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Taking CALIcon13 Live to the Web Using YouTube Live Events, TeleStream Wirecast for YouTube, and Commodity Hardware

We were able to live stream the entire CALI conference on YouTube this year. A lot of folks have asked me about how we did this and that’s what this article is going to cover. Before I get into the nitty gritty of how it all worked I want to make sure to thank the folks at IIT Chicago-Kent for making all of the tech stuff happen. Specifically from the Audio Visual & College Service Center Staff: Jarryd Scott Steimer, David Townsend, Alton Jackson, Sue Jadin, Gloria Juarez, Aaron Ruffin; from the Center for Law and Computers Staff: Sejal Vaishnav, Nisha Varughese, Bill Mette, Mohit Gaonkar, Rudi Buford, Efe Budak, Heather Banks, Greg Morris, Larry Adamiec; and Debbie Ginsberg and Emily Barney from the Law Library. Thanks everyone for making CALIcon13 a great tech success.

One upon a time webcasting a conference live on the Internet took a LOT of effort. Cameras, capture cards, encoders, PCs, a streaming server, and a fair amount of good luck to make sure it all worked. We did it for many years with the CALI Conference for Law School Computing. Eventually we gave up, as it became too difficult to manage especially as we took the conference on the road every year to a different law school. Even something as seemingly basic as pointing a camera at the front of room became difficult especially when you multiplied it across 5 rooms and 4 – 5 sessions per day. Lots of equipment and lots of things to go wrong. We just went back to recording for archives and dropped the live stream.

Earlier this year Google began making YouTube Live Events available to Google Apps for Education organizations. YouTube Live allows you to schedule and stream live video using YouTube’s infrastructure. Using YouTube Live requires having an encoder running on a local computer and a good, stable Internet connection to connect the encoder to YouTube. Once connected to YouTube, the event will not only stream live on YouTube but it will also record to YouTube. The archived recording of the event becomes available on YouTube at the same URL shortly after the live streaming of the event concludes. After testing the product I realized that we might be able to bring live streaming back to CALIcon.

The basic set up for this is pretty straight forward and is well handled by commodity hardware. We used a Canon video camera, Star-Tech USB capture, and Dell laptops. The actual specifics of the hardware isn’t really important since it is more about the features of the hardware. The camera should have composite video and audio outputs. High definition video isn’t really necessary here, it just uses extra bandwidth. The camera’s video and audio outputs were connected to the USB capture device. The capture device was connected via USB to the laptop. The laptop needn’t be a hot rod, just current. The encoding software we used is available for Mac or Windows computers.

With the hardware in place the USB capture device is seen as a USB camera by the encoding software. This allows the audio and video from the camera to be streamed to YouTube. For encoding of the video, we used the free version of TeleStream Wirecast for YouTube. Wirecast proved easy to use and the free version provides enough features to get your stream up and running, especially for most law school events that you might be streaming.

Once we sorted out the hardware and software we were going to use the next thing was making sure that all of the sessions were scheduled on YouTube. 55 sessions were scheduled on YouTube. This gave us event slots that we could connect the encoders to at the right time. We created a separate event for each CALIcon session. This created a YouTube link for each session. The URL was embedded in each session page on the CALIcon website so that the conference sessions could be watched live directly from the CALIcon website. The same URLs embed the archived session video in the session page on the site.

And that is all there is to it. We also recorded the video on SD cards in the cameras for archival purposes. Of the 55 session streams that we launched, we had some timing issues with the first set of sessions that resulted in some short streams, and we had 1 stream that did not record properly on YouTube. All of these videos were replaced on YouTube with the video recorded on the SD cards. Within 4 days of the end of CALIcon13 all of the video for all of the sessions that were recorded was available to all on YouTube and on the CALIcon13 website.

I would recommend that you give this a try at your law school. No matter what sort of recording/streaming solution you are using, I think you’ll find the YouTube Live Events solution useful. If you have any thoughts or questions, please use the comments below or send me an email.

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Google Play for Education Accepting Submissions

Google’s submission process requires all applications marked as suitable for K-12 to first pass through a network of non-affiliated educators for evaluation before then being measured against the Play for Education store’s requirements for classroom use. If selected, developer’s applications will be made available to the many pilot programs currently underway across the country

via Engadget: Google Play for Education now accepting developer submissions.

Google Play for Education is getting under way. Seems like Google is doing all the right things to make sure that the apps that get into the special store really belong there.

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Some Automattic Shareholders Cash Out to the Tune of $50 Million

…there has been a large secondary transaction in Automattic stock, about $50M worth. “Secondary” means that it’s existing stockholders, like the earliest investors or employees, selling stock to another investor versus money going into the company (“primary”)

via Automattic After-Market | Matt Mullenweg.

