Must Have APPs for Parents – StoryCorps App Review
Must Have APPs for Parents – App Review Part IV
Right before school ended my son learned all about immigration. Since then we’ve been watching videos about the topic online and reading a variety of books too. We even took a trip to visit Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. His teacher also asked him to interview a family member born outside of the United States. He interviewed my dad, his grandpa or as he calls him “Tata”. He enjoyed their little chat so much. He asked questions off the list provided by the teacher and carefully jotted down all the answers. It was a wonderful way for him to connect with his grandfather and learn a bit more about his life.
This experience got me thinking about how much my son did not know about his grandfather and the rest of our family, our memories, our history. He’s seen many pictures and I’ve shared a story here or there but I think what he enjoyed the most about this experience was hearing it directly from the lips of his grandfather. So this got me thinking, how could I possibly incorporate more sharing of oral stories into our lives.
You can checkout previous app reviews in this series by clicking below
Must Have APPs for Parents – App Review Part I
Must Have APPs for Parents – App Review Part II
Must Have APPs for Parents – App Review Part III
StoryCorps App
If you are anything like me, you’re that parent constantly trying to document and share memories so that your little ones will one day better understand where they came from. Searching for new ways to do just that, I discovered a cool new little app. The StoryCorps app provides tools to document and store your own oral history in a meaningful way right on your smartphone.
As the daughter of immigrants, when my parents moved to the United States my entire family history was left behind in a far away land. Since childhood I have been gathering and trying to hold on to as many family stories as possible. I treasure the pictures and oral stories my parents share with me but always fear that they could all be lost one day. This is why I am so excited about the StoryCorps app!
The Story Corps app makes it simple for anyone to document and store family stories and memories. It provides a unique opportunity for the stories of older family members to be documented in their own voice. Imagine, your little ones being able to listen to their grandparents or even great-grandparents tell important family stories long after they are gone.
I recently began using the StoryCorps app to interview my own parents about their life experiences. My son loves to ask questions of his grandparents while I record their voices. I think it’s a great way to make sure that my children will have these stories to listen to and learn from later in life, and even share them with their own children someday.
The StoryCorps app is super simple to use and any parent interested in documenting their family’s history for generations to come should definitely give it a try! You can download this app here for iOS or here for Android.
Why I LOVE it
Guided Interview – The app guides you through a 40 minute interview and provides you with meaningful questions to help you keep the conversation going . You simply select questions from a variety of lists as you conduct your interview.
Upload or Store Option – At the end of your recording you have the option to upload your story to the StoryCorps’ archive for the world to hear OR you can choose to store it to your smartphone for your own personal record.
This app is FREE – Who doesn’t love a FREE app 🙂
Want more reasons to LOVE it?
If you’ve never heard of this Brooklyn based non-profit organization, let me give you a little background. StoryCorps has traveled across the United States since 2003 collecting and archiving the oral stories of everyday Americans. Their oral history project, one of the largest of its kind, makes it possible for the personal histories of ordinary Americans to be documented (on a free CD to share) and archived with the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.
Until now, StoryCorps had only offered mobile recording booths that helped guide Americans as they shared and recorded their own personal oral histories. These booths, filled with professional recording equipment and staffed by trained StoryCorps staffers, has produced the largest single collection of voices ever gathered. To date more than 100,000 everyday Americans have shared their oral histories with StoryCorps. You can hear some of these stories by clicking here.
StoryCorps recently received a $1 million dollar TED grant making it possible for them to launch the StoryCorps app. Now with the StoryCorps app this huge collection of oral histories will grow even more! What a great way to pass wisdom on from one generation to the next, and leave a legacy for the future of our children. 🙂
Happy recording!
Do you have any special ways in which you document and share memories with your family. I would love to hear about it! Leave me your thoughts in the comments section. Thanks for stopping by!
