Course: 2026-02
Practical AI For Genealogists: Foundations and First Steps
Virtual via Zoom
Faculty:
- Coordinator and Instructor: Steve J. Little, Jr.
- Other Instructors: Mark D. Thompson; Blaine Bettinger, PhD, JD; Nicole Dyer, BA; Angela Packer McGhie, CG®, FUGA
Tuition:
- Regular Price: $615.00
- NGS Member Price: $575.00
Description:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers genealogists practical and powerful tools to make family history research faster, clearer, and more productive. This course introduces genealogists to straightforward, easy-to-use AI skills, helping researchers enhance their work immediately. Students will learn foundational techniques such as crafting clear prompts, summarizing records, and extracting data from complex documents, all while emphasizing ethical use and privacy. We will also explore AI features built into major genealogy platforms and create engaging family history outputs.
Student Prerequisites:
No previous experience with AI or specialized software is necessary. However, students should be comfortable with standard computer operations. This includes using a web browser, copying and pasting text, and managing files (downloading, saving, and locating them). Familiarity with a basic text editor (such as Notepad or TextEdit) is also expected.
Recommended:
A second monitor is highly recommended for Zoom workshops to allow students to view the instruction and their own work simultaneously.
Important Notice Regarding Course Materials:
An electronic syllabus for personal use.
Recordings:
Sessions will be recorded and available through Friday, 10 July 2026, at 11:59 PM ET
NOTE: All times are listed in Eastern Time.
Live Sessions may be subject to schedule adjustments by your course coordinator.
| Day | Session | Time | Session Title | Description | Instructor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday 22 June |
Intro | 10:00 AM – 10:30 AM | Class Introductions | Take this opportunity to connect with your peers and gain insights into what exciting adventures await you this week. | Little/Thompson |
| 1 | 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM | Course Welcome and Orientation: The BIG Picture | Get started with course goals, meet classmates, and learn how AI can enhance your family history research from the first steps onward. | Little/Thompson | |
| 2 | 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM | Plagiarism, Provenance, and Prompting | Explore how generative AI can blur the lines between inspiration and plagiarism in genealogy, and other ethical issues. Learn strategies for preserving provenance, ensuring proper citation, and maintaining transparency when incorporating AI into genealogical research. | Bettinger | |
| 3 | 2:15 PM – 3:30 PM | Chatting with Your Chatbot: Prompt Basics | Learn simple, practical techniques to ask clear questions, craft helpful prompts, and improve AI responses when researching your family’s past. | Thompson | |
| 4 | 3:45 PM – 5:00 PM | Summarizing Family Records with AI | Quickly condense long genealogical documents into useful summaries, making research logs, reports, and emails simpler and clearer for you and your readers. | Little | |
| Tuesday 23 June |
5 | 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM | Saved Prompts Made Easy: Projects, Custom GPTs, and Gems | Save time by creating and reusing helpful prompts in Custom GPTs, Projects, or Gems—personalized tools designed specifically for your genealogy tasks. | Little |
| 6 | 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM | Your First AI-Assisted Research Project | Put your new skills to work by planning, conducting, and documenting a small, manageable family history research project using AI tools and resources. | Thompson | |
| 7 | 2:15 PM – 3:30 PM | Extracting Facts from Text | Learn how AI can pull structured details like names, dates, and places out of documents, simplifying the way you organize and analyze your research. | Little | |
| 8 | 3:45 PM – 5:00 PM | Image Analysis Essentials for Family History | Easily identify and label images, handwriting, and printed text in photos and documents, making your family images more searchable and meaningful. | Thompson | |
| Wednesday 24 June | 9 | 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM | AI Tools at Major Genealogy Sites: Ancestry, MyHeritage, FamilyTreeDNA | Explore AI tools offered by Ancestry, MyHeritage, and FamilyTreeDNA, learning their strengths and limitations to better integrate them into your personal research routine. | Little |
| 10 | 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM | Protect & Cite: Privacy, Copyright, and Attribution Basics | Master basic citation skills and privacy best practices, ensuring your family documents and research notes meet standards while keeping personal data safe. | Thompson | |
| 11 | 2:15 PM – 3:30 PM | Writing Draft Narratives with AI Help | Use AI to generate clear, accurate drafts for family histories, emails, or research notes, while maintaining your unique voice and careful standards. | Little | |
| 12 | 3:45 PM – 5:00 PM | Creating Family History Multimedia with AI | Produce audio clips, restored images, or short videos about your ancestors, enriching your family history presentations while respecting ethical and historical accuracy. | Thompson | |
| Thursday 25 June | 13 | 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM | Unlocking Airtable’s AI Features for Genealogy Research Logs | Discover how to harness artificial intelligence that’s built right into Airtable to enhance your genealogy research logs. With AI integrated within the platform, analyzing your research log and timeline data becomes even more efficient than before. Learn techniques for using Airtable’s AI to summarize lengthy transcriptions, extract dates and relationships, generate research report sections, and create formulas that streamline your data analysis. Explore how Airtable’s AI fields function, understand the various plans and pricing options available, and learn how to select the right AI model within Airtable’s generative AI settings for your specific needs. By the end of this session, you’ll see how this native AI integration transforms research data into organized, searchable, and meaningful insights. | Dyer |
| 14 | 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM | Artificial Intelligence to Analyze Information in Historical Documents | Discover what AI can and cannot do to help you analyze documents for reliability, relevance, and historical context. | McGhie | |
| 15 | 2:15 PM – 3:30 PM | Transforming Texts: Changing How Texts Look and Sound | Discover how AI can translate difficult documents into clear English, preserving historical meaning and context to strengthen your research. | Little | |
| 16 | 3:45 PM – 5:00 PM | Pin Your Past: Mapping and Timelines with AI | Create interactive maps and timelines to visualize and share your ancestors’ movements and life stories clearly and engagingly. | Thompson | |
| Friday 26 June |
17 | 10:30 AM – 11:45 AM | Responsible AI Use: Focus On: Education | Gain simple, practical strategies for continuously learning about new AI tools and methods without feeling overwhelmed or falling behind in your research. | Little/Thompson |
| 18 | 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM | Panel Discussion | Engage with course instructors as they reflect on key skills taught, answer questions, and offer guidance for your ongoing family history and AI journey. | Little/Thompson |