links for 2006-07-26
Open Sourced Reporting. How About Open Sourced Law Reviews?
The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion; it employs professional journalists to carry the project home and set high standards so the work holds up. There are accountability and reputation systems built in that should make the system reliable. The betting is that (some) people will donate to works they can see are going to be great because the open source methods allow for that glimpse ahead.In this sense it’s not like donating to your local NPR station, because your local NPR station says, “thank you very much, our professionals will take it from here.” And they do that very well. New Assignment says: here’s the story so far. We’ve collected a lot of good information. Add your knowledge and make it better. Add money and make it happen. Work with us if you know things we don’t.
PressThink: Introducing NewAssignment.Net
Note that this is just an idea so far, newassignment.net does not exist yet. The whole aritcle is rather long, but worth read, so go read it and come back.
Welcome back. Now, suppose a law review editorial board posted a bunch of ideas for aritcles to a wiki-like site? We would like to publish articles concerning… Law students view the ideas, chip in some basic research stuff, a case here, a blog there. Faculty come along and claim the aritcle, pull together the resources, work with their virtual research assistants to create the final article. Credit is shared, the article is published by the journal. Comments?
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New Orleans Law Firm Revamps Backups Post Katrina
That revealed a flaw in the law firm’s disaster planning. “We had our data, and it was safe in New Orleans, but it was inaccessible,” he says. “We were protecting our data, but we weren’t fully protecting the processes of our business.”
Zeller has set up a Web-based e-mail system to forward mail so during a blackout when both Baton Rouge and New Orleans are shut down, e-mail would be available through a separate Web site domain.
Also, the law firm has set up a Web site where employees can log their current location in an emergency. The site also contains phone numbers of close friends and relatives who live out of the likely path of hurricanes who will know the locations of employees.
Chaffe McCall has learned that the best disaster recovery planning can’t bring the business back up any faster than the people who work there can learn to cope. “That first week a lot of people were still getting their acts together on a personal level realizing they had just lost everything they owned,” Zeller says.
Law firm retools its backup scenario
There is a lot here for law schools to learn. When disaster strikes, are you prepared? Reminds me of the Law School Emergency Planning Project, described here and talked about at the 2006 Conference for Law School Computing®. Law schools really need to be working on this sort of thing because when it happens, it’s too late.
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Law Students Online, All the Time
John pointed the CALI staff to this presentation done by Sam Ruby for IBM’s New Paradigms for Using Computers. In a nut shell the presentation points out the ‘always connected’ nature of today’s teenagers. Of course these teens are becoming today’s law students. There was not a lot new for me in the presentation but it did bring into focus the some of the challenges we face in bringing technology to legal academia.
As time marches on incoming law students are more comfortable with different communication channels having been raised in a world of plentiful bandwidth, cheap cellphones, and ready Internet access. Unlike some previous technological innovations (word processing, email) the sorts of things that today’s new law students are accustomed to using are available right in the classroom. That is the real challenge to legal academia and law professors everywhere: how to deal with the pervasiveness of the net in the world of today’s law students. For us the challenge is to position CALI as a resource for both teachers and students in an environment where the net is always on and the students are always logged in.
We need to be able to provide teachers with resources to harness the possibilities of the pervasive net, to turn it from a distraction in the classroom to a useful teaching tool. Certainly one way to keep students from surfing the web is to engage them and their computers, focusing them on the task at hand: learning the law. At the same time we need resources for students that draw them into the new world of collegiality and professionalism that is the practice of law. Tools that foster the social networking and collaborative skills they will need to succeed in the practice of law.
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links for 2006-07-25
Classcaster: What's the Catch?
At this year’s CALI Conference for Law School Computing® and as a result of John’s talks at SubTech 2005 and AALS I’ve been fielding a lot of questions about Classcaster. Most take the form of something like “I’ve tried Classcaster and it really seems to work great but what about…” and then I’m asked about things like “is it really free”, “will it keep running”, “does the telephone interface always work”, “is this something CALI will continue to support”, “is there a limit on disk space” and so forth. I’m going to answer these questions and more in this post and then spread it around so folks have something to reference.
