Course: 2027-01
Practical AI For Genealogists: Foundations and First Steps
Virtual via Zoom
Faculty:
- Coordinator and Instructor: Mark Thompson
- Other Instructor: J. Stephen Little, Jr.
Tuition:
- Regular Price: $615
- NGS Member Price: $575
Description:
This course equips genealogists with practical, accessible AI skills they can use immediately and responsibly: clear prompting, privacy-aware use, source-based summarization, fact extraction, simple data hygiene, writing assistance, timelines, maps, and ethical multimedia 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.
Level of Instruction:
Beginner AI user; intermediate genealogical skills. Students may be new to chatbots but should already be comfortable using computers and online genealogy resources.
Course Prerequisites:
No formal prerequisites. Students should have basic computer skills, access to online genealogy resources, and willingness to create or use accounts with at least one major AI chatbot. Sample materials will be provided so students do not need to use sensitive family information.
Special Course Requirements:
Students need a laptop or desktop computer capable of accessing the internet, online genealogy websites, and cloud-based AI services. For the virtual week, a stable internet connection, Zoom access, and a headset or microphone are strongly recommended. Homework consists of short optional practice exercises.
Recordings:
Sessions will be recorded and available through July 9, 2027.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Course Welcome and Orientation: The Big Picture | Get started with course goals, meet classmates, and learn where AI can help family historians without replacing careful human judgment. | Little/Thompson | |
| 2 | Using AI Responsibly: Ethics, Privacy, and Copyright | Learn practical rules for privacy, permission, copyright, citation, disclosure, and safe handling of sensitive family information. | Little/Thompson | ||
| 3 | Chatting with Your Chatbot: Prompt Basics | Practice clear questions, useful context, iteration, and simple prompt patterns that improve answers for everyday genealogy tasks. | Thompson | ||
| 4 | Summarizing Family Records with AI | Use AI to summarize long documents, research notes, correspondence, and transcripts while checking accuracy against the source. | Little | ||
| 2 | 5 | Saved Prompts Made Easy: Projects, Custom GPTs, and Gems | Save time by creating reusable prompt sets and simple project spaces for repeatable genealogy tasks. | Little | |
| 6 | Your First AI-Assisted Research Project | Plan, run, and document a small AI-assisted research exercise with clear boundaries, source notes, and human review. | Thompson | ||
| 7 | Extracting Facts from Text | Pull names, dates, places, relationships, events, and clues from text into usable notes or tables. | Little | ||
| 8 | Image Analysis Essentials for Family History | Explore practical uses and limits of AI for photographs, scanned documents, printed forms, and readable handwriting. | Thompson | ||
| 3 | 9 | AI Tools at Major Genealogy Sites | Compare AI features at major genealogy platforms and learn where they fit in a responsible personal research workflow. | Little/Thompson | |
| 10 | Protect and Cite: Privacy, Copyright, and Attribution Basics | Create simple habits for attribution, source notes, disclosure, and protecting living-person information. | Little/Thompson | ||
| 11 | Writing Draft Narratives with AI Help | Use AI to draft and revise short family-history narratives while preserving voice, evidence, and accuracy. | Little | ||
| 12 | Staying Current in a Rapidly Changing AI World | Develop a sane update routine for tracking new tools, model changes, and risks without feeling overwhelmed. | Little/Thompson | ||
| 4 | 13 | Clean and Tidy: No-Code Data Hygiene for Genealogists | Standardize dates, names, places, research-log notes, and pasted text with low-friction AI assistance. | Little | |
| 14 | Spotting Conflicting Evidence with AI | Use tables and comparison prompts to identify discrepancies, organize conflicts, and prepare questions for further research. | Little/Thompson | ||
| 15 | Transforming Texts: Changing How Texts Look and Sound | Translate, simplify, reformat, and modernize difficult text while preserving historical meaning and marking uncertainty. | Little | ||
| 16 | Pin Your Past: Mapping and Timelines with AI | Use AI to help build timelines, place lists, map-ready data, and movement narratives. | Thompson | ||
| 5 | 17 | Creating Family History Multimedia with AI | Create ethical audio, image, slide, and short-video concepts for family history sharing, with attention to provenance and disclosure. | Little/Thompson | |
| 18 | Panel Discussion: Bringing It All Together | Reflect on the week, answer remaining questions, and build a practical next-steps plan for continued AI use in genealogy. | Little/Thompson | ||