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Two articles and book excerpts--How-to Genre:

1. Creating Family Newsletters & Time Capsules.

2. Writing A Genealogy Course Syllabus

Creating Family Newsletters & Time Capsules:  How to Publish Multimedia Genealogy Periodicals or Gift Booklets

ISBN: 0-595-39872-3

How to Start Personal Histories and Genealogy Journalism Businesses: Course Template, Syllabus, Writing and Marketing Guide

ISBN: 0-595-38698-9

Family Newsletters

Tired of only paper print annual family newsletters? Try multimedia--video with text, music, voice, and pictures. Put warmth, kindness, and inspiration into photos, video, and text to cheer up viewers and readers. The annual family video and print newsletter, handwritten newsletter template using circles for messages and squares for photos, or a photo and text calendar delivers energy through celebration of life. Use a new, dramatic viewpoint, what’s called a fresh news angle. It’s something so new that viewers learn information that can be used in a different way. Make multimedia newsletters.

It’s like discovering hidden markets or exploring new patterns and spaces. What are the unique qualities of your information? Contrast and balance the dynamic imagery.

What actions can you use? Emphasize what the family (or corporate) tradition represents. How do visionary events, change, the future, and reality contrast or compare with solidarity, energy, roots, genealogy, and tradition? How does it all work together as energy and character that provide the foundation of the family or corporation? These tips can be used both for video or print family newsletters and corporate case history success story newsletters.  

1. Children: Have each child write about what they have done or are doing on an annual basis. If the child is too young, summarize in a short paragraph any updates.
2. Parents: Keep a separate business newsletter for updates on your business. Decide whether you want to talk about acts of kindness, promote yourself or your achievements, or ask about others. What’s left to discuss? Repairing the house? Choose a topic you want to emphasize that is universal, simple, and about values and commitment or teach a new subject to your readers with universal appeal with which they all can identify.
3. Information: How efficient and effective is your news information? Be informative rather than directive. Present information instead of giving them directions as commands. What are you expert at? What are you beginning to study that eventually you will have acquired expertise? What do you have time to do and write about that is not overwhelming you with overwork?
4. Shorten Text: Use large page margins on your newsletter text. Keep videos to 7 minutes before you break for another topic so viewers can pause. On videos, don’t read from a script. Talk into the camera.
5. Charisma: Be passionate, enthusiastic, and charismatic in your writing. Use humor and jokes in good taste. Use the element of surprise for humor, not disdain. Instead of flat writing, emphasize acts of kindness you and your children have done.
6. Kindness: What behavior helps your writing to be more animated rather than flat in tone and mood or texture? Each act of kindness measures a range of change in your growth. Emphasize the range of change as forward movement. Let your newsletter “pay it forward” as it has been said in support groups, by encouraging readers to keep passing forward the acts of kindness to others as a choice for growth, change, and vision.
7. Balance: Each topic should be equal in length or at least balanced. Don’t write the entire newsletter about one topic and then squeeze in a paragraph on another issue.
8. Relationships: Explain and define who each person is. Put a date on each event or photo along with the name and the relationship. Example: This is a photo of ABCD, my paternal niece taken on July 4, 2006, at the World’s Fair in EFGH, California.
9. Scrapbooks on DVDs: Decide whether you want your newsletter in text and on a CD or DVD or in print/paper/text form with different information from an interview or life story highlights placed on DVDs or CDs that you enclose with the paper newsletter. Or would you send the newsletter as a PDF file by email? A document file? Mailed in an envelope as a paper? Or saved on DVD as text along with video, with the print edition mailed together? Provide formats such that anyone can read the dated information with or without a machine to play the disc.
10.  Time Capsules of Humor: Use uplifting, tasteful jokes, poems, art, video, writing, life story highlights, and volunteer work experiences to connect your extended family to community service which extends your family of humankind’s accomplishments even further. Create an annual time capsule from your conception of an annual family newsletter or video newsletter. The time capsule then becomes an heirloom that can be conserved and preserved for future generations catalogued by year.

