CALIOPOLIS

News of BlackBoard’s pledge is still pinballing around the blogpsphere. I subscribe to a stored search for the term ‘blackboard patent’ and it retrieves dozens of blog posts every day since they made the Pledge. The great majority of these posts have not been positive or grateful to BlackBoard.

I have really been trying to get my head around this whole quagmire that BlackBoard is in. Clearly they did not expect the storm of response that they got from the patent. Perhaps they were hoping for a quick settlement with Desire2Learn? If not, then Plan B surely has to be making them re-think this strategy.

On the plus side, they have a patent. It took them 6 years and probably a hundred thousand dollars in legal costs, but they got it.

On the minus side, they have a whole bunch of people – many of them their customers – real upset with them.

They have the largest consortium of higher education institutions telling them to just drop it.

They have a lawsuit that is going to cost 7 figures before its over and it might result in an invalidated patent. Imagine the blogstorm after that! I gotta believe that the accountants weren’t consulted on this one.

They have emboldened a competitor and given them untold free, positive press. Before this lawsuit, I had hardly ever heard of Desire2Learn.

They have poked a stick at the larger open source community and woken the GPL giant in the manifestation of Professor Eben Moglen. Take a listen to Eben’s lunchtime remarks and you realize that he is not going to back down one iota. He cannot be bluffed or bought. He is your worst legal nightmare – a lawyer with a cause and a law professor with all the time in the world to devote to it.

Let’s say they win this patent suit.

They either put D2L out of business or they force a hefty payment/royalty. If they make it too hefty, D2L will declare bankruptcy and all of their customers will rush into BlackBoard’s loving arms …. uh …. I don’t think so.

An now the Pledge which is the biggest boon to open source LMSes since the Internet. BlackBoard doesn’t just want to go out of business themselves, they want to kill the commercial LMS market for everyone. If the Pledge wasn’t such a lawyered-up, weasly-worded, condescending piece of crap, I would almost thank them. Did it clear the air or straighten things out? Ohhhhh, NOW we understand, all is forgiven? Not according to EDUCAUSE and Sakai. And BlackBoard’s careful and misleading excerpting of the Sakai response didn’t win them any friends either. Did they think we wouldn’t read it for ourselves?

Open Source is where all D2L customers are going if they are forced into bankruptcy, methinks. With all the money saved by not purchasing a commercial/proprietary system like BlackBoard’s, schools can hire more programmers to contribute to Moodle, Sakai, et al.

This is NOT rocket science.

There is an old joke that I first read in an Archie comic where Jughead is up on the roof of the school on his hands and knees looking for something. The principle, Mr. Weatherbee asks him what he is doing.

"I’m looking for a book I lost yesterday in the cafeteria", Jughead replies.

"If you lost the book in the cafeteria, why are you looking up here on the roof?" inquires Mr. Weatherbee.

"Because the light is better up here." Jughead answers.

What’s my point?

There is a new report soon to be published about a study at Winona State University that purports that laptops in the lecture hall hurt student’s grades.

There is some good reporting and discussion about the report, here, at the Chronicle of Higher Education website.

The first sentence of the Chronicle article says this…

"…Most professors can vouch for the fact that students with laptops sometimes seem a bit distracted in the lecture hall…"

This is my point. It is not that students with laptops are distracted, it’s that before laptops, faculty could not really tell if students were distracted.

Prior to having laptops to hide behind, clever students developed the "attentive and interested" facial expression (at least the polite ones) that is worn at all times in class. It prevents the instructor from calling on you to see if you are listening.

Students have always found ways to be distracted, but laptops are literally "in your face" to the faculty. They are a literal barrier between the faculty and the students.

I have not searched the literature, because I am not sure how I would conduct such a search, but I am reasonably sure that prior to laptops in the classroom, there was not a whole bunch of articles about distracted students.

So does that mean that in the past, students were not distracted? I doubt that. The issue is that laptops have brought to the surface the polite fiction that occurs in classrooms all the time. Faculty teach and students listen or pretend to listen. Now, that pretension is manifest in the student’s averted gaze to the laptop screen and faculty cannot ignore that.