What this means is that a small number shareholders of Automattic made a decision to sell some of their shares to an outside investor, turning paper wealth into actual cash money.

Typically these sorts of transactions aren’t about the company, but more about the folks buying/selling the stock. A company like Automattic probably has a pretty long list of folks interested in acquiring some stock in the company. At the same time there are stockholders who for various reasons may want to convert some of their shares to cash.1» Of course this sounds like a straight forward market transaction, but since Automattic is privately held the rules are different and the stock isn’t simply traded like Google or Microsoft.

The bottom line is that Automattic continues doing cool things with WordPress and more and some folks have an extra happy holiday weekend.

 

A little cash just in time for summer can be a good thing.Powered by Hackadelic Sliding Notes 1.6.5
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Flipping The Legal Classroom Featured At #CALIcon13

The flipped classroom concept has been seeing a lot more attention in law schools of late. The idea is that students learn basic concepts outside of the classroom, typically through reading or the use of recorded lectures or lessons, and then come to the classroom to learn how to apply their new knowledge, discuss key concepts in depth, and demonstrate mastery of the material. in many ways this not so different from the traditional Socratic method employed in many law school lecture halls.

This year’s CALI Conference for Law School Computing, June 13 – 15, 2013, at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law features a number of sessions devoted to the flipped classroom. Three sessions will explore the real world application of the concept in different law schools around the United States and Canada. Other sessions will explore topics related to changes in the way the law is being taught including developing and using electronic course materials, building distance education components for courses, the use of gaming theory in teaching law, and the use of collaborative tools.

The sessions the deal directly with the flipped classroom model are:

Other sessions that touch on changing how law is taught include:

If you are interested in changes happening in legal education today and in interacting with the folks putting those changes into practice in law schools around the country, you should be in Chicago for the 23rd Annual CALI Conference for Law School Computing, June 13 -15 2013 at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Did you know you can video archives of past CALIcons on the CALI Youtube channel?

 

**Disclaimer: I’m CALI’s Internet guy and am responsible for organizing the CALIcon agenda.

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CNN Money Takes Notice of Open Source Textbook Publishers, Misses eLangdell

Ideally, the major publishers, the free education players, and the open source firms will end up egging each other on, upping the ante at each step of the way, and ultimately benefiting students and teachers. After all, why cant it play out like the way open-source Linux helped propel advances from Microsoft MSFT and Apple AAPL? “I think there will always be what I think is a healthy relationship between publishers and the open-source world. They push each other forward. They challenge each other. Competition is good,” says Wiley.

via Startups are about to blow up the textbook – Fortune Tech.

Open educational resources get the focus in this article. CK-12 gets the most ink, while challenges to traditional publishers are nicely laid out. Articles like this are great because they bring info about OER to audiences that wouldn’t hear about it otherwise.

In the legal education arena, CALI‘s eLangdell project, especially the eLangdell Press , provides OER for law schools. eLangdell Press provides free and open access to over a dozen titles including casebooks, Federal rules, and statutory supplements.

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Are Law Students Dumber? Law Profs See Damage Done by NCLB

One professor at a top-20 law school recently confided that he has to teach his students how to write business letters. A professor at another elite school complained that grading exams is far more difficult now because the writing skills of students are so deficient that each exam requires several reads. Bernstein’s article suggests that he knows what accounts for this—federal education policy. He  may be right.
…
Teaching to the test overshadows (if not supplants) teaching critical thinking, higher-order reasoning, and the development of creative-writing skills. As Bernstein emphasizes, contemporary teaching or teaching to the test does not “require proper grammar, usage, syntax, and structure.” In fact, those skills may be perceived as unimportant in this modern age—as many of the tests taken by K-12 students employ multiple choice, and those that require essays grade on a rubric that pays little if any attention to the quality of writing.

Law Professors See the Damage Done by ‘No Child Left Behind’ – The Conversation – The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Something to add to the pile facing legal education today: students may not be as smart as they used to be. And that’s a problem because the law is more complex today than ever and requires extraordinary analytical and critical thinking skills. If you show up at law school lacking the necessary skill set, you will not do well.

As the father of 2 teenagers I can tell you that even in the best public schools “teaching to the test” is a great problem. Bright kids hit high school without a lot of writing and independent thinking skills and aren’t learning or even working on those skills there. I can certainly see where issues are going to come up in higher education as these kids move forward.

Be sure to read the comments following the Chronicle piece, there is some good stuff in there.