What to Include 

Corporate Case Histories and Success Stories or Extended Families’ News: 

      Your family video or print newsletter can be a business that you do for other clients. Decide whether you’d like to do corporate case histories and success stories or family history and genealogy as newsletters either in print and text paper or on DVDs and CDs or all of these for all types of clients-family, corporate, or professional, educational/institutional.

A professional newsletter could focus on a medical or legal practice, for example, or other professional. A business newsletter can emphasize the work of a corporation, its history, or an individual business. One example would be the work of a contractor or developer, architect, or independent teacher, dentist, engineer, computer programmer, artist, musician, author, consultant, or life, job, and image coach.

Family newsletters could reach out to extended families or include alumni reunions, genealogy and DNA-driven family history and ancestry surname groups. You choose your emphasis. Include more types of newsletters, whether DVD or text. 

Here are what to put into your video newsletter

1. Significant events
2. Life stories
3. Travel photos
4. Photos of events such as weddings, graduations, or grand openings
5. News of births or childbirth video clips (leave out the gore)
6. Summaries
7. Jokes
8. Memorabilia and trivia with useful facts, such as statistics
9. Joy of life and fun events
10. Wise sayings and original proverbs or quotes with source of origin
11. Mourning and/or celebration of life events
12. Hobbies, crafts, art, writings, poems
13. Sports enjoyed
14. Reading group: Start a family or corporate book club and discuss reading
15. Old time radio clubs, public domain video, or exchanging gifts of  purchased videos from stores
16. Make your own family videos and exchange them—such as graduations and birthdays
17. Celebrations marking rites of passage, anniversaries, cruises, or other events marking dates
18. Scrap booking or quilting tips for those interested
19. Poems and skits
20. Monologues
21. Genealogy and DNA-driven genealogy reports
22. Food preferences or allergies
23. Reunions and suggesting video conference reunions for those not able to travel
24. Free courses to family members in what you are expert at doing
25. Instruction in putting video on DVDs and CDs for family newsletters or desktop publishing tips for those who want to make their own newsletters
26. Military experiences or war stories
27. Survival stories
28. Computer skill tips
29. Making natural, non-toxic cleaning or bug repellents from household kitchen baking ingredients such as cinnamon, baking soda, vinegar, or cream of tartar
30. Finding hidden markets for bargains of quality at better prices and activities

How Much Time to Spend on Each Newsletter 

If you want to email a newsletter, use a template and follow the template’s guide. It will take you about two hours per issue for a two-page newsletter. Allow yourself an hour per page if you’ve already written the news and just need to cut and paste it from your computer file onto a newsletter template that you can email.

Other choices include writing a newsletter as a personal letter. If you use a newsletter template and print out each copy on your laser printer, it takes about six hours just to write the features for a standard newsletter of multiple pages. If your pages increase to the business type of eight-page newsletter, allow yourself at least one full day’s work. This doesn’t include the time it takes to write the articles.

That’s why putting life stories and memoirs on DVDs or CDs and including them in a little paper or plastic envelope in the newsletter, mailed in a protected, rigid mailer could allow you to summarize the events in the paper newsletter. You’d be brief, and let the speaker on the video tell the story in a half hour or even up to an hour. Remember that talking heads are difficult to pay attention to for more than seven minutes without a break or pause between files to click on. 

How Many Copies? 

Is your annual video and text print newsletter, booklet, or time capsule destined for a small family, extended family, students and teachers, and the archives of a personal history/oral history university library or museum? If you’re sending your newsletter to dozens of people, upload it to the Web and let them download it. Also offer it on a DVD or CD as well as in print as a document that can be emailed as a document file or as a PDF file to be read in Adobe Acrobat software. Readers can download the Adobe Acrobat reader free on the Web at http://www.adobe.com. The software reads PDF files. The good point about PDF files is that you can typeset them like a book or newsletter using your template or saving any document as a PDF file. Otherwise, save your newsletter as a document file.