The format will be a sort of mini FAQ. There is a support FAQ for Classcaster here, but it doesn’t clearly address some of these basic questions. Here goes.
- Is Classcaster really free? Will it stay that way?
- Yes, Classcaster is available as a free service to the faculty, librarians, and staff of over 200 CALI member schools. Classcaster has quickly become a core service of CALI and as such will remain free of charge to members for the foreseeable future.
- Yes. As I mentioned above Classcaster is key part of our plans for the future and is a central service provided by CALI to our members. As such we will continue to support Classcaster into the future.
- No, at this time we are not limiting disk an author or school can use on Classcaster. We monitor disk space closely and the system is expandable enough that we can easily add disk space as it is needed. Podcasts, posts, and other documents stored on Classcaster will be available there into the future.
- Yes. Most of John’s interviews with the faculty podcasters of the Legal Education Podcasting Project were recorded using the telephone recording and auto-podcasting features of Classcaster. For the most part the system performed well. Of course there is only one phone line at the moment, so you may get a busy signal, but you can just try again later. We are looking into expanding the number of available phone lines on the system.
- Sure. The Classcaster blogging system should easily support several hundred bloggers and podcasters. As the system grows we will expand its storage and processing capabilities to make sure that it will provide your communities with access. The telephone to podcast part of the system has only one phone line at the moment, so you may get a busy signal, but you can just try again later. We are looking into expanding the number of available phone lines on the system.
- Yes, yes, and yes. All of these features are available. Please review the Classcaster FAQ for details.
- Yes. Folks from member schools are free to create blogs so long as the blogs are related to the function of the law school. Blogs of a personal nature are beyond the scope of Classcaster.
- Yes. We know not everyone is interested in podcasting, but may like to try blogging. By all means, try Classcaster.
technorati tags:cali, classcaster, podcasting, legal_education
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Chronicle Leads With Challenge to The Book
The Chronicle: 7/28/2006: Book 2.0 – Good article that highlights work being done at the Institute for the Future of the Book. It mentions several subjects I’ve already covered including the MediaCommons and the new Rice University Press. The aritcle mentions the coming academic dustup over the use of electronic works for tenure work. This may be the most important thing here.
Historically, especially in legal academia, any sort of electronic publication is discounted by tenure review committees. CALI has seen this a number of times when we have had authors of our Lessons actually physically print their lessons and put them in a binder so that the work would get any review at all. As more and more work moves into an electronic world this prejudice will need to disappear. Some law professors are now beginning to think of their blog work as scholarship, though most recommend that junior facutly stick with more traditional work writing for law reviews to insure a favorable tenure outcome. The law reviews themselves are experimenting with online versions of their publications and the day is not far off when the traditional forum for legal scholarship, the law review, in only available online.
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MSFT Exchange Server 2007 Beta Available
Microsoft Corp. today announced availability of the public betas of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 and the new Forefront Security for Exchange Server. Exchange Server 2007 builds on the leading e-mail, messaging and calendaring server with new features for improved security, remote and mobile access, compliance management, and unified messaging. Forefront Security for Exchange Server helps provide advanced protection against viruses, worms and spam, and is the first product available under the recently announced Microsoft Forefront brand for business security products.Exchange Server 2007 beta 2 is available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/beta2, and Forefront Security for Exchange Server beta can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/forefront/serversecurity/exchange/download-beta.mspx.
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Dave's Podcasting Directory is Reborn
podcasting.opml.org – Dave Winer has announced the rebirth of his OPML-based podcasting directory. It occurs to me that we need to create a directory to capture the ever increasing number ofpodcasters using Classcaster. The challenge we face with Classcaster is creating a meaningful taxonomy that allows folks to find the podcasts and podcasters they are looking for.
technorati tags:podcasting.opml.org, Dave_Winer, classcaster, podcasting_directory
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