CALIopolis

The AKFQuiz package lets you easily make your own quiz games or learning exercises. These can be used either with grquiz in a graphical environment (SDL), with crtquiz on a text terminal, or with diaquiz in a GUI environment. There is also a line oriented variant, linequiz, which can be used as a backend. A CGI-variant can be installed on a Web server to offer exercises via the Web.

freshmeat.net: Project details for AKFQuiz

Handles multiple choice, true/false, multiple correct and very short answer type questions.  Works from a simple text file, no GUI authoring tool, but text file format is straight forward.  Could be used as simple tool for creating web-based quizzes.

technorati tags: AKFQuiz, distance education, web based learning

Mayers12DaysXmas2005.mp3

This is a recording of a long Mayer Family Tradition - the singing of the 12 Days of Christmas. One family member is chosen as the "Maestro" (did I spell that right?) and chooses - at random - and without warning - someone to sing each "day" of Christmas in the song. Hilarity ensues.

There is an inherent tension between law schools, teachers and students.

School wants student to succeed - be happy - become a rich alum and donate - and pass the bar.

Teacher wants to student to learn - and not bug them too much - and only learn what the teacher thinks is important. Teacher wants a lot of control over the educational environment. They are, after all, primarily responsible for the "education" that happens in educational institutions - or so they think.

Students want the credential, the job, the loans paid off, the bar passed - with balance between life and job and learning and stress. Here is the catch, however.

Students wants to learn the way that they want to learn.

It's almost too simple a statement, but it means that students are in ultimate control of the educational process. They are not "in charge" and they are not the final authority and they are not always primarily responsible, but if they don't show up, nothing happens.

So that means, that schools and teachers must get students to show up - that's motivation. It's a natural, important and vital part of education. In law school, however, it's given fairly short shrift. Law students are adults, after all, and so they should not need to be reminded to bring their pencils to class and all that. This has some truth to it as well.

Let's cut to the chase...

Schools wants results.

Teachers wants control since this leads to student learning.

Students want the least hassle to satisfy authority of teacher and nab the credential which the school is reluctantly granting only after you have jumped through all 36 hoops (courses) to get the JD.

Where is CALI is this?

CALI lessons are written by teachers and so controlled by teachers - but since we have decoupled the teacher from the student - we have decoupled the authority. This gives back a lot of control to the student - hence students use our lessons, teachers do not. This is a constant point of discussion within CALI - "Why Don't More Law Faculty Assign CALI Lessons?"

A couple of years ago, we started making our lessons much smaller which helped students (because they became more findable). One of the stated goals of making smaller lessons (we called them lessonettes!), was to make them more reviewable and assignable by law faculty. Anecdotal evidence tells me this was a complete failure.

So why does CALI have steady membership?

Schools want their money's worth and as long as there is relevant activity and return-on-investment - they stick around. CALI gives huge return-on-investment. (IMHO) They could get more return if their teachers assigned more lessons, but this comes back to the control issue and the tension between schools and teachers.

I am not terrifically worried. Students are finding our lessons and telling us they like them for the reasons we designed them. But I do believe that we need to understand better the relationship between schools, teachers and students if we are going to be effective in creating better tools in the future.

The Association of American Law Schools (AALS) and the Center for
Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) are collaborating on a
project to create podcasts, digital audio recordings, of most of the
presentations to be made at the 2006 AALS Annual Meeting to be held
January 3-7, 2006 in Washington, DC.

CALI staff will be handling the logistics of capturing the recordings
and processing them for posting to www.aals.org/am2006/. It will take a
few weeks to process the recordings of over 120 sessions, but once they
are posted, they will be available to anyone with a web browser and MP3
player software on their personal computer. Alternatively, the MP3
files can be downloaded and played on portable MP3 playser like the
Apple iPod.

"Law faculty make presentations at AALS about cutting edge issues in
legal scholarship." opines John Mayer, CALI's Executive Director.
"Faculty cannot attend every session and law students normally have
almost no access to these presentations. CALI believes that by
providing this service, faculty may find material that they can use in
their upper-level seminar courses that will be of interest to students.
It is a way to connect scholarship and teaching in a very direct
manner."

"We are delighted to be working with CALI to provide this resource to
law schools." states Jane LaBarbera, Associate Director of AALS. "This
is a bit of an experiment and we are hoping that it is well received so
that we can decide how to proceed in the future."

AALS is a non-profit association of 166 law schools. The purpose of the
association is "the improvement of the legal profession through legal
education." It serves as the learned society for law teachers and is
legal education's principal representative to the federal government and
to other national higher education organizations and learned societies.