If you only have a few people to mail to, you can also use a Web site or you can make photo newsletters using an ink jet printer or color copier and mail them as paper newsletters. Include a DVD or CD anyway with talks, life story highlights, or other events that are recorded using video or even audio.

People like to look at other people. For relatives who have disabilities, use the appropriate format—video, audio, or print. For blind relatives, use the services of a Braille transcriber or save the document in a format that can be read on a computer using accessibility technology your relative already has. Ask the person what format he or she prefers in which to receive a document.

If you have too many relatives or clients for the expense of using a color copier for photos, print them out as black and white documents, or print black and white photos on flesh-colored paper. There are such conveniences as pre-printed paper, post card photos, and photos on tee shirts or mugs as gifts.

For short one-page newsletters, you can have newsletters with photos printed on tee shirts and offer them as gifts. Same can be said for framed plaques and other art objects. Poems may be framed.

Short skits and monologues may be put on newsletters ranging from one to eight pages in length. It’s all about your budget. 

Budget 

Email won’t cost you if you’re sending to many people, unless your email service provider charges for bulk email. Send the email one at a time to relatives or clients if you’re using the relatively ‘free’ email you normally use to send memos. Send the email from home, not from work, unless you work for yourself at home.

Post cards would only cost about $20 or less to design, but you’d have to print them out from a computer or send photos to a film developing or digital photography processing company to put on the postcards. It costs about $35 to write a black and white newsletter and print it out to send to a few relatives. Count on about $75 for pre-printed stationary with color print. Talk to printers who do discount or print-on-demand publishing of newsletters. Take a course in desktop publishing at a local adult education center.

Four-page newsletters, the standard in business for corporate case history success stories cost $100 to $200 to prepare. You also need to fold them for mailing with pre-printed stamps or places for stamps to be pasted, and envelopes. If you’re doing an eight-page newsletter, it will cost you more than double because first class postage is limited to one ounce.

Be sure to check with your post office for current newsletter mailing rates. It might be less expensive to put audio or video clips on a CD or DVD. Save the audio as MP3 files to get more talk on one disc. Photos, video, and text can go on any one DVD. Or, with less information, photos, video, and text can be placed on a CD. With DVDs costing only a dollar or so per disc, you might make frequent use of your camcorder by producing an annual newsletter on a DVD or CD in multimedia. Defined, multimedia means photos, video, audio, text, and sounds such as music or talking all can be saved and played on one DVD or CD. You can play the disc on any computer or save it to the type of file that may be played on usual DVD players that play video.

CDs with audio and photos also can be sent as a newsletter along with text saved on the CD or mailed as print or both. If the person doesn’t have a computer at the other end, use paper, but if they have a DVD player, video brings people to life along with text. And video can be played generations after the relatives are gone. That’s why multimedia is a great time capsule. You can capture video, art, photos, text, music, voices, textures, tones, and moods. 

Family Newsletters Are Visual Anthropology: Scrap booking Photos to Video Newsletters 

When you crop, size, or edit photos, you trim them on your computer to fit your print or video newsletter template. Don’t waste space in your newsletter with tiny photos that can’t be seen when printed. Print fewer, but larger photos, and don’t make them so large that you can see the grains. It’s best to use your photo digital imaging software to correct red eye or cut off an object above a head.

 A photo also can be cut with a scissors and pasted on a sheet of paper, then scanned to get rid of plants growing out of a person’s head or other intrusive objects. Use two photos to tell a story. Edit out of a picture too much sky and crop the photo about a quarter inch over everyone’s head and below their feet. It saves space in your newsletter.

Choose your location before gathering the whole family reunion. Have the lighting in place before the people congregate. Don’t keep children waiting while you’re setting up. You can put a short newsletter on reunion tee shirts and photograph the entire group in the same uniform or dress color or historic costume. For effect, if your ancestors arrived in prehistoric times, 1632, or today, you might photograph an entire reunion group of current descendants in costumes of those eras you choose to emphasize if each can afford to make historical wear—or plan unique food and modern dress.

