognize their own family members but also discriminate in favor of them.  The drive to find what we are a part of is that natural.   

 If you were to start researching your family today, you would find a third of the information I have now in the first week by researching online.  Technology is changing the way genealogists work and making the process faster for whoever comes next.

 If you are the next person, here’s how to get you started.

Write down everything you know.  Keep it simple.  Write as complete a name as you know [maiden name for women], birth date & location, death date & location. Be organized: Forms can be found online for free.  I’m directing you to the Mormon Church.  I am not Mormon but I have great respect for their contribution to family history research.  When I’ve been stuck, I have visited a Family History Librarian at a Mormon church and they always help with a next step.

 The Mormon Church has the largest genealogical library in the world.  Family history research is fundamental to their belief that a husband and wife, children and parents are bound together for eternity.  They compile and digitizing birth, marriage, death and other records and making them available anyone. For Free.

 Chart the basic information.Family Group Sheet

The most important forms to get started are the Pedigree Chart, which traces the various generations of your family and the Family Group Records, which contains the details of each nuclear family.   Start by filling these out from memory and from the memory of living relatives.  There is free software you can download from the site, as well.  I would hesitate to do this at the early stage.  Start with a printed, handwritten set of papers and write across the top “From Memory” so that you can sort that out from conflicting facts you may find later. 

 Census information is a primary building block.

Genealogists are #1 fans of the Census.  The Census began in 1790 and every ten years, the information is gathered about every person in the country.  The results are currently available through 1930.  The law says census data can not be released to the public for 72 years, to protect the privacy of participants in their natural lifetime. 

By looking at the census reports for various years, you can see how households & families change over time.  Each census asked different questions and you can learn a wider range of information by looking across several census years.

 The Census Bureau gathers and compiles the information; when a census year goes public, it is housed at the National Archives and Records Administration which makes it available to us.  http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/.

 The Census Bureau does have a service: “Age search service”.  You can find it by following this link:  http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/data/agesearch/index.html

The census will do a search of information from 1910 to 2000 for $65 per person per census.  This can be an expensive way to go because those 65 dollars-es will really add up if you look at multiple years.  You can only request a search of yourself or if you are the heir or legal representative of the person being searched.

 Do all you can for FREE before you start signing up for paid services.

Paid services can give you a lot of information.  Before you starting spend a lot of money, unnecessarily, go back to the Family History site. Using your basic information, you can look for records that substantiate, correct or clarify what you think you know.  You will find details that flesh out the stories, beyond the facts of date and location. 

 Always record the source of your information.

When you find conflicting information, you may need to evaluate the accuracy of each source and corroborate before you have the true story.  A year from now, you may come across something new and if there’s a conflict you need to backtrack easily.

As you become more experienced there are a lot more resources, some of which I have listed further below.  There’s no timeline on these. But there is a clock ticking on the living resources.

 Recollections from people who lived the history are the richest.  As much as you can, set aside time to talk to the oldest relatives about what they know and what they remember. 

• Set aside specific time to talk about the family history.  If you wait for it to happen spontaneously, it never will.  Every family researcher I ever met regrets the person they knew and loved but never asked about the family stories.
• Start by setting a framework.  Ask how old they are now, were they the oldest in their family, etc.  This will set a framework for you and get them talking.  Questions about themselves are easier; they won’t worry so much about ‘getting the answer wrong’.
• Prepare a list of specific questions, generated by your research, if possible.  Ask follow-up questions when the conversation gets rolling.  But first, get the ball rolling.  When you ask someone to tell you the “family history”, they freeze, think they don’t know enough, fear they’ll forget or get it wrong.  Often the reaction is to refer you to someone else.  In fact, everyone has a story.  Frame the questions as if asking for an opinion and provide reference points; “What do you remember about the flood in 1889, it seemed our family moved to the top of the mountain right after that?”
• Put the question in the context of general history; “Do you remember when your family got their first radio?  Where was it in the house?  What were your favorite shows?  Was that a purchase that was difficult for the family to pay for?”  

