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The CALI 2005 conference is over now, and I’ve had some time to figure out what was truely important and interesting from the conference and what was not. The theme of the conference was, "Open Source :: Open Law :: Open Education".  Being an open source enthusiast this was an exciting theme.

The speaker for the opening plenary session was Stephen Webber, and Poly Sci professor from UC Berkley. He gave an insightful presentation on the origins and underlying mechanics of the open source software projects. He also spoke about how Open Source has been able to overcome some big problems that commercial software houses have been struggling with for years, in particular Brooke’s Law. Brooke stated that for each additional programmer added to a project, the work done scale lineally, but the complications in the project increase geometrically. The way open source software is created does not seem to have this limitation, to the same degree, as closed source projects. He concluded by saying that he hopes that both open and closed source software project remain healthy, and that the competitiveness between the two will help create better software for everyone in the long run. The only thing that might be able to limit the ability of open source projects to continue to flourish is software patents.

The next session I went to was excellent as well. It was a demo of closed source piece of software called Onfolio. It is a research tool that integrates into your web browser (both IE and Firefox), and allows you to capture data from web pages, organize that data, mark up the data, and then publish that organized data to RSS feed, blogs. You can also share the data in a Point to Point network with people you are collaborating with.  It looks like a great piece of software. I just need to find a research project to try it out on to see how well it does when pushed to its’ limits. For anyone doing research I recommend you download the 30 day trial version, it could help you be much more productive than you currently are when doing online research.

The next three sessions where good, but more technically geared. One was on Dspace, the next on congnative learning styles, and finally on Enterprise Storage and backup.  Good info, but nothing earth shattering. There was also a good session on network security that was a good reminder of things that all Sys Admins know that they should be doing.

Next was a session on Class Scheduling. Not something that I have to do, but the software that was being demoed looks like it could save the person assigned to do the scheduling a ton of time, and make a better schedule as well.  The software is called Schedule Whiz. It appears to have taken into account every conceivable variable when trying to schedule class rooms, student, professors and equipment. This means that it is very flexible and powerful, but could take some time to use the full power of it.  I think that Yvonne (our administrator) will try out the 60 demo version this spring.

Finally the last session before I did my presentation was called Using Innovative Video Technology to Facilitate Skills Instruction. It was an EXCELLENT session. As you might have guessed by the title, Dr. Farmer from BYU is using laptop based video technology every week in his interviewing class. He found that only doing 4 video taped interviews per semester was not enough for the students to become proficient in the techniques he was trying to get them to learn, so he went from 4 exercises to 22 exercises, and the results were impressive.  The law school bought 44 high quality web cameras and put them on reserve in the library. Students select one fact pattern to use throughout the semester. The Used sharepoint portal software to distribute materials during the class, including instructions fo the exercise, and then to store the video in a safe location for Dr. Famer to review them and grade them. Students reviewed their own videos and then Dr. Farmer commented on their self-reviews and added his own comments.  I hope we can try something similar to this at UVic.  They are in the middle of developing some custom software to  capture the video and annotate bookmarks in the video files. There should be a video of the presentation on the conference web page in a week or two.

My presentation on Open Source OPAC’s went well, with lots of questions, and a good discussion at the end of the session. Here is a link to a flash version of my presentation.

It was an enjoyable conference at Kent Law School in Chicago. The main items that I would like to see us move forward on at the UVic Law School are the Video Technology to teach skills, Schedule Whiz, and Onfolio.  We are already using a lot of open source products at the law school. 

 

Steve Jobs @ Stanford

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

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• Are standards the way to influence technology in law schools?
• Technology is moving very quickly. The standards we set today will be out of date tomorrow.
• Standards for Approval for ABA Schools… Technology is in the Chaper 7 Facilities Section.
• Proposed Standard 704 is at the bottom of this post.
• There are other section that impact technology in other sections of the standard.
• The standards are supposed to be vague so that the site visit committee can give the visitors some latitude when they make recommendations to the Deans.
• "Technology needs to be innovative in supporting the pedagogical goals of the faculty" - Seattle U Associate Dean.
• Is one standard appropriate for all law schools. Different standards for different types of law schools?
• Proposed ABA Standards are minimum standards.
• A possible good approach would be a best practices approach.
• ken@law.duke.edu - to create a AALS section for law school IT.
• Possibly benchmark against other professions (Business & Medical).
• The standards would aim to set minimum levels for student learning (Wordprocessing, Email, Legal System, e-filing…). Also standards for technology.
• Some schools have tech boot camps to get people up to the same level.
• Three actions items 1. AALS section, 2. technology survey in annual AALS survey, 3. Tech committe to recommend changes to 704.

—————————- 

Standard 704.  Technological Capacities

A law school shall have the technological capacities that are adequate for both its current program of legal education and for growth anticipated in the immediate future.

Interpretation 704-1
Inadequate technological capacities are those that have a negative and material effect on the education students receive.

Interpretation 704-2
Adequate technological capacity shall include:

1. sufficient and up-to-date hardware and software resources and infrastructure to support the teaching, scholarship, research, service and administrative needs of the school;

2. sufficient staff support and space for staff operations; and

3. sufficient financial resources to adapt new technology as appropriate.

Comments
The ABA is soliciting comments on this proposal. Comments can be directed to Stephen Yandle, Deputy Consultant, yandles@staff.abanet.org, by May 3, 2005.