Staging and photographing family or corporate reunions is a hobby or home-based business that may be done for a variety of clients. Photo scrapbooks may be turned into video, slide, and multimedia productions using templates you can buy from a store that sells software and craft or hobby items related to scrap booking or desktop publishing and digital video production.

Whatever you do for family newsletters, the same may be done for owners of pets who want to share in clubs or animal care. An example would be a club for a certain breed of dogs or cat fancier societies.

What’s important with print newsletters, is selecting the weight and feel of the paper. Talk to your local printer about types of paper used in newsletters. You want to communicate also using a type of paper—color, weight, and texture. Choose bright colors or delicate lace watermarks to convey the emotional tone of the newsletter.

Keep the paper light enough to have contrasting letters easy to see. Don’t let the color of the paper distract the reader from the photos and text. Postcards should be heavy enough to pass through the postal machines without tearing.

To send photos with a few paragraphs of news, use a fold over postcard sealed with a tape sticker. Never staple the card. It rips in the postal machinery. Keep the background paper light enough in color to show off the photos and text.

Collect templates. Some templates allow you to handwrite news and photocopy the handwritten messages in templates such as squares or circles placed decoratively on graphic art. Some look like cartoon bubbles for writing dialogue captions.

Some circles let you write one sentence by hand in each circle. You can write six sentences on a page. Or you can reduce the font size and type a sentence in the template then cut and paste the text within the confines of a square or circle.

The templates for handwritten news usually look like a greeting card with art in the center and circles or squares for you to write one sentence inside the dialogue boxes. It resembles a greeting card or coloring book.

Stationary supply, scrap booking stores, and craft shops sell these types of templates for handwritten news. For mailing newsletters, they also can be folded into origami shapes and mailed in round or unusual shaped mailers that conform to postal regulations for mailing. One example would be tube mailers for calendars and posters or round DVD and CD mailers for video newsletters. 

Teachers and Students: Children and the Family Newsletter in the Schools 

Illustrate your newsletters and DVDs with art made by children. If you don’t have children, you can ask to obtain written permission of a school or summer camp to let the class draw pictures of artwork on the theme of family and choose those to illustrate your newsletters or DVDs, including the covers for your DVD inserts.

You might want to visit classrooms or camps and talk to school assemblies on how to put together a family newsletter made by children ranging in grades from elementary through high school on the subject of intergenerational writing and illustration or family reunions and newsletter or DVD video design.

Children can make use of desktop publishing software, camcorders, or handwritten templates for family newsletters and greetings. Talk to local parent and teachers associations or the coordinator of authors in the schools projects in case you want to visit a school to give a talk. Have the children interview one another to create a family newsletter section for children.

Ask for the use of children’s art for illustrating and producing annual family newsletters. The outcome of this as a fresh news angle is that it promotes children’s participation in their own family or extended family traditions by helping them create a family newsletter.

These products can be as simple as using a template for handwritten newsletters to producing a newsletter on computers or using camcorders to create video DVDs of family newsletters for high school or community college students’ projects in digital imaging and desktop publishing. The same may be applied to classes for older adults in genealogy for adult education programs. Use home schooling projects for creating annual family newsletters or digital video time capsules as newsletters.

To help children answer questions for newsletters, hand them a list of questions or ask the questions verbally and give them time to think of answers. Then record the spontaneous answers on audio tape or digitally. Save the answers and then move to doing the same on video after the children have decided what to say and how to answer the questions. Give them time to think of answers they want to see on video. Work with teachers if you want to visit a classroom. Or write easy to understand questions with the help of your own children at home.

Record voices on video and audio. Put the clips into a time capsule which may contain many annual video and print family newsletters. Keep them and save them to your computer and to discs. They can be played when the children are older, provided that you transfer the recordings to more evolved technology as the children grow and the old technology becomes obsolete. Example: phonograph players versus DVD and CD players.

