I am back from the NERGC genealogy conference held last week April 15-18, 2015 in Providence, Rhode Island. I promised I would write about my adventures with my Android tablet (first time using one, and no computer). I have an Asus Nexus that my daughter gave me a couple of Christmas's ago.
At home I made sure all my updates were current and that my tablet was fully charged. I also downloaded the sections of the syllabus that I was interested in; then made sure I had packed my cord to recharge the tablet each night. I was ready to go to the conference. I was finally ready to use my tablet for something more than playing games. I was quite excited.
Wednesday night in our Hotel room my roommates and I were discussing if we could download the syllabus as an editable document. I had enough trouble figuring out how to download all the parts of the syllabus that were important to me. That is my first learning lesson, but no problem I know I can take notes, on the tablet and need the experience.
 |
| Picture taken by Genevieve De Haan of Tablet taken to NERGC |
Thursday afternoon my first class T-104 is most appropriately
"There's an app for That!" presenter is Donna Moughty sponsored by The Connecticut Professional Genealogists Council. How lucky can one person get. If you ever get a chance to hear Donna Moughty speak do it. She is a terrific and knowledgeable presenter. Her website is
http://www.moughty.com/ and she is also on Facebook and gives tours to Ireland. She talked about having the convenience of being able to have your genealogy with you (all the time) with a smart phone or tablet. Most of us want to travel lighter but still access our information instantly. Donna went over many of the common genealogy apps and stated that an added advantage is that computer programs cost up to $100.00 where apps usually run less than $10.00 with many of them being free. At the end of her presentation she gave many tips about short cuts with the I-phone. She worked for Apple for 21 years and appears to know her stuff. I wish I wrote more of them down as a man in the audience stated at the end of the talk that everything she covered worked on the android devises also.
Yes, I did say I wrote down as you see I had printed the syllabus at home on the lectures I felt were really important, as I didn't know how my experiment was going to work out (Backup plan). Also since this was my first class my screen kept going black. I soon was able to rectify that problem by going to settings and changing my Display time to 30 minutes instead of the 2 minutes it was set at.
I will not bore you with my everyday experience with my tablet, but will tell you I believe that the tablet or smart phone is the way to go. Please Believe me that is saying a lot coming from a person that likes the feel of books and paper (hard copy) in her hand instead of reading things electronically. If I had to rate my experience I would give it 4 stars out 5 with 5 being excellent. So please don't be afraid to try it, because if I can do it, you can do it. I will definitely do it again and not be so fearful.
