Year: 2006

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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.
  • Will Classcaster continue to be supported by CALI?
    • 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.
  • Is there a limit on disk space a person or school can use on Classcaster?
    • 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.
  • Does the telephone recording to podcasting feature really work consistently?
    • 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.
  • I would really like all of the faculty at my school to use Classcaster. Will the system support all X faculty (where X is some number)?
    • 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.
  • Can I customize Classcaster’s look and feel, invite colleagues to contribute to the blog, and have more than one blog?
    • Yes, yes, and yes. All of these features are available. Please review the Classcaster FAQ for details.
  • Can I create a blog for our Library? Admissions Office? Career Services?
    • 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.
  • I’m not really interested in podcasting, but would like to have blog, may I use Classcaster?
    • Yes. We know not everyone is interested in podcasting, but may like to try blogging. By all means, try Classcaster.

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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.

    Microsoft Releases Public Betas of Exchange Server 2007 and Forefront Security for Exchange Server: Customers can immediately evaluate both products and begin the migration to an advanced secure messaging solution.

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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.

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    Gizmo + Asterisk = SIP Classcaster for All?

    Now with new Asterisk support, Gizmo Project allows you to simultaneously log in to your Gizmo Project account, and another SIP-based server such as the popular Asterisk PBX, Switchvox, epygi, or others. You can then receive incoming calls or make outgoing calls through either service.

    Gizmo – A free phone for your computer -Advanced Features – Dual Login

    The theory here wuld be that you could use the Gizmo SIPphone to call Classcaster and record a podcast.  THis may provide an interesting angle to get some notice for Classcaster.

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    Linux In Education: Advancing An Elementary School

    Two parent volunteers at an Atlanta district school have revolutionized technology use there by replacing Windows workstations with Linux on thin clients, using K12LTSP.Click here!Daniel Howard and William Fragakis were spending too much time fixing “broken” computers at Brandon Elementary School. They were slow, frequently frozen, and “fraught with hardware, software, and malware issues. We would hear over and over again, ‘our computer doesn’t work anymore,'” Howard says, “and it takes hours to reinstall the operating system or figure out what driver got corrupted by what virus.” Students weren’t learning how to use the computers because frustrated teachers weren’t including computer work in their lesson plans. “What we discovered is that teachers were really using [the computers] only for browsing and office applications.” The school didn’t have enough money to upgrade Windows 98 or aging hardware, and Howard and Fragakis were working many hours just to keep the school’s technology afloat.

    NewsForge | Brandon Elementary transformed by K12LTSP

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    Rice University Press Gets Connexions

    As money-strapped university presses shut down nationwide, Rice University is turning to technology to bring its press back to life as the first fully digital university press in the United States.Using the open-source e-publishing platform Connexions, Rice University Press is returning from a decade-long hiatus to explore models of peer-reviewed scholarship for the 21st century. The technology offers authors a way to use multimedia — audio files, live hyperlinks or moving images — to craft dynamic scholarly arguments, and to publish on-demand original works in fields of study that are increasingly constrained by print publishing.

    Rice University | News & Media

    Rice will be staffing and operating this as a traditional press with an editorial board and peer review of submissions.  It breaks new ground in offering publications for free on web under Creative Commons licensing.  On demand print copies will be available for a fee.  No launch date has ben set.  The Connexions project grew up at Rice and is used by the University for distance learning programs.

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    MediaCommons: Nice Theory…

    if:book: introducing MediaCommons – The fun-loving folks over at the Institue for the Future of the Book launched another project today. Well, really it’s a blog post announcing the pending launch of another project. Sigh… Something beyond a blog post would be nice here. I notice that the boss wonders about Sophie (BTW, I’d link to the FOTB website and the Sophie project except that the page contains some sort of hideous java plugin banner at the top that crashes Firefox 1.5 and annoys IE6, also, there isn’t anything about Sophie there beyond a couple of PDFs outlining what it might be) an earlier FOTB project that has yet to see the light of day. It seems to me that these folks are long on ideas and short on applications, which is ok, I guess. I’d much rather see something concrete.

    <rant> One of the things that does bug me about this is the amount of play it is getting across the web from the Chronicle of Higher Education to Ars Technica. It would be nice if something that actually exists and works, like Classcaster and the Legal Education Podcasting Project, got some mention.  As a developer of tools in the educational technology field I do get tired of hearing about all of these great things that get trumpeted across the web only to never see the light of day when the actual working tools I develop are rarley mentioned outside of the small world I work in.</rant>

    Well, back to work on something interesting and useful.

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