Create newsletters to showcase graduation photos and other school pictures. Use themes and events such as presenting the seasons changes through the eyes of children and older adults. Also see chapter 4 on how to make extended family pop-up newsletters, reports, greeting cards, and books. 

How to Write a Genealogy Course Syllabus

How to Start Personal Histories and Genealogy Journalism Businesses: Genealogy Course Template, Syllabus, Writing & Marketing Guide by Anne Hart Publisher's price: $17.95 Format: Paperback Size : 6 x 9 Pages: 242 ISBN: 0-595-38698-9 Published: Feb-2006   International orders: Call 00-1-402-323-7800

Here’s how to open your own genealogy, family history journalism, or personal history business. This includes a genealogy course template and instruction on how to start and operate a home-based business working with personal and oral histories, genealogy, family history, and life story writing. You also learn how to interview people, what questions to ask, and how to put together a business and/or a course or book on any aspect of genealogy around the world, journalism, writing, personal history, and life story writing.

Start your own course using the genealogy course template to inspire you to develop your own specialties and niche areas. Work with almost any ethnic group, and create businesses ranging from DNA-driven genealogy reporting services to family history, memoirs writing, or personal history videography services.

Use social history to find information such as female ancestors’ maiden names that had not been recorded using hidden and niche areas of information, including ethnic, religious, and institutional sources such as widows’ military pension applications. You’ll learn how to write social history by using genealogy journalism resources, find hidden records, and market your own course or write your book or report in many different areas of personal history and genealogy journalism. Female ancestors’ information also may be found in midwives’ records, journals, or diaries and in later times, in prenatal records books.

Start your own business or set up a course and teach or train others to be genealogists or personal and oral historians. Write for historical, folkloric, or genealogy publications, specializing in writing eulogies for people or pets. Interview friends or family, and write obituaries for publications that have no staff obituary writer on board all the time. Assemble family history time capsules, keepsakes, or courseware and software. Record family history how-to lectures on audio CDs or video DVDs.

Teach life story journalism. Or write life stories as plays and skits. Do research for clients, libraries, and institutions. Learn what is appropriate to charge clients for personal history, genealogy research, or life story recording and writing services.

 Make family tree charts with software or craft them in scrap books. Learn how to be an independent documentarian. Produce video and audio recordings such as DVDs for your clients or family. Develop genealogy and personal history classes anywhere. You’ll make history. To start, first you need to create a course syllabus-either to teach beginners genealogy or to train professionals in other fields to use personal history techniques to find hidden information, or organize information for the reports you generate for your clients or family. Start your own business, club, franchise, or course.

One of the best ways to publicize and market your genealogy course and/or family history instructional book is to write a syllabus. Teach an online or in-person course related to the topic of your book. Require students to purchase the book. Teach the contents of the book in a how-to course. What’s your hobby or field of expertise? My usual full-time working day emphasizes genealogy journalism and personal history research. My hobby combines visual anthropology and producing, viewing, and reviewing documentaries.

If your field relates to personal history or genealogy, here’s how to write a syllabus to teach online (or in person) a genealogy course. You can train or teach at a variety of levels.

Starting your own classes and reserving a conference room in a library, church social hall, or community center don’t require degrees or credentials, only expertise. Nothing lets you learn a subject better than if you have to teach it to beginners. If you don’t like teaching face-to-face or training employees in a work setting, teach online from your Web site. Or apply to teach a course in something you can do well at online educational sites such as blackboard.com. Read online education publications such as the Virtual U Gazette. Check out GetEducated.com at: http://www.geteducated.com/vug/index.asp.

 You learn more from your students’ feedback than you ever learned from books in a variety of areas related to writing and publishing. The first step is to write a great syllabus that convinces others to hire you to teach a subject related to the information in your book. This technique works well with nonfiction, how-to or self-help books.

