Week 4 - Family History course

Well, week 4 was not the best week of my life.  I have torn something with a long name in my knee, so can't even walk without a walking stick.  So it was doctors, MRI's and more doctors for me this week.  To top it all off it was the worst birthday I think I have ever had because all I could do is hobble about the house!

So, to uni, I found this week quite straight forward and quite easy, focused on conducting your research.  Some of the information came from a book by Barry J. Ewell  - and this created a lot of controversy as he has been taken to court by Cyndi Howell of Cyndi’s List for plagiarism. Just google genealogy and plagiarism and you will find out more.  Recently he has had a couple of books where he  used other people's work taken off Amazon. Not a good look for the course co-ordinator. 

I know some of the people on the course have found the Uni of Tas learning site (MyLO)  quite difficult to learn and that must be very frustrating.  Perseverance is the answer, and experimentation, after all you cannot really break anything.

I have also enrolled in the course Genealogy: Researching Your Family Tree at the

University of Strathclyde and will do a wrap up of the course one I finish it.  So far though, it seems pitched more at the level I wanted.

 But back to week 4 of Family History at the Uni of Tas, the steps for conducting research included in the course are:

1. Write down what you know
2. Decide what you want to learn
3. Choose a record or source of information
4. Obtain and search the record
5. Use and record what you have learned

There was information about evaluating records, what is a repository, commonly used word abbreviations on charts, using Ancestry, how to reference correctly (for this course),and then a case study for everyone to comment on.  The case study was interesting, but difficult to discuss anything new after one or two people had posted.  It involved evaluating an obituary from the newspaper, then posting one of your own obits.  A quick online quiz and I was done.  Overall I found this week very easy.