Not everyone with a laptop is distracted or ignoring the instructor, but it seems that way just like the Chronicle writer says in the first sentence of the article that I excerpted above.

So, how do we deal with this misconception that laptops are always distracting (not true) and get to the real discussion which is "How do I keep my students from being distracted by anything?"

Read all about here.

I’m still digesting, but a couple of things pop out.

Last week, after the news that the USPTO had agreed to re-examine the ‘138 patent, the number of blogs and news sources that ran the story was huge and noisy.

They want to own the commercial CMS market. I haven’t read the other patent applications that they list, but it seems like it would be hard to be a commercial LMS vendor and not deal with Bb on their terms.

They miss the point about "Free" in Free Software. It’s not the price, it’s the freedom to do what you want.

EDUCAUSE’s and Sakai Foundations endorsement of this action did not exactly say "All is forgiven" and I am a little disheartened with the response by these two organizations. Updated: BlackBoard’s selective quoting from the Sakai/EDUCAUSE response was misleading …

"…As a result, the Sakai Foundation and EDUCAUSE find it difficult togive the wholehearted endorsement we had hoped might be possible…"

I feel better.

The FAQ is long and detailed, but I think you can drive trucks through the loopholes and since they reserve the right to litigate if they think you are in violation of the pledge, there is a segment of the community that is chilled.

Some people will be satisfied with this, others will not and the litigation will continue on its merits.

It’s still a bad patent, IMHO.

More later.

So what are the arguments for banning laptops? I believe there are some good ones and some good sounding ones, but I also think there are more subtle issues surfacing. I’ll come back to that.

1. Laptops are a high-definition distraction and students cannot resist looking and clicking if the screen is right in front of them.

I believe one faculty member even described laptops as heroin- so strong is the need to look at the screen and ignore the professor. This is quite a good argument, actually. If a parade of clowns was going by the windows of the classroom everyday, the instructor would pull the shades. If students brought televisions or radios or wore iPods into class, the instructor would insist that they be turned off. Isn’t the laptop a similar distraction?

2. Even if they are not a distraction to these digital native/millenial students, they are a distraction to the students around them who cannot avoid seeing what is on someone else’s screen.

This is a variation of (1), but it lays bare the fact that the classroom is a social space and not a collection of individuals. This is key. In a social space, you are expected to pay attention and track the conversation. If you fall asleep at the opera, few people will mind and it won’t affect their enjoyment of the performance. If you start to snore, you’ll get shushed or sharp elbows to remind you that you are in a social space. You cannot, however, shush a screen.

3. I cannot see the students’s faces when they are behind their laptops. It is harder to connect with the students.

I think this is a great argument for banning laptops because it communicates a desire to connect with the students. The problem is that from the student’s side of things, they don’t always see this effort to connect.

How much connection is needed to teach? How much connection is needed to learn? It’s really not something easily quantified, but I don’t think many people will disagree that it is important.

4. Students need to learn to listen and analyze without taking notes and especially without typing. As lawyers, they will be in many situations where they cannot have their laptop open and the classroom is a good place to start learning these listening skills.

This is a fairly week argument in my opinion. Students do need to learn listening skills, but I don’t think the classroom is a great laboratory for that. Listening to instructors in the classroom is not too similar to listening to clients or listening during to your boss.

Some of these are pretty strong arguments and they speak to the need for faculty to be able to control the educational environment and optimize it for learning. But students are too often unaware of what the instructor is doing – how they are teaching – and sometimes even what they are teaching.

"Hiding the ball" is a hoary old chestnut I hear pulled out all the time about legal education along with comparisons to Professor Kingsfield and the Paper Chase. That movie came out in 1973 – 24 years ago and a LOT has changed since then.

Faculty are in charge of their own classrooms, but like any position of authority, they have a responsibility to their students. Learning is work, but it doesn’t have to be drudgery.

I think the laptop issue is a proxy for the discontented relationship between faculty and students in many cases. It is also, therefor, an opportunity to explore a path to greater connectedness.