 If your book is a novel, your course syllabus might emphasize plotting the novel or marketing and promotion. To sell your book in this type of class, you’d use each chapter to teach how to write “tag lines,” emotions and behaviors in a novel, or portions of your novel as tools for fiction writers in the genre of your book—such as plotting the mystery or romance novel.

You’d use passages to teach consistency and transitions that move the plot forward and show how the characters grow and change or the romantic tension. A similar technique of “teaching the process” would be used if you wrote plays, poetry, or cinematic scripts. A syllabus helps you get hired and/or to recruit students so you can sell your book and teach a class or train a group of people either online or in person.

You can adapt this syllabus plan and format to the subject of your book in nearly any field. Instead of ‘genealogy,’ just substitute the concept and framework of your own book. Here’s how to write a syllabus.

A short course may be taught online or arranged in any room available from a church basement to a library conference room. A seminar can last a few hours. A lengthy course can be planned for an entire semester at any level in adult education, for college extended studies programs, or at community centers. You need experience in your area of expertise, and a published book helps your credibility. If you’re teaching a course in a community college or university for college credit you’d need a graduate degree. For public school you’d also need a teaching credential unless your expertise level is the equivalent. Teaching vocational education and using your book as instructional text is more flexible. You can teach in the extended studies (not for credit) department of universities and community colleges based on experience. Credentials in your field of work are helpful to get you hired, but without them, start your own course online or from an available room.

You can share a rented room to teach the course with other trainers or teachers. Least expensive is to teach at your Web site and sell your book online to students. At the end of the course, give them a certificate in the subject you’ve taught related to your book. Require students to buy your book, and use it throughout the course.

One of the easiest ways to get hired to teach a course is to offer one in genealogy and/or personal history, if you have done your research on how genealogists find their information. Since you have written a book, can you now call yourself an expert?

If genealogy, personal history, oral history, social history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, creative writing, early handwriting, or journalism interests you, a beginner’s course in genealogy attracts people interested in where their ancestors came from and how they lived, ate, and played. Classes often fill up quickly.

People like to take courses where they can learn about themselves and their families’ life styles. Genealogy courses work well online, at social, ethnic, and religious clubs, and at senior centers. So here’s how to begin writing a syllabus for a genealogy course.

Your first genealogy course syllabus expands the four keys of genealogy research: identity, name, date information was recorded, locality, and kinship. How you organize, edit, and write a genealogy course syllabus often determines whether you’ll be hired to teach a course in genealogy for beginners.

If you’re a genealogist or want to promote your genealogy-oriented book or journalistic skills, teach a course in genealogy. Genealogy courses rely on verifiable details. Accidental or intentional alterations by scribes can dramatically affect information. Courses that go on year after year are evaluated by students as excellent.

Genealogists are concerned about accurate reproduction of texts or entry of information. For generations, most public family history entries were hand copied by government record clerks, clergy, and scribes deeply influenced by cultural, political, and theological disputes of their day.

Your syllabus can help students look for mistakes and intentional changes in surviving records. Can the original names be reconstructed? Genealogy course content also includes the social history of where and why these changes were made and how family historians go about reconstructing what might be the original names, relationships, and records as closely as possible.

Use your syllabus as a tool to outline your course. Students want an easy-to-follow syllabus. The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word ‘syllabus’ as an outline of a course of study. It’s a table of contents with a schedule of topics, not a book proposal.

Your syllabus also needs to cover how to find records of hard-to-trace people, such as clergy. How would you direct students who want to trace nuns, priests, ministers, or rabbis?

Genealogy courses given in churches’ social halls sometimes attract those who want to trace difficult-to-find genealogy records of clergy. Old books make excellent genealogy sources. Other primary sources to trace clergy or religious educators include College Alumni Records , The Clergy Lists , Crockford's Directories , Fasti Ecclesiae, Anglicanae, Parish Registers, Bishop's Records, Censuses, and County Directories.