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Reflections on #ReInventLaw and Some Thoughts on #ReInventLegalEdu

I spent Friday March 8 at one of the most interesting conferences I’ve ever attended. The ReInvent Law Silicon Valley conference promised 40 speakers in 9 hours, a day of the best in innovation in law practice, courts, and more. It certainly delivered. Much has been written about specific sessions and the ideas presented, so I’ll skip that sort of analysis. Instead I’d like to give you my impressions a few days after the conference and after having let it sink in a bit.

It is now apparent to me that there is a major structural shift going on in the way law, especially “big law”, is being practiced. Practice and the courts are embracing many aspects of technology as part of doing business. Lawyers and judges are looking to technology to increase efficiency, automate rote tasks, and create space, physical and virtual, for more personal interaction between attorneys, clients, judges, parties, and legal consumers. There is a growing awareness that the delivery of some basic legal services can be delivered by non-lawyers and that there is a great unmet need for legal services among those who cannot afford to pay hundreds of dollars an hour for a lawyers time.

As with all structural shifts like this, there are barriers and points of resistance. A major barrier to the shift is ABA Rule 5.4 governing the professional independence of a lawyer. This rule effectively prohibits the investment of outside capitol in law firms or organization engaged in the practice of law. Without access to outside capital and business structures practicing attorneys will have a difficult time taking full advantage of the opportunities presented by increasing the use of technology. They will get there eventually, but the rate of change would greatly accelerated with an infusion of outside capital.

Of course it isn’t just a practice rule that is slowing down the ReInvent Law movement. Lawyers themselves need to examine the way they have traditionally structured practice. The billable hour came under criticism just as often as Rule 5.4 during the presentations. The use of billable hours builds inefficiency into the system and was cited as a strong demotivator of efficiency in practice. Indeed the wisdom of continuing the “big law” model of life tenure partnerships was questioned. A more flexible structure with compensation linked to actual outcomes is seen as a better model to deal with the swift changes in technology confronting the legal profession.

And what about legal education? While the gathering included members of the legal academy both as presenters and in the audience (the organizers of the event are professors at Michigan State University College of Law), the focus of day was really on the practice of law and to a lesser extent the courts. Reform or reinvention of legal education was the topic of only a couple of the presenters and this was a shame because we could really use a #ReInventLegalEdu movement right about now.

There is little doubt that legal education in the US is facing a crisis of its own. Enrollment is down, applications are down, graduate employment is down, and debt load among graduates is high. On top of that the nature of the practice of law is under going a structural change. As law schools struggle with the crisis I think they are at risk of increasing the disconnect between the academy and practice especially if they continue to turn out graduates who are being educated for a style of practice that is disappearing.

The challenge to law schools, in the face of this crisis, is to embrace the changes moving through practice and the courts and #ReInventLegalEdu. There is an opportunity here for law schools to change, to embrace the technology and methodologies heralded by ReInvent Law, to provide the research and development that the practice and courts will need, and to graduate more tech savvy lawyers. I think change is coming to legal education and law schools have a choice, lead the charge to a new legal practice future or have the change imposed on them by the practice and courts. I’m hoping something like #ReInventLegalEdu helps to lead the way forward.

 

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Having a Routine May Make Decisions Easier

Vohs’s experiments tested whether everyday choices — which candy bar to eat or what clothes to buy, for instance — wear down our mental energy. The results? Vohs and colleagues consistently found that making repeated choices depleted the mental energy of their subjects, even if those choices were mundane and relatively pleasant.
So, if you want to be able to have more mental resources throughout the day, you should identify the aspects of your life that you consider mundane — and then “routinize” those aspects as much as possible. In short, make fewer decisions.

via Boring Is Productive – Robert C. Pozen – HBS Faculty – Harvard Business Review.

Fascinating stuff. Now I know why it’s hard to decide to what to have for dinner at the end of a long day and why lots of decisions early in the day result the need for a nap in the afternoon.

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Analysts Sound Death Knell For Dedicated E-Readers, So Multi-Purpose Tablets Win

Selburn said that 2011 appears to have been the peak of the e-reader market, when IHS said that 23.2 million e-readers shipped, compared to 14.9 million shipped for all of 2012. By 2016, Selburn said that just 7.1million e-readers will ship, equal to a loss of more than 66% since 2011.

via Last chapter for e-readers? – Computerworld.

This shouldn’t really surprise anyone. Single use tech devices have a more limited audience especially when they must compete against more feature rich multi-purpose devices. Why have just a reader when for just a few dollars more you can get all the features of the reader plus all the features of a tablet. You can read the latest best seller AND check your email, update Facebook, chat with friends and so on. Of course e-readers aren’t going away, but they won’t be dominating the market for hand held devices either.