The purpose of this first lesson was to determine a little about your previous genealogy experience.  Don't worry if you feel you cannot answer all the questions with lists of sources and repositories.  That will come.  Pages 1-4 through 1-17 were preassessment exercises for you.  Hopefully you are in the class in which you want to be enrolled, and you are not too advanced to move on with the rest of the group.

It is time to begin to gather your family records. If you don't know how to start, make a telephone tree. Start with your parents. Call them and ask them to tell you other people in the family who might have information. If they aren't very responsive, don't despair, everyone has different interests and this might not be theirs.

Think about cousins. Can you call any of them? How about aunts, uncles, grandparents. If you have e-mail and so do they, you can save lots of money. Personal visits, telephone calls, and e-mail messages elicit the fastest responses.

Follow that up with a letter on your personal computer thanking them for their help and offering to share what you learn in the future. Then begin to organize your information as indicated in Assignment One on page 1-20.

You'll actually be given two weeks to do this assignment. One week to gather the information, and another to organize it.

By the way, your instructor is interested in your computer skills. Will you help out by filling in the response to the questions asked in this week assignment? In the future, various computer programs and techniques for their use in order to accomplish assignments will be introduced in these lessons.

You will not be graded on your ability to master a genealogy computer program in this class, but you will receive instructions on what to watch for in good programs and you are free to use the ones you like best. It is a good time to experiment with them and ask your fellow students what they like about their computer programs.