At some point, "adequate" and "sufficient" need clarification so managers can allocate funds for technology needs. I don’t expect to see that happen now. The connection between emerging information and presentation technologies is too intimately tied to faculties, many of which simply can not be retrofitted because cost issues. These school need a vague standard otherwise they would be put in the position of needing new facilities to be in compliance.

 

Professor Farmer from BYU

• Deliberate Practice: 

1. Identify a practice task (sequence of progressively more difficult tasks).
2. Practice the task (need to be motivated - have goals).
3. Analyze the practice (informative feedback, evaluation, identify errors, monitor improvement)
4. Modigy practice task & then repeat (went from 4 practice tasks to 22. More microscopic in the tasks. Make sure it affects their grades).

• You must somehow capture the practice performance, so that they can later review it. Too hard to try to analize performance while doing it.
• With 22 exercises too hard to learn 22 different fact patterns. Students select one fact pattern to use throughout the semester. A web page lists who has which fact pattern.  Uses sharepoint to distribute materials during the class, including instructions fo the exercise.

• Supporing technoligy
  • 44 web cameras on video
  • share point server
• Students took trials seriously when videoed… immediately uploaded to the sharepoint server.
• Web cameras in cases on a cart. 2 cameras for each interview pointing at each other.
• Video Capture Utility in One Note. Are using something else this year.
• Use Comments in Word to mark up the individuals analysis of their performance.
• Classes of 16 are about right. More than that eats up too much time for the Prof.

• SANS institute is a great security resource.
• Defense in Depth. concentric circles (data, application, host, network).
• Three core principles: confidentiality, integrity, availability (CIA).
• Least Privledged model. You get only the amount of access you need to do your job.
• Good Authentication: Something you know (passwd), something you have (key), something your are (biometrics).
• Data classification: label data as to its sensitivity.
• Threats: activity that represents a potential danger. You can’t protect against all, protect against the onces that are the most likely.
• Vulnerabilities: threats and vulnerability must be paired.
• Origin’s of a threat: external threats from outside. 
• An internal threat from “inside the wire” (someone walks in and plugs into your network.
• Network Level Protection: Firewall (you want a stateful one)(start by denying all traffic & then open traffic as necessary), Intrusion Detection System (sits off switch and looks at all traffic), Intrusion Protection System (this one is proactive & works hard to stop know exploits).
• Host Level Protection: Virus Scanners, Host Firewall, Limit authority, detect changes.
• Familiarize yourself with the hacker tools… you can test your own system.
• Snort is a great tool… a good IPS… Highly recommended… can run on windows too.
• Encryption DDDS encryption on wondows (you can encrypt a particular directory). Unless the key is escrowed, if the HD fails, you will loose the data.
• Log watchers are also a good idea.
• Application level Protection: there is a lot of bad code out there… e.g. buffer overflowing a stack, and causing the execution of arbitrary code.
• Conclusion: Melissa virus: 100K machines over the weekend. Code Red 37K per hour.

ScheduleWhiz

Gary Thompson

• Makes scheduling much easier, with better results.
• Start be setting the earliest time a class can start.
• Min – Max sizes for class rooms.
• You can identify the better rooms so that they are utilized more often.
• You can block out time in classrooms (when other org’s have use of it).
• You can identify days that you prefer not to have classes on (Friday), or days you cannot have classes (saturday & sunday).
• You can keep classes by prof’s as close as possible.
• Min to Max teaching days for Prof’s can be constrained.
• You can create groups (for 1L for example), so that you don’t make conflicts with groups.
• You let it run over night and it will go through hundreds of thousands of options.
• If conflicts remain, you can drill down and find out what the exact problems for the scheduling conflict were.
• Free 60 Trial for the software.
• http://www.thoughtimus.com/

Tom Ryan

• Many people are not using tapes for backing up… Hard drives with off-line storage.
• Some enterprise and open source hardware and software.
• Hourly backups for the last 24 hours, nightly backups for the last week, and monthly backups.
• $50K for an EMC systems.
• Can use Rsync, but more processor intensive.  BackupPC is also an option.

• Streamlined (Close Up)
• Write the brief with blanks
• Fill in the blanks
• Adjust argument only if absolutely necessary

Five Types of Legal Resarch Tools

• Narrative Restatements -treatises, encyclopedias, law reviews. (Wide Angle tool).
• Codifications - annotated codes (Wide Angle)
• Free text - boolean searching, natural language (Close up) - very precise decontextualized.
• Controlled vocabulary Indexes - like in the back of a book (Close Up). In a leagal index, there is more context (Wide Angle - kind of).
• Citation Indexes -

• Becoming a big issue for Law – Open access to scholarly publishing.
• An institutional repository for documents.
• Loading it, creates a perminant URL, includes metadata on loading (dubin core).
• Google began indexing Dspace servers in 2004
• Jointly developed by MIT and HP labs.
• At University of New mexico… Comp Sci set it up, then turned it over to the library for policy development.
• Http://lawschool.unm.edu/lawlib/index.htm
• Dspace is an end state repository… not typically for documents that will change.

Read more

This looks like a great tool for Faculty, Librarians and Students to organize research. It works a a side bar for Word, IE, Firefox, and Word, and then you add docuemnts to the repository. You can also capture web pages and mark them up. Then you can publish as much of it as you want at RSS feeds or on Blogs. There’s lots more. You can see a tour of the product here:

http://www.onfolio.com/product/tour.cfm

Defniatly work downloading the 30 day trial and check it out…

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