What you need to organize before teaching courses in genealogy journalism

1. How to design and write family history newsletters--or teach others to do the same.

2. How much time to spend letting each student talk about the work they have done during the week--depending upon how many students you have in class.
3. How to organize family history files.
4. How to break topics into memoirs or biographies (family or clients).
5. How to keep organized and accessible research files
6. How to write inquiries and queries by email and letter.
7. How to abstract and transcribe basics.
8. How to write client or family research reports and summaries.
9. How to write personal use research reports and summaries
10. How to make time capsules.
11. How to put historical context into essays, numbering formats and citation formats.
12. How to compile and send family newsletters.
13. How to prepare to write a family history or genealogy-related book.
14. How to publish and promote a family history or genealogy book.
15. How to incorporate research

 GENEALOGY COURSE SYLLABUS TEMPLATE  

A genealogy course syllabus for beginners includes answers to one of the most frequently asked questions: How do you find female ancestors and solve identity problems when maiden surnames didn’t appear on the death certificates? Before you try to organize and write a syllabus, first list topics you’ll cover in your syllabus. 

Planning Your Syllabus

List all obvious items. Keep this list next to your blank syllabus page. Then list items often omitted from a syllabus for a beginning course in genealogy. Compare your syllabus with other genealogy course outlines that have received great student evaluations. Your clue is whether the course is repeated year after year. There are several copyrighted genealogy course outlines on the Internet to peruse. Use them only for comparison and motivation. Keep your syllabus unique to your own course. Make a list of resources to be used in your own course before you begin writing your syllabus. 

Resources List

Social History (brief)

Genealogy sources created by women:

Diaries, journals, letters, postcards, family Bibles, heirlooms, artifacts, oral history, legislative petitions, atypical sources, published family histories, cemetery records, tombstone inscriptions or rubbings, church records, censuses, military records, hospitals, orphanages, institutions, sanitariums, passenger arrival lists, city directories, notaries’ records, voter lists/registrations, pensions, widows’ pension applications/civil war, orphans and guardianship records, land records, marriage records, medical records, Eugenics Record Office, (ERO), social data, midwives’ journals, doctors’ journals, asylums, divorce records, wills, probate, court records, school records, ethnic sources, codicils, ethnic/religious hospital records, naturalization laws. 

            After you compile this list, put it aside to refer to as you write your syllabus. Begin outlining the syllabus by starting with the course information, instructor information, text or reading materials, course descriptions, course calendar or schedule, and references or bibliography.

 Each category would get a one or two-sentence description summarizing what will be covered in the course and what assignments are required of students. Keep your syllabus short— about three pages or less. The syllabus in a semester-long college level, 3-unit genealogy course meant for beginners and taught online or in person would look like this in its layout:  

                                                Syllabus

Course Number/Title: Genealogy and Family History 1

Name of School or College

Year and Month:

Department:

Credit Hours 3

Required Text

Days/Time

Instructor

Location

Prerequisite: None

Course Placement: Adult Education, Extended Studies, Community College, University Undergraduate level. 

Overview

In Genealogy 1, students will learn special strategies for uncovering hard-to-find information about their ancestors. By the end of this course, students will become more versatile in using interdisciplinary skills for researching family and social history resources. 

Course Description

Genealogy 1 is an introductory course in family and personal history research methods that includes learning interviewing and recording skills. This survey course covers the strategies of genealogical research in North America and introduces the student to the techniques of genealogical research around the world. Students able to read other languages may work on genealogical records in other languages if they can translate their findings, projects, or assignments to the class in English.  

Research Methods

Students are introduced to a survey of all the methods used to identify individuals and their ancestors, including paper records, online searches, surname groups online, and DNA-driven genealogy resources.  

