Keeping with Technolgoy (or trying to)!

Well, my blog is supposed to be about genealogy not technology, but I am finding these two interests of mine converging. There is also an overlap with my day job, school libray media specialist! Most often, I learn about new technology from other bloggers. I read their blogs for the content,  but I also look a their layouts, widgets, and basic features that they are using to see if I can apply some to my own blog. I am constantly trying to keep up with technology to pass along techniques to my students, use with my students to better impace their learning or use in my  genealogy "world."

I find that many websites have their own blogs and if I subscribe to their RSS Feeds, I can "hear" about their latest innovations as soon as they advertise them. Ancestry.com has a blog and that is where I learned about the features of My Canvas. I even watched the tutorial last night, having missed the "live version," I was able to catch up in the archives because of a post by Stefanie Condie.

Flickr, the photo sharing site has a blog. So does Twitter. The Footnote.com blog is how I keep up with that site's newest acquisitions. YouTube has also joined in the blogging arena.

My previous post discusses how in the world I keep up with all of these blogs without losing my mind! Put these feeds in your Reader or iGoogle page or you will not be able to keep up!

Most people who will be reading this blog will probably be aware of RSS Feeds, but you may have friends or colleagues who do not understand the possibilities that open up to you when you start to subscribe to these feeds.  If you have a difficult time understanding or explaining the concept to someone else, I find the most helpful tutorials come from a company called Common Craft: Explanations in Plain English. They ingeneously put up "low tech" video tutorials to explain the most technologically advanced concepts and they are so fun to watch! The video on RSS feeds is one of my favorites. Their tutorial on Wikis was one of my first introduction to their videos, but if just type "Common Craft" into the YouTube search engine, you can see all of their video clips. I did watch the one on Twitter, but I found that the blog entry put up by Thomas MacEntee on Facebook Bootcamp for Genea-Bloggers and more was brilliant and more useful for applying it to genealogy.

Lastly, there is one blogger in the technology world that I follow because he focuses on web 2.0 social networking sites. His name is Pete Cashmore and his blog is called Mashable! He describes the site as, "Founded in July 2005, Mashable is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Networking news. With more than 5 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what’s new on the web."

So, while I am not entering information into Legacy Family Tree, scanning documents for uploading, searching for records on Footnote.com, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, etc., reading blogs from all my new found genelogical friends, you can find me lurking in the techie world trying to learn what is the next best thing out that will help make my world a bit easier to navigate!

New Resolutions

Wow! 2009. Where did the time go?

I have set some personal goals for myself, in my daily life for 2009: 1) daily personal prayer and scripture study, 2) Pray the rosary on a regular basis, and 3) continue with some sort of community service (see next paragraph).

For Christmas 2008, my husband and I were blessed to be able to offer our time to the homeless, elderly and/or poor at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC. We acted as servers for tables of people dining on a traditional Christmas dinner sitting at tables decorated with fresh flowers and candles. Words cannot express the deep satisfaction that we felt at being able to serve God's people and for 4 hours we were on our feet without worrying about ourselves! It was liberating! I want to continue this service in 2009.

I have set the following goals for my genealogical and blogging research in 2009:

1. I will spend at least five hours a month working on my genealogy - especially those brick walls that I have.


2. I will print off current family group sheets and update my research. I have done this before, but the files are in need of serious updating since the most printing was done in 2001.


3. I will update all my sources in my Legacy program. I don’t like seeing undocumented genealogy, so I need to start updating and adding those sources.


4. I will find sources for everyone in at least one direct line of ancestors.


5. I will blog weekly about my progress. I added a link to this site on my facebook, flickr and footnote pages, so hopefully I will get more visitors :-)


6. I will add more information to this site. I get sidetracked and don't update in a long time and I think people stop visiting because they don't see anything new!


7. I will start posting photos on this site as well as my Flickr page. I have been blessed with so many old family photos, that it’s a shame not to share them.


8. I will get re-organized with my CLOOZ. I started using CLOOZ about 5 years ago and it was a tremendous help in getting all of my paperwork organized so that I could find things quickly. I am starting to see piles of paper again and need to start adding new documents into CLOOZ and filing them away properly!


9. I want to visit a Family History Library in 2009 and start using the wealth of information that they have to offer.


10. I want to complete at least one of my Texas First Family forms and mail them off to the the Texas State Genealogical Society. I have been diligent about gathering the correct sources required as proof, but now I need to act on it!

I hope that everyone has a great and productive 2009 and I wish you an abundance of health and happiness!!!

Cite Your Work!

Yea, yea, yea...I teach how to cite your sources all day long, but I have been caught not heeding my own advice! When I first started my genealogy hobby 13 years ago, I didn't bother citing where I got my information from because I never planned on publishing my findings and it was just "for fun!" Well, do I ever regret that decision! I still probably won't publish anything, but if only I knew where I got all of my information from so that I could verify it! I have met many distant relatives and shared information with many people and often I find discrepencies in our data. If only I knew exactly where I got that specific date in question (or city, or name, etc) then I could go back and check my work. Now I am in the process of citing all of the information that I have copies of, emails that I printed, books that I purchased, and it is painful, but productive!

I went to my friend, Georgia's, last Friday and got her started in Legacy Family Tree software and CLOOZ organizing software and yes, she is citing her sources because of my lessons learned! We will plan a trip to the Library of Congress library or the DAR library for my day off in September or October. That should be fun!

Still no headway on my "things to do list", but I am ever so hopeful....