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Money for eLangdell? or DrupalEd?

13. Online learning. US schools are often bad. A lot of parents realize it, and would be interested in ways for their kids to learn more. Till recently, schools, like newspapers, had geographical monopolies. But the web changes that. How can you teach kids now that you can reach them through the web? The possible answers are a lot more interesting than just putting books online.One route would be to start with test prep services, for which there’s already demand, and then expand into teaching kids more than just how to score high on tests. Another would be to start with games and gradually make them more thoughtful. Another, particularly for younger kids, would be to let them learn by watching one another (anonymously) solve problems.

Y Combinator: Startup Ideas We’d Like to Fund

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Fred Wilson Imagines Drupal Organic Groups

And that sounds right to me in the groups market. Charlie says the least common denominator in the groups market are these three functions:

1. A customizable site to call their own, even if it just has information as to what the group does and how to sign up.
2. A way to communicate internally, via a one-way or two-way listserv, depending on the group.
3. A way to do RSVPs for events.

So using the less is more mantra, someone should build just that, make it drop dead simple, and then build the killer API that lets everyone build on top of that. It may be that the big social nets are in the best spot to do that. Or maybe not.

A VC: Thinking About Groups

Yep, it sure sounds a lot like OG for Drupal.  In fact it sounds a lot like what I’m building right now to allow faculty and students at law schools to come together and form ad hoc groups around classes, ideas, scholarship, organizations, etc. 

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Banning Laptops in the Law Lecture Hall, Some More…

Charles R. Nesson, a professor at Harvard Law School, says the key for professors is to know when laptops are good for class and when they’re not.
“Technologies are not good for everything,” says Mr. Nesson, who is also a founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “Sometimes they destroy some good things along with the opportunities they make available.”
In Mr. Nesson’s classes, laptops are good for looking up legal material. During class students are encouraged to find the right evidence rule on the Web and to contribute to a class wiki, a communal Web site they frequently edit and update.
He says laptops are not good, however, during and immediately following a guest speaker’s presentation. He requests that the computers stay shut, signaling to students that they should all participate in discussing issues the speaker raises.

Law Professors Rule Laptops Out of Order in Class – Chronicle.com

This just isn’t going to go away.  I think the real answer here is for law school tech folks and interested faculty to actively pursue and advocate for constructive ways to use laptops in class.  Make the laptop a useful tool rather than a distraction. 

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Commercial Support for MySQL in Amazon EC2

MySQL :: MySQL Enterprise for Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 is a web service that allows organizations to right size their computing capacity on demand using Amazon’s proven computing environment. Using MySQL Enterprise for Amazon EC2, developers can cost-effectively deliver web-scale database applications in the “cloud”, fully backed by the database experts at MySQL. Amazon EC2 and MySQL are a great fit for organizations that want to reduce the capital expenditures and operating costs required to build out and run their IT infrastructure.

This is a pretty big deal. A definitive sign of support for the Amazon cloud on the part of Sun and MySQL.

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MSF Scraps Live Search Book and Academic

Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes.This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users.

Live Search : Book search winding down

Looks like Google is now the only mega player in this area.  I wonder if this has anything to do with the failure of the Yahoo! takeover?

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Tell the Bluebook What You Think

The editors of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation are about to embark on making revisions for the forthcoming Nineteenth Edition. Please take a few minutes to fill out their survey. Surveys must be received by June 30, 2008 in order to be considered for the Nineteenth Edition. Comments and suggestions are also welcome through email.

Law Librarian Blog: Reminder: Take The Bluebook Survey

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More on Banning Laptops in the Law School Lecture Hall

As for laptop use, shouldn’t this be a matter decided by law profs and their students on a class by class basis, even perhaps on a day by day basis? If so, law profs might want to read Kevin Yamamoto’s (South Texas College of Law) article, Banning Laptops in the Classroom: Is it Worth the Hassles? [SSRN]. Yamamoto argues that laptops should be banned unless their use aids the learning process.

Law Librarian Blog: Banning Laptops in the Classroom: Is it Worth the Hassles?

This just isn’t going to go away.  The referenced article looks fascinating and I’ll certainly give it a read.

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Adobe Brings More to the Linux Table

Adobe AIRs out Linux, Joins Foundation

Adobe Systems is making two strongly pro-Linux moves by releasing an alpha version of the Adobe Integrated Runtime for Linux and announcing its membership in the Linux Foundation. Adobe officials announced March 31 that the pre-release alpha version of Adobe AIR for Linux is available on Adobe Labs here. …Meanwhile, Adobe announced its membership in the Linux Foundation to collaborate on the advancement of Linux as a key platform for RIA and Web 2.0 technologies.

Adobe seems to be moving more toward Linux and Open Source of late. Perhaps it is a strategy to make it less palatable as a take over target. Either Apple or Microsoft, both rumored to be interested in Adobe, would have a harder time swallowing a company that is heavily committed to open source. Whatever the motive, Adobe’s moves are good news for Linux and Open Source developers.

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Lots of Free Case Law, Now I Have Work To Do:)

As announced at public.resource.org, CC and public.resource.org have announced the first release of material to support our free law project. After raising a large chunk of change from great and generous sorts like David Boies, John Gilmore, the Omidyar Network and the Elbaz Foundation, we’ve purchased a database of a substantial part of all federal cases. Carl’s team has now made all the data available in a beautiful, xml format for developers to take and use however they want. The however they want part is what’s assured by the CCØ mark on all cases — no rights, including attribution rights, are asserted over these data at all. Free law available for anyone to build search engines, or collections, or whatever else they want.

Big news in the free law department (Lessig Blog)

Pretty major stuff here.  Coverage includes the Supremes, 1 U.S. 1 solid through 524 U.S. 775 plus intermittent coverage through 2005; Circuits, 178 F.2d 1 through 999 F.2d 1584 and 1 F.3d 1 through 491 F.3d 1342.  All of the decisions are very nicely formated in XML and transform wonderfully to the web.  The regular XML will make the slicing and dicing we want to do work well.  I would suggest that you keep an eye on CALI’s eLangdell project for more fun as we do a ‘rip, mix’ learn’ make over on some of this caselaw.

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