Got 12 Hours of Genealogy Continuing Education in 2022? - Mon, 9 Jan 2023

I’ve been a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) for 10 years now, since 2013. I don’t take clients but use my membership to add a bit more credence to my genealogy activities, software development and speaking engagements.

Many professional organizations in a variety of fields require a number of hours of Continuing Education. This is some form of learning in order to keep up-to-date with the new trends in your field, or just to brush up on the information you know but have “forgotten” because it’s been so long since you learned or used it.

Up to now, I do not remember the APG ever enforced a Continuing Education requirement. To my surprise, I received an email a few days ago from them:

They also included a link to the online form to self-report as well to a page with Continuing Education FAQ.

My Hours

So that got me wondering. How many hours did I spend in 2022 on what would be considered Genealogy Continuing Education? Time to total things up:

Webinars - Total 17 hours:

• Jan 9 - 1 hour - Finding Your Jewish Documents in the Ukrainian Archives - Alex Krakovsky
• Feb 27 - 1 hour - Navigating Your Jewish DNA Results - Adina Newman
• Mar 3 - 1 hour - MyHeritage New Releases: Timeline & FamilySearch  Syncing - Daniel Horowitz
• Mar 17 - 1 hour - All About GEDCOM - Lisa Louise Cooke
• Apr 7 - 1 hour - What’s New in Jewish Genealogy 2022 - Ellen Kowitt
• Apr 7 - 1 hour - Confirming Smart Matches and Record Matches at MyHeritage - Moshe Etlis
• May 4 - 1 hour - Quickly Organize Your DNA Matches with the Leeds Method - Dana Leeds
• May 15 - 1 hour - Jewish Genealogy Facebook Groups - A Panel Discussion - MN Jewish Gen Society
• May 22 - 1 hour - 5 Things to Know About Metadata - Maureen Taylor & Permanent.org
• Jun 1 - 1 hour - Tips and Tricks for Navigating JewishGen
• Jul 6 - 1 hour - What’s New at DNAPainter - Jonny Perl
• Jul 12 - 1 hour - Exploring Your Ethnicities on MyHeritage - Gal Zrihen
• Sep 2 - 1 hour - Changing Places, Changing Borders, Overcoming geographic challenges - Dave Obee
• Sep 12 - 1 hour - Family Tree Maker - Mark Olsen
• Sep 15 - 1 hour - Planning and Preserving Your Digital Legacy - Maureen Taylor & Permanent.org
• Dec 9 - 1 hour - Trendy Tech Tools for Your Research Yay or Nay? - Cyndi Ingle
• Dec 14 - 1 hour - DNA and Endogamy: Making Sense When Your Matches Don’t Make Sense - Adina Newman

Courses / Workshops (Online) - Total 6 hours:

• Feb 23 - 1.5 hour - How to Read and Interpret Russian Birth-Marriage-Death Records - JGS Toronto
• Apr 3 - 4.5 hours - Jewish Roots in Ukraine: Context and Connection - NYG&B

Conferences (Online) - Total 15 hours:

1. Mar 3 to 5 - 5 hours - RootsTech 2022
• Family Search GEDCOM 7 (3 talks) - Gordon Clarke
• Visual Phasing (5 talks) - Tanner Blair Tolman
• DNA Painter Part 3: The Inferred Segment Generator - Tanner Blair Tolman
• How to Know if a Matching DNA Segment is Maternal or Paternal - Nichole Dyer
• Piling on the chromosomes - Debbie Kennett
• Best Foot Forward - Family Photos (2 talks) - Nancy Lora Desmond and Maureen Taylor
• What’s New/Coming on FamilySearch.org (3 talks) - Ron Tanner
• What Can I Do With Ancestral DNA (3 talks) - Roberta Estes
• Overview of HAPI-DNA.org - Amy Williams
• Genealogy Youtubers Live Panel
2. Aug 20 - 4 hours - Genetic Genealogy Jamboree - SCGS
• Keynote - Johnny Perl
• Rewriting History with DNA: How DNA Testing Affects Our Identify - Diahan Southard
• When Enough is Enough - Judy G Russell
• The Basics of Unknown Parentage Searches with DNA - Kitty Munson Cooper
3. Nov 5 - 6 hours - WikiTree Day  
• Being a Good Genealogy Partner - Melanie McComb
• Finding Ancestors Without Going in Circles - Amy Johnson Crow
• The Puzzle of Genealogy - AJ Jacobs
• The Future of Genealogy Panel
• Internet Archive - A Genealogist’s Gold Mine - Thomas MacEntee
• Getting Started with Borland Genetics - Kevin Borland

So in summary, during 2022, I watched 17 hours of educational webinars, took a course and workshop totalling 6 hours, and spent 15 hours at 3 online conferences.

That’s 38 hours in total.

So now it’s time for me to self-report my hours.

How much time did you spend in 2022 improving your genealogy knowledge?