There was yet another discussion on the Teknoids mailing lists (the list is mostly law school IT folks) on the subject of banning laptops in the classroom (or at least shutting off access to the Internet while in the classroom).

For a long time, I dismissed this topic as so much culture clash, but its persistence and vehemence convinces me now that there is something much, much deeper at play here.

To investigate this, I made a list of reasons why laptops should not be banned and include some discussion around the reasons.

Later, I will list the reasons why laptops should be banned and explore the issues from that direction.

1. If faculty lectures were more interesting, the students wouldn’t be looking at their laptops.

This is one of the more perjorative reasons given for not banning laptops and it doubtless has some truth, but it raises so many other questions.

Should faculty be "interesting"? Their goal is to teach, not to entertain and academia should be focused on academics.

However, it does seem obvious that if you can keep your audience’s attention, you can teach them something. Seymour Sarason’s book "Teaching as a Performing Art" makes the case for the teacher as performer who should use tools of stagecraft to make connections with the students/audience. Notice I did not say "entertainer". Sarason has taught for 20 years and brings much insight to this idea.

Students don’t want to be entertained, but they do want to be engaged and if they find little engagement in the classroom, they seek it elsewhere.

2. Because of advanced networking technologies like cell phones, you can’t actually block all network access.

This is a non-issue in this discussion. The instructor controls the classroom and if she bans laptops, she can enforce that. It is, however, quite true that it would be difficult to impossible to turn off the network as it is becoming ubiquitous. The real solution, I believe, lies between teh teacher and student and not between the student and the network.

3. Your students will hate you.

This might follow from an instructor who imposes her will on her students as in (2). You cannot teach someone who is unwilling to learn except in the most Pavlovian ways. If (1) were handled well, then this argument becomes moot anyway.

Surely, however, instructors must strike a careful balance between the hard knocks of learning a difficult topic and nurturing proto-scholars. Learning is hard work!

4. Some students use the network access to take notes to a wiki or other net-accessible service.

This is a pretty strong argument as increasing number of students type their notes instead of writing them. This is a mass-culture phenomenon and would be difficult to withstand.

However, there is something to said for kinesthetic learning through writing, editing (and analysis) that is required to summarize complex issues into an outline in real time.

Students that stenographically type everything uttered by the instructor miss the big picture or refrain from in-class analysis.

5. Some students do actual legal research or lookup relevant material that contributes to the quality of the class discussion.

This argumente is often advanced, but I believe it is weak. If only our students were so thoroughly engaged. This is an occasional occurrence – somewhat serendipitous – and useful, but not critical to the dynamic of the classroom.

6. If the instructor would record or podcast the class students would not feel compelled to stenographically type everything.

I am a big fan of podcasting the classroom else, CALI would not have invested so heavily in Classcaster and the Legal Education Podcasting Project(s). I cannot see a downside to recording the classroom for later reference by the student.

This does not resolve the banning of laptops issue, but it does address the "stenographor" arguments mentioned above.

7. Should we confiscate all crossword puzzles too?

This argument is really a variation of (1). It is still true that you cannot make someone pay attention if they are determined to ignore you.

You cannot ban doodling or lack of sleep or in-attention, though you can measure it and fight it with in-class tools like Clickers or small-group discussion.

8. We should put it to a vote with the students or faculty or let the Dean decide.

I don’t believe that a blanket policy should be enacted for all students in all classes. There is too much variability in teaching models, subject matter and student-interaction that argue against a one-size-fits-all solution.

Every classroom has to decide what is best for it – both the students and the faculty. What I am not sure about is whether the majority of students should be able to prevent a minority of students – who are genuinely using their computers for good – should be allowed to impose their will. Faculty, of course, can impose their will – but at the risks mentioned previously and they carry the responsbility of creating the effective learning environment.

This issue is really at the core of legal education. If students can effectively tune-out the instructor, then why does the ABA have an attendance requirement and why do schools enforce it?