Learning Objectives for Genealogy 1

At the end of this course, students will have learned the following skills: 

1.      Students will be able to research the following resources: 

Original records

Family histories

Church records

Censuses

Passenger Arrival Lists

City directories

Family history libraries and genealogy sections of public and university libraries

Voter lists and registrations

Military records and pensions, widows’ pensions

Land records and notary records

Marriage records

Medical records

Divorce records

Ethnic women and men

              African American

              Native American

              Jewish American

              European Immigrants

              Chinese and Japanese Immigrants in California 

2.      Methods for determining maiden names.

3.      Solving identity problems in genealogy research

4.      Methods for identifying women (midwives’ records)

5.      Genealogy as social history

a.       child bearing and raising in genealogy research

b.      children born out of wedlock and genealogy research

c.       women’s work and genealogy records,

d.      property tax records

e.       religion and genealogy information

f.        women’s reform movements, rights, and genealogy records

g.       merging social and family history in genealogy research

h.       documenting your own ancestor’s history

6.      Unpublished Genealogy Sources

7.      Published Genealogical Sources

8.      How to research population schedules

9.      Probate and court records

10.  Slave genealogy and schedules

11.  Social history research and biographies

12.  Property, Inheritance, Naturalization and Divorce laws for genealogists

13.  Widows’ pensions and applications-Acts and Laws, survey

14.  DNA-driven genealogy, methods, resources, matrilineal and patrilineal research, surname groups and genetics associations

15.  Online research resources

16.  Checklist for genealogy research

17.  Genealogical case studies

18.  Articles and Bibliography

19.  National Archives and Genealogy Research

20.  How to read abstracted records

21.  How to find and read microfilms and microfiche records

22.  Military pensions—records in the National Archives

23.  Searching records of the Veterans Administration

24.  Published indexes to pension files and other aids

25.  Genealogy journalism methods—interviewing and recording

26.  Oral history, video and audio recording—what questions to ask. 

How Students will apply the newly learned genealogy research skills: 

1. Use the methods of scientific genealogical research.
2. Establish lines of descent for the person or family you select and develop a pedigree chart or family history tree of names and critical dates such as birth, marriage, and death for each ancestor on the family tree and/or pedigree chart.
3. Organize genealogy records.
4. Interview and record relatives or selected persons.
5. Research the past.
6. Use online technology to research or supplement written records and develop a pedigree chart or family tree.

Six Assignments and Projects: Due by End of 12-Week Course. (Insert Specific Due Dates) One assignment is due every two weeks. 

1. Write a publishable 1,000-word researched family history/genealogy article and submit it to a publication.
2. Develop a list of 30 to 60 questions (chosen from a list of suggested questions to ask from the handout) to ask another person during a genealogy-oriented or life story-oriented personal or family history recorded interview.
3. Interview using critical and creative thinking skills one or more older adults and record on audio or video tape a half-hour to one-hour life story experience to submit to an oral history archive library. Obtain a signed release form from all persons interviewed to send the recording to an oral history library. Give all persons interviewed copies of the interview recorded on tape or disc, such as a CD or DVD.
4. Use written records and online resources/technology relevant to your personal interests or selected discipline. Genealogy has several areas of emphasis including archival records research, oral history, personal history, family history, video biography/life story recording, and DNA-driven genealogy/genetics for ancestry.
5. Understand opportunities, skills, and requirements for genealogy journalism and publishing concentrations.
6. Research the diversity of cultures in North America and other countries as related to how genealogy records have been maintained.
7. Find several new or hidden ways to find genealogy information on females whose maiden names (surnames) were not recorded in the usual records such as censuses and city directories. How would you find birth certificates of women?

Course Competencies: 

1.      Learn how to perform scientific genealogical research.

2.      Fill out and expand a pedigree chart and family tree--first by hand and then using technology or genealogy software.

3.      Collect sources and resource information and organize the sources using records, legacies, diaries, letters, or journals.

4.      Understand the value of journaling and archiving journals, letters, and diaries.

5.      Read an article on how to restore old diaries and photos.

6.      Write and record as audio or video a life story to keep for future generations or to put in a time capsule. One copy would be text for reading and another recorded in any format, including text and photos, audio or video. Be aware technology changes, and a text copy on acid-free paper is required just in case the recorded format can no longer play.

7.      Learn how to correspond with relatives or friends and what questions to ask when asking for genealogical information.