Other resources:

• Newspaper clippings.  Obituaries have the greatest information.  Once the primary source of local information articles were very detailed.  The library in the town where your family lived should have old newspapers on microfilm.  There’s a move to put some online; these services tend to charge a monthly subscription.  Do your homework first, sign up for a month and search as many as possible in that month. 
• Go to the courthouse.  Old Wills, land & property records and marriage applications can be found here and hold great detail.    
• Religious records.  You may need to know a bit of church history.  When did the congregation form and have churches consolidated since?  Some churches let you go through the records and others do it for you, requiring a written request accompanied by a small fee.    You may also want to save time by finding out how they keep information.  Sometimes it is by date or milestone, rather than name.
• Visit the Cemetery.  Information on headstones is often revealing.  Modern cemeteries have very good, sometimes electronic, recordkeeping.  And more historians visit cemeteries and take the time to put the information online, Like this one: http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi.  
• Needle in the haystack.  Finally, just google, bing or yahoo search for free genealogy resources.  Searching individual names can also be revealing.  But this is not the most scientific approach so it is the most time intense with the most limited yield.  

 This is not a project you can finish in a day or a week or a year.  Early ‘finds’ will lay the groundwork for what you find later.  As you start to see who these people were, you may focus on military service or building a health history of the family. 

Like the single-cell amoebae, you will recognize family members and find yourself discriminating in favor of them, for we are all carrying a bit of those who came before us.

My brothers and sisters and I recently went to clean out my aunt’s house following her death. She had no children and our mother was her only sister. So, it was our responsibility and a welcome opportunity to visit a part of the life our mother lived. We found the old cassette tape recorder our mother sent to our grandmother.

Mom would record us and mail the tape to our grandmother, who could play it in her machine.

Long distance phone calls were expensive. The idea was that audio & photos helped her share her children across the miles.

My mother is gone more than 30 years. She was no electronic pioneer but would be excited by today’s video version of sharing her children’s milestones immediately: YouTube. I can hardly believe the video sharing service is only 5 years old.

Look at how much that baby has grown in 5 years. This blog has linked you to youtube to share ideas. I have checked youtube to see what the heck my kids are talking about; they name a performer, movie or band [pop culture when I’m not popping] and I search it on youtube. I hear the music, see what they look like and what they’re wearing [call me old school, I still judge a book partially by its cover]. People post video resumes to get jobs, propose marriage. I’ve used utube for entertainment, to see the Christmas pageant when my niece had the ‘lead” or my nephew’s first steps. After the sudden death of my college-age son, utube kept him alive for us through the web videos he made. Utube has brought laughter into our home, shared ideas we could see & feel and provided comfort in sorrow. In just 5 years, it has become a part of the fabric of our lives. [ I’ve even nicknamed it “utube”; as if the extra 2 letters was too much!]

This is not just a lovefest over youtube. The site still has some growing up to do. Anonymous comments are getting to be a thing of the past online. [Thank goodness!] Most sites now require people to stand behind their comment[s], takes the ‘haters’ out of the process; provides a sense of civil community. Youtube still hasn’t come to that. And they make it harder than I like to flag offensive videos or comments. There’s a lot of trash [but that’s what you get when anyone can post] and that’s the benefit.

On this anniversary of youtube, I encourage you to post video online. You don’t have to become a fancy video producer to share ideas or the moments in your life. Grow your digital life today.

Those ‘flip’ video cameras were all the rage for young moms just a Christmas or two ago. For $150 you could got a pocket-size point & shoot video camera, some could even do HD! [Like you really need that.] 

They were well marketed. Touting plug & play to the internet via youtube. My sister and two sisters-in-law got them. And I waited for their videos to come; which they never did. One of them told me last weekend her camera burned out early and it hadn’t backed up to the laptop as expected so a year’s worth of video was lost.

I resisted the urge to get one and only because I had just bought the latest Sony Handycam (with HD).

1. Any modern video camera will do; video camera, pocket digital camera, even cell phone.
2. If it came with a book, read the book about loading video. Your husband never will. So, you need to do it. But do it right. Directions for electronics are written in step-by-step for even the most basic user. The catch is: don’t just sit with the book. Gather the camera, the laptop, the book and make sure there is a small test video on the camera. Here’s mine:  MOV05688 .  The best way to learn is by doing it, step-by-step.
3. Repeat. The more you do it, the easier it will become. I think Stephen Covey coined the phrase, “21 days to a new habit” and I have always found this to be true. If you post one video a week for a month, even if you don’t post again for 6 months, it will be easy and quick because you’re in the habit.
4. Don’t try to break new ground and learn a new skill at the same time. Don’t try to learn to post with the first ‘flash mob’ video you are choreographing at the preschool. Keep the production simple and focus on learning to post: baby’s first steps in 30 seconds. Waving to Grandma for 30 seconds. A funny little dance.
5. Charge the camera every night, next to your cell phone, so it is always ready to go. I carry mine in my purse all the time.