Who is ultimately responsible for learning to happen? The school and instructors are responsible for teaching to happen, but learning? Sure they have a stake in the success of their students, but to what degree can they impose their imprimatur on the students to make sure that learning takes place?

If law students were adolescents, this would be an easier discussion, but they are adults and so must be engaged in the enterprise of learning as co-equals. Not equals in knowledge or experience, but as equals in the commitment to learning.

The New York Times is reporting that IBM has released a new enterprise social networking suite called Lotus Connections.

What does this have to do with legal education?

The New York Times pieces quotes…

"…Lotus Connections has five components — activities, communities, dogear(a bookmarking system), profiles and blogs — aimed at helping expertswithin a company connect and build new relationships based on theirindividual needs…"

Let’s break those features down and apply them to law schools…

• activities – the two main activities of legal education is teaching and scholarship. Knowing what someone teaches tells you a lot about them and reviewing their scholarship tells you more.
• communities – law faculty form communities of scholars within their own schools (somewhat), across institutions but by teaching and scholarship discipline and students form natural communities in the courses they take and among their peers in their class.
• dogear(a bookmarking system) – two words – legal research. Also a way to find things that is better than search (or at least – augments search).
• profiles – the bio or the collection of work that defines you (or that you present to the community)
• blogs – for many law faculty, this is scholarship in progress. For students, there are tons of class-related blogs at Classcaster.

What is not listed, but is inherently assumed is that all of these functions reside within a single system with the ability to enter at any point and traverse the links to find people, activities, scholarship and courses that are related to your interests. This is social networking applied to legal education.

CALI is working on a similar beast. At present, we define it across five areas of context…

1. Personal – your articles, powerpoints, podcasts, cases, etc.
2. Small Groups – like co-authors of a book or panelists working on a presentation or seminar courses with students and the digital artificacts that they want to share.
3. Communities – slightly more formalized like AALS sections, all teachers of a particular subject area, all faculty at a law school, all scholars writing in the same area and even courses.
4. The Commons – everything that everyone above is willing to share with anyone else.

Within CALI, these are manifesting themselves as …

CALI Spaces where individual faculty and students can store their own (personal) digital artifacts and share them a few people they are working with (groups) or a community of like-minded folks or everyone. It’s a matter of boundaries, context and sharing.

Some things are between you and your co-authors or between you and your students.

Some things are useful and valuable to other torts teachers or other scholars writing in your area (this is also a form of personal marketing of your ideas).

Some things are useful to many teachers and students and you are willing to let them have them under some sort of license like Creative Commons. This is the idea behind the Legal Education Commons.

CALI has been building towards this for a long time, but only recently has our understanding matured sufficiently – and have the tools become powerful enough – for us to implement this system.

If it’s good enough for IBM, it’s good enough for legal education. Don’t you think?

I ran across this video on Youtube (thanks to PresentationZen) and I love the idea of apparently unrelated relationships it evokes.

Every year, the membership of CALI meets during AALS to elect new members to the Board of Directors and I give an overview of the previous year plus a look-ahead to the coming year.

2006 was an amazing year for CALI and I expect that 2007 will be even better.

You can watch/listen to my screencast here.

Alternatively, you can listen to just a podcast of the presentation. Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 – AALS2007CALIMembersMeeting.mp3

I welcome comments, ideas, suggestions, complaints and kudos. Drop me a note at jmayer@cali.org.

This is BIG NEWS for CALI. In the Fall 2006 Semester, users of the CALI website downloaded or ran CALI lessons over 500,000 times. This is the highest single semester ever.

The totals for the calendar year (as opposed to academic year) for 2006 are over 880,000.

Many thanks to all the schools and students who support us – we will continue to serve your needs. If you have any comments, ideas, suggestions or complaints, feel free to drop me an email at jmayer@cali.org.

Every year, my sisters and their families gather for the holidays and one of our traditions is to jointly sing the 12 Days of Christmas.

This year, we tried something a little different. On the last verse (where all 12 days are sung), we tried to "sing" the "sound" of the item … uhhh … it leaves something to be desired.

Click to listen or right click to download the MP3 – Mayer200612Days.mp3