CALIOPOLIS

Here is another podcast of a presentation given at Subtech 2006 in Oslo, Norway on Friday, June 20, 2006.

The speakers were Paul Maharg, Pat McKellar, Sefton Bloxham and Karen Barton.

The title of the presentation was "Current E-learning Projects, and Also a ‘state ofplay’ Presentation: Overview of What’s Happening in the UK Currently as Regards Legal Education, and Where the Possible Futures of the Discipline Lie".

The powerpoints for the presentation are here.

Paul Maharg blogs about it here.

From the viewpoint of this American, the Brits are doing amazing things with technology that is deeply relevant and intelligently driven by the pedagogy in legal education. There is almost too much information to absorb here.

I refer you to the following for more information…

• Ardcalloch Virtual Town for Legal Education
• Siberdam (Dutch Ardcalloch) project- slideshow here (in Dutch)
• Using e-portfolios in legal education
• LUVLE – Lancaster University’s Virtual Learning Environment
• Zeugma – Paul Maharg’s (and soon others) who blog on legal education and technology in the UK.

This podcast is 55 minutes and 19 seconds long.

Click the link to listen or right click to download the MP3 – MahargMcKellarBloxhmaBarton.mp3

Here is the first of several podcasts from Subtech 2006 conference that I attended in Oslo, Norway this past week.

Tom Bruce, Director of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell gave a talk that was was insightful and probing and wickedly funny. At one point he played a Flash animation that must be experienced to be understood – link here.

This podcast is 31 minutes long.

To listen in your browser, click the link or right-click to download the MP3 – TomBruceSubtech2006.mp3

As part of a workshop I ran with Deb Quentel at Subtech2006 in Oslo, Norway, I had participants interview each other on the topic of "Lessons Learned using ICT in Legal Education". This admittedly broad subject lent itself to telling stories that could cover a wide swath of subjects and the podcasts I will be posted indicate this. These "interviews" were unscripted and off-the-cuff and the room was rather noisy with half-a-dozen interviews going on at the same time. First lesson about podcasting to learn – find a quiet space. I could not post some of the recordings do to the ambient noise making the subjects voices almost unintelligible.

This is first of several podcasts and is the interview between Professor Paul Maharg of the University of Strathclyde (Paul blogs here) and Professor Peter Martin of Cornell Law School. Peter is a co-founder of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell.

This discussion between Martin and Maharg is 12 minutes long.

Here is the link to the podcast. Click to listen or right-click to download – Maharg_Martin_Interview.mp3

I remixed the audio with a screencast of my keynote presentation at the 2006 CALI Conference to create a screencast that introduces a new project that CALI is launching this summer called eLangdell. There isn’t a website just yet (we do have the domain registered, but it’s merely parked for now), but there will be more news about this trickling out over the coming weeks.

Here’s the link to the screencast (45 minutes).

This screencast, lays out the foundational thinking that goes into why we are launching this project. It’s 45 minutes long and should be playable in any browser or OS.

Feel free to leave comments with your reactions. We are just getting started and we are anxious to involve the entire community of legal education in this project.

I am off to Oslo, Norway next week to attend Subtech and one of the things I offered to do was to explain the rise of new 3D virtual worlds like Second Life to Norwegian law professors. I don’t have much time and I was fortunate to find a couple of excellent and professionally produced videos that will do the trick.

The first is from the New Media Consortium and its a promotional video for the NMC’s virtual campus inside Second Life, but in five minutes it does decent justice to the things that are possible (at this time) using Second Life as an educational platform. I highly recommend it.

Here’s the link.

The second is a music video that was produced using Second Life as the production location. This is an amazing and emotional piece of work that you have to watch to appreciate. It is called Better Life.

Click to play the video via YouTube.com.

Fascinating video of a prototype the BumpTop 3D desktop PC interface. I really like the feel that this implies and after watching it several times, it really starts to dissolve the line between real and virtual. I want these capabilities on my REAL desk now.

The Plain Dealer in Cleveland reports that Judge James Kimbler is posting videos of sentencing hearings on YouTube.com.

Most people and probably a lot of law students have very little experience with what happens inside of courtrooms. Their experience is mostly taken from Law & Order episodes and these don’t really reflect the reality of law practice.

I have always thought that it makes good sense for law students to spend some time in a courtroom watching a case and pulling the documents from PACER to understand how cases are prosecuted, defended and litigated.

I also think that videos like these might be valuable to the millions of people who represent themselves pro se. The problem is that every case is different and it is difficult (though not impossible) to draw conclusions that are specific to your case. Most lawyers will tell you that it is downright dangerous and that you should get a lawyer to represent you if you are in legal trouble. Despite this, many folks cannot or do not obtain legal representation.

The internet is the great leveler and knowledge, experience and advice about everything is available – even legal advice (though it is illegal or improper to give legal advice unless you are the lawyer reprsenting the client). This does not stop people from telling stories or providing their own experiences.

What these videos need is more context. What was the crime? What was the evidence?

Supposedly, much of this information is public record, but so much of law practice is not in the coutroom or on the record. It’s much more subtle and complex than that.

This is legal education of a sort and the fact that bandwidth and diskspace are practically free means that the next hurdle is to provide relevant context so that the right education happens and so that the problem of ‘a little knowledge is dangerous’ is mitigated for the viewing, pro se public.

Orin Kerr points to a recent article from Professor Erica Hashimota at the University of Georgia available at SSRN from which I offer this intriquing quote…

"…In the study, which is scheduled to be published in the North CarolinaLaw Review, Hashimoto found that pro se felony defendants in statecourts were as likely as defendants with counsel to win completeacquittal. In addition, they were more likely to be convicted of lesseroffenses – misdemeanors rather than felonies, according to Hashimoto’sreview of data, a sample from the National Archive of Criminal JusticeData that covers the country’s 75 largest counties in the even yearsbetween 1990 and 1998…."

What does this say for lawyer representation?

I have said in several presentations that "Everyone is a Lawyer" because our system permits us all to represent ourselves, but it is very difficult to do so because the nature of law and our system make it difficult to do so. Despite this, it appears that many people are succeeding at least as well as lawyers in their own representation.

More to say on this in the future and how it involves CALI.

What are the career prospects for an IT Professional in education?

Maybe this book will answer that question and many others. From the blurb…

"…provides an overview of current principles and practices for mentoringand developing the next generation of IT leaders in higher education.Edited by EDUCAUSE Vice President Cynthia Golden and written by topleaders in the industry who have distinguished themselves and theirorganizations for sharpening others’ skills, institutional savvy, andability to lead, the book’s chapters are organized into two sections: the organizational perspective and the individual perspective. …."

The entire book is available online in PDF or HTML format here.

There are also audio interviews (we call them podcasts in these parts) with various CIOs from over half-a-dozen universities and community colleges (none from law schools) here.

I have some extensive travel to be doing and will report back as I read.

Read along with me.

I gave the opening keynote at the 2006 Conference for Law School Computing yesterday. Here is the powerpoint deck from the presentation.

1759-JohnMayerThursdayPlenaryFINAL.ppt (17 MB)

Here is a link to a WMV video of the presentation.

Here is a link to an MP3 of the presentation.

Update: Tom Boone at UNLV Boyd School of Law provides an excellent precis here.

This is an podcast interview in our continuing series of podcast interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project this past semester (Spring or Winter) of 2006.

Professor Robin Craig of the University of Indiana-Indianapolis School of Law recorded the classroom for her Property II course.

The podcast can be found here – click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 – robincraig2.mp3