Let me mention the pocket digital camera, or even your cell phone. What’s the right camera to use? The one you have with you will produce the best results; because it is with you! You don’t need a fancy HD camera, you don’t need to shell out $150 for a special camera. If you use your digital camera, you’ll need the USB cord, if you are using your phone, just email the video to your youtube account.

6. Go to http://www.youtube.comand sign up. They’ll walk you through the basics. But take a few extra steps:
a. Click on our name in the upper right-hand corner.  Then click on “Account”, then “Privacy”.  Adjust.  I set mine so that people can find me by my email address. But you can choose to share only with family & friends. I’m disallowing advertisements but making stats on my videos public. Do what makes you most comfortable; remember their defaults are generally the most public settings.
b. Click on ‘activity sharing’. I chose NOT to connect to my twitter account or facebook page. But you can. I may do it later. This means you post a video and it also shows up on the other social networks you select.
c. Click on ‘mobile Setup’ and they’ll give you a unique email address you can add to the contact list on your phone. This lets you send a video directly from your cell phone. Easy! Just check your cell phone plan to make sure you have data &/or minutes to do this without additional $$.
7. Make a quick video. Don’t shoot something off the TV or radio, etc. This is a copyright violation and Youtube does pretty good job of protecting peoples’ intellectual property. One copyright complaint & they boot it. Email the video to your youtube account or connect the cord & follow the instructions that came with the camera. Upload the video.

Finally, back it up. You can get a little hard drive of 500GB for about $70, if you watch the sale flyers. You should have one dedicated to backing up pictures & videos. If anything happens to the computer, you have not lost all your memories. Do it today. As an engineer friend once told me, “there are two kinds of computers, the one that just crashed and the one about to crash”. Don’t wait until it’s all lost.

Above all, Midwest Moms, do not fear the video. It is the modern-day version of my mom and her cassette recorder chasing after us to “tell Grandma a story”. But now Grandma can see to share the marvel of your progeny. And it will comfort you with those cherished moments into your old age.

With the new changes coming to Facebook, there’s a lot of talk about you privacy.  But most people never check their privacy settings to make basic setting available to them.

Here’s a quick and easy way to take some control:

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Blog, a contraction of ‘web’ and ‘log’, it’s almost always written by one person.  It’s that person’s take on the world, heavy on the opinion.  It can be a website, part of a website or hosted by a site with lots of blogs where each is editorially independent.   If it’s part of a web site for an organization selling a product, service or idea, the editorially control rests with the organization.  Doesn’t mean don’t read it, just evaluate what you read based on where it’s coming from and who, if anyone is paying for the opinion.

In its purist form, blogs allow people to share experiences and ideas; meet interesting people.  Friends and relatives followed my daughter’s blog about living in China.  Twenty-somethings and older blog.  I wish more teenagers would.  I read an article just this morning that they don’t want to make that time commitment.  They’d rather text, tweet or status update in 140 words or less.

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You won’t hear your kids say they’re keeping their current phone, but most of my friends do.  Oh, parents will talk about the iPhone; but in the end, there are more important things that buying the fishing app and increasing the dreaded cell bill.

We’re living our adult lives post-telephone deregulation.  That means we got in the habit of a phone where we pay one fee for unlimited local calling.  As we hit our professional stride, the phone/cable companies offered us unlimited long-distance calling from our home phones.   We like to know what things are going to cost us before we use them.  Cell service doesn’t work that way.  The sales people will walk you through the ‘plans’.  But cell phone charges are NOT fixed, so don’t get caught in that false sense of security.

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Thanks for visiting the Moms Guide to Technology blog.

I’m guessing you are a mom, too.  So, I don’t have to tell you that when you’re a mom, there’ s nothing more important than the kids.   Keeping up with their schedules and my work and my husband has more than eaten up 18+ hours a day.  So, I am never surprised when parents confess they can’t  find time to step across the threshold of life to the online, multimedia world.  Even if “too busy” is just a mask for fearful, I understand.  We are a new generation of parents.  Tecnology is emerging at a rate exponentially faster than my parents could have imagined.  My parents never learned to program the VCR.  They just waited until the kids moved out to watch whatever they wanted.  Our generation will not skate by avoiding the interface with technology.

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