CALIOPOLIS

The Michigan State Board of Education is set to approve a new graduation requirement today that would require every high-school student in the state to take at least one online course before receiving a diploma.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: ‘The Cutting Edge’?

This proposal has a few hurdles to clear, but it certainly highlights the trend toward moving more education online.

technorati tags: distance education

I found myself catching up on a bunch of blog articles that I had checked and not read over the past month. There were over 30 of them and it took a diligent 2 hours to read through them all.

Some were interesting enough to tag in my del.icio.us account and others I emailed to staff or friends to look at.

I’m exhausted.

I also downloaded a bunch of podcasts so that I can listen to themas I walk the dog all next week, but downloading podcasts sometimestakes a long time on my DSL. I could wait until I get into work wherethe connection is faster, but, well, I took a break to make somecoffee.

Then I started into old emails that needed to be filed, answered, deleted, etc.

I’m really getting tired.

Finally,I went to the several blogs that I adminster (including this one) anddeleted the p0rn comment spam that is starting to show up. I know thatsoon we will have a way to deal with this, but in the meantime, I needto be diligent (there’s that word again) so that my "space" does notlook like a brothel.

I didn’t have any time this weekend to getout with friends, go Christmas shopping or call my family. I was toobusy managing my social connections on the Web. I am experiencingsocial software fatigue or SSFS for short (the last "S" is for syndromesince everything seems to be a mental illness these days.

SSFSis when you spend more time managing your connections than makingconnections with real people and real friends. You know it’s especiallybad when you spend MORE time managing than living. It’s kind of likespending more time washing your car than driving it, but even that’snot a very good analogy.

Doubtless, this will all get easier asthe tools converge and things become more convenient (or my friendsstop calling), but in the meantime, I am thinking of looking for a SSFS12 step program.

Lessee,

My name is John Mayer and I am a SSFaholic.

HI JOHN!!!

Would someone please intervene.

Duke University has discovered that iPods are a hit in class. A year after the university gave all freshman students the little white music players, the number of students using iPods for class work has quadrupled, and the number of courses incorporating iPods has doubled, the university announced.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Invasion of the iPod People

Article includes this link to the list of Spring 2006 course that will be making use of iPod technologies, though, the page notes, not all course will require student use of iPods.  Of note, no law courses are listed.

technorati tags: ipod, Duke University

The Emory Wheel Online reports that Emory University chemistry professor Justin Gallivan is offering enhanced podcasts of his chemistry classes available free via iTunes.

Thomson Peterson’s–Syndication for Higher Ed–Emory Chemistry Professor Offers Enhanced Podcasts

Not in the law school, but close. Good article that highlights the benefits of podcasting as a supplement for students who still attend class regularly. Article makes it clear that listening to podcasts is not a substitute for actually attending lectures.

technorati tags: podcast, education, Emory

California recently adopted a law that stiffens data-security requirements for academic researchers who work with confidential information about human subjects. Some observers predict that other states will follow suit. (The Chronicle, subscription required)

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Safeguards for Personal Data

This new law covers data provided by state agencies to non-profit research orgainzations including universities for academic research.  Other states are likely to follow.

PennTags lets you organize and share your bookmarks. You can use the UPennToolbar or the PennTags Bookmarklet to post websites into your tagspace.

PennTags /

This is intriguing.  A local social tagging effort aimed at gathering the collected bookmarks of UPenn together in one tagging space.  Seems to focus on academia for the moment, so it is bit like gathering up the collective web research of the community.  CALI has an interest in this sort of tagging effort with a pilot law school directory based on Scuttle, and it is easy to see it expanded into something like this.  Imagine all of the bookmarks of legal scholars across the country.

technorati tags: scuttle, tagging, law schools

excited utterances has this great list of conferences, worldwide, that focus on legal technology and knowledge management:

technorati tags: km, legal tech, legal km, knowledge management

Slashdot is discussing wi-fi access in the college classroom in an article ominously titled…Is Wi-Fi Ruining College?

Here’s an interesting solution that is likely to have some traction with law faculty…

"…I’m a student at Harvard Business School, where they have a fairlyinteresting solution for handling this problem. While every campusbuilding has wireless access, all the access points in the classroombuildings require a web based log-in that checks your student ID versusyour class schedule. If you’re scheduled to be in class at that moment,you are denied wireless access to the internet (in any classroombuilding)…"

We’ve heard all the discussion on both sides of this…

• If students are paying, that’s their problem,
• If faculty are boring, students will not pay attention anyway,
• Students could doodle or do crossword puzzles,
• Faculty should make the classroom more intereactive and interesting,
• The web is a seductive, shiny thing and no one could help themselves checking their email,
• There are valid educational uses for accessing the web inside the classroom like…
• Students looking up things that the instructor is talking about to better understand the material,
• Studenst IMing each other with the answers when one is called upon,
• Faculty integrating websites, research, etc into the classroom time,
• Students use their PCs to take notes, so you can’t refuse them access to their PCs,
• Eventually, it will be impossible to block network access via cell phones, PDAs, mesh networks, wi-fi max, wi-fi muni, etc.

Here’s a thought experiment. If a student did not attend any classes and still can get a ‘A’ in the course, does that negate the need for the classroom time?

Let me pose this thought experiment more generally (I did this at the CODEC workshop last April). If students are willing to pay the full tuition and they prove that they can pass the bar exam, would you ‘sell’ them their degree?

In case it is not obvious, I am asking whether law schools are selling education or a credential and whether students are buying an education or a credential.

I think the answer is both, but I know that schools place a lot of weight on student bar passage rates and quite a few schools are developing their own non-credit bar review courses to bring these numbers up. Is this just a natural manifestation of the disconnect between legal education and bar exam passage?

11/20/2006 – Update – Tipping Education’s Sacred Cow: Reconsidering the Lecture

This blogpost considers whether lectures can be replaced by "coursecasts" where the student can pause and take notes, etc.

Why not do it both ways? Faculty can continue to deliver the live lectures and archive the video and audio for students to re-visit later. I don’t think that the synchronous, live class meeting will go away, but it could be improved.

Coursecasts/podcasts/CALI lessons could cover doctrine and the live class could be interactive, socratic and discussion-oriented. Bligh says that lectures have limited capacity to deliver information and almost no ability to change attitudes or opinions. It is discussion with others that engages the student mind. Expect a future article on deconstructing the lecture.

A study by the Sloan Consortium found that a growing number of colleges are putting online more of the courses that they offer in a face-to-face setting. The consortium, an organization that promotes standards for online learning, found that more than three out of five institutions offering face-to-face undergraduate or graduate courses offer them at the same level online. The survey also revealed that more college officials see distance learning as crucial to their long-term strategies. The survey can be found at the Sloan Consortium Web site.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Online Options

This trend will catch up with law schools in the near future.  CALI‘s work with CODEC and Classcaster is intended to bring awareness about and tools for online education to law schools.  You can download the complete text of the study here.

technorati tags: CALI, Classcaster, CODEC, distance education

In an announcement about Google Base on the company’s blog, CollegeBoard.com is listed as one of the first users of the service. The service has a section for "course descriptions" and another on "education."

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Google Helps Students Search for Colleges

Well, this is interesting. A lot of the content in ‘course descriptions’ is from the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative. It is easy to see CALI adding Lessons here, even our subject outlines. I do wonder how this will be integrated into the regular Google results.

technorati tags: CALI, Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, Google base, distance education