The AALS holds an Annual Meeting every year in January and five or six
workshops and conferences throughout the year. The AALS publishes a
Directory of Law Teachers and a quarterly newsletter, as well as other
publications. Much of the learned society activities are done by the 85
AALS Sections, which plan programs at the Annual Meetings and publish
newsletters throughout the year.

CALI is a U.S. 501(c)(3) non-profit consortium of law schools that
researches and develops computer-mediated legal instruction and supports
institutions and individuals using technology and distance learning in
legal education. CALI was incorporated in 1982 and welcomes membership
from law schools, paralegal programs, law firms and individuals wishing
to learn more about the law.

For additional information, please contact...

Jane LaBarbera, Associate Director, AALS - jlabarbera@aals.org

... or ...

John Mayer, Executive Director, CALI - jmayer@cali.org

The Michigan State Board of Education is set to approve a new graduation requirement today that would require every high-school student in the state to take at least one online course before receiving a diploma.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: 'The Cutting Edge'?

This proposal has a few hurdles to clear, but it certainly highlights the trend toward moving more education online.

technorati tags: distance education

I found myself catching up on a bunch of blog articles that I had checked and not read over the past month. There were over 30 of them and it took a diligent 2 hours to read through them all.

Some were interesting enough to tag in my del.icio.us account and others I emailed to staff or friends to look at.

I'm exhausted.

I also downloaded a bunch of podcasts so that I can listen to them as I walk the dog all next week, but downloading podcasts sometimes takes a long time on my DSL. I could wait until I get into work where the connection is faster, but, well, I took a break to make some coffee.

Then I started into old emails that needed to be filed, answered, deleted, etc.

I'm really getting tired.

Finally, I went to the several blogs that I adminster (including this one) and deleted the p0rn comment spam that is starting to show up. I know that soon we will have a way to deal with this, but in the meantime, I need to be diligent (there's that word again) so that my "space" does not look like a brothel.

I didn't have any time this weekend to get out with friends, go Christmas shopping or call my family. I was too busy managing my social connections on the Web. I am experiencing social software fatigue or SSFS for short (the last "S" is for syndrome since everything seems to be a mental illness these days.

SSFS is when you spend more time managing your connections than making connections with real people and real friends. You know it's especially bad when you spend MORE time managing than living. It's kind of like spending more time washing your car than driving it, but even that's not a very good analogy.

Doubtless, this will all get easier as the tools converge and things become more convenient (or my friends stop calling), but in the meantime, I am thinking of looking for a SSFS 12 step program.

Lessee,

My name is John Mayer and I am a SSFaholic.

HI JOHN!!!

Would someone please intervene.

Duke University has discovered that iPods are a hit in class. A year after the university gave all freshman students the little white music players, the number of students using iPods for class work has quadrupled, and the number of courses incorporating iPods has doubled, the university announced.

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Invasion of the iPod People

Article includes this link to the list of Spring 2006 course that will be making use of iPod technologies, though, the page notes, not all course will require student use of iPods.  Of note, no law courses are listed.

technorati tags: ipod, Duke University

The Emory Wheel Online reports that Emory University chemistry professor Justin Gallivan is offering enhanced podcasts of his chemistry classes available free via iTunes.

Thomson Peterson's--Syndication for Higher Ed--Emory Chemistry Professor Offers Enhanced Podcasts

Not in the law school, but close. Good article that highlights the benefits of podcasting as a supplement for students who still attend class regularly. Article makes it clear that listening to podcasts is not a substitute for actually attending lectures.

technorati tags: podcast, education, Emory

California recently adopted a law that stiffens data-security requirements for academic researchers who work with confidential information about human subjects. Some observers predict that other states will follow suit. (The Chronicle, subscription required)

The Chronicle: Wired Campus Blog: Safeguards for Personal Data

This new law covers data provided by state agencies to non-profit research orgainzations including universities for academic research.  Other states are likely to follow.

PennTags lets you organize and share your bookmarks. You can use the UPennToolbar or the PennTags Bookmarklet to post websites into your tagspace.

PennTags /

This is intriguing.  A local social tagging effort aimed at gathering the collected bookmarks of UPenn together in one tagging space.  Seems to focus on academia for the moment, so it is bit like gathering up the collective web research of the community.  CALI has an interest in this sort of tagging effort with a pilot law school directory based on Scuttle, and it is easy to see it expanded into something like this.  Imagine all of the bookmarks of legal scholars across the country.

technorati tags: scuttle, tagging, law schools