CALIopolis

"Please Pay Attention" is the working title of the new podcast series. We would love to get suggestions from listeners to name this podcast.

Elmer Masters and I talk about legal education-related IT topics several times a week and we have threatened in the past to turn some of those conversations into podcasts because we believe that others might benefit. Alternatively, others might listen and set us straight.

So we have followed up on our threat and recorded the first in a series of podcasts. The general topic area is IT in legal education/law schools. We don't expect to be the only voices on this podcast as we will be inviting "guest speakers" - that is - real IT folks who work at real jobs in real law schools.

But for this first podcast, we decided to keep it between just me and Elmer and talk about Drupal (Elmer attended DrupalCon in Boston last week), Drupal, the massively popular open source content management system and related topics on law school website design, development and administration issues.

We talk a bit about the planned DrupalFest to be held during the 2008 Conference for Law School Computing on June 18-21, 2008 in Baltimore, MD at the University of Maryland School of Law.

Give it a listen, give us some feedback and in a couple of weeks we will see if this a drive-by podcast or we will be repeat offenders.

Here is the podcast ... LegalEdITpodcast001rev1.mp3 (updated version after running The Levelator to clean up sound volume levels)

iTunes links to be added soon.

Intro and out-tro music is Creative Commons licensed and was found at Podsafe Audio. The artist is Heather Sullivan and the tune is "I Believe".

Here is the link to the screencast version of my talk at the 2008 Annual CALI Members Meeting held on Friday, January 5, 2008 in New York during AALS.

I had previously posted the podcast/audio recording and Powerpoint slides.

Here ...

AALS2008Carnegie.mp3

... is the recording of the AALS Session: Rethinking Legal Education For The 21st Century. The speakers included...

• Moderator: Edward L. Rubin, Vanderbilt University Law School
  
• Speakers: Vicki C. Jackson, Georgetown University Law Center
  
• Robert Mac Crate, Esq., Senior Counsel, Sullivan and Cromwell, New York, New York
  
• Martha L. Minow, Harvard Law School
  
• Suellyn Scarnecchia, University of New Mexico School of Law
  
• William M. Sullivan, Senior Scholar The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Palo Alto, California
  
• Judith W. Wegner, University of North Carolina School of Law

Here is the recording of my talk at the 2008 Annual Membership Meeting for CALI during AALS in New York, NY on January 5, 2008 ... AALS2008CALIBreakfast.mp3

Here are the slides ... 2008AALSBreakfast_final.ppt

I will be posting a screencast version soon and posting more information about ELangdell into the future.

I lurk on the LawProf discussion list and was privy to the discussion about student note sharing websites that surrounded SwapNotes.com over the past few days.

I was a bit perturbed by the vehemence of some of the responses and invited Adam Steiner who is a 3L at Cardozo Law School to talk about his company.

In many ways, it's a familiar Internet entrepreneur story. Students were already sharing their course notes via email and other (somewhat) under-the-radar file repositories and Adam saw a way to make the process more efficient by creating a centralized, Creative Common-based respository of student-contributed notes. He pays the hosting/bandwidth bills via advertising on the website.

Some faculty object to this for copyright reasons. I don't go into this aspect in the interview because neither I nor Adam are copyright experts. I direct the reader to Professor Michael Madison's cogent analysis here.

We do discuss the pedagogical issues that are inherent in Adam's enterprise because I believe this has direct overlap with CALI's mission and our work on the creation of a Legal Education Commons (I talk about the Legal Education Commons projects here in a video/podcast of a presentation recently delivered at the Harvard Berkman Center).

The conversation is 28 minutes long and you can listen to it by clicking on the following link - adamsteinerswapnotes.mp3.

I have also invited Adam to speak at the Conference for Law School Computing which will be June 18-20, 2007 at UNLV in Las Vegas. I will also be inviting owner/operators of other law student note-sharing websites.

Like the issue of banning laptops in the classroom, I believe there is more here than what is visible on the surface. I think it would be difficult to for faculty to completely suppress all sharing of student notes for copyright infringement reasons. I think it would be hypocritical to suppress sharing for pedagogical reasons. If you are going to issue take-down notices to websites, you should consider closing your law school's bookstore (or at least telling them to stop selling commercial outlines).

Students of the digital age are very much into RML or Rip, Mix, Learn. I delivered an entire keynote address on this topic at the 2006 CALI Conference. You can watch the video, screencast or listen to the podcast here.

I spent a wonderful day last week at the Berkman Center and gave a fast-paced talk about past, current and future CALI projects. The Berkman folks are involved in all kinds of imaginative, challenging and exciting projects that overlap with my work at CALI in all kinds of ways. I had a great time.

The kind folks at Berkman have already posted a podcast and video of my talk.

I look forward to working more closely with them in the future.

I am always looking for sources of interesting podcasts and one of my staff pointed me to this collection of gems.

Hamline's Conversations in Law.

Lots of intersting topics relating to law, society, culture and even Malcom Gladwell, author of Blink and the Tipping Point.

Professor Garrett Power has spent 30 years writing his casebook which is titled: Constitutional Limitations on Land Use Controls, Environmental Regulations and Governmental Exactions.

He has posted the 704 page PDF to SSRN and the University of Maryland's Digital Commons website.

In this 24 minute conversation, we talk about his motivations and expectations for the casebook and open-access content.

Click here to listen or right-click to download - GarretPower2.mp3

Every year, the membership of CALI meets during AALS to elect new members to the Board of Directors and I give an overview of the previous year plus a look-ahead to the coming year.

2006 was an amazing year for CALI and I expect that 2007 will be even better.

You can watch/listen to my screencast here.

Alternatively, you can listen to just a podcast of the presentation. Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - AALS2007CALIMembersMeeting.mp3

I welcome comments, ideas, suggestions, complaints and kudos. Drop me a note at jmayer@cali.org.

Every year, my sisters and their families gather for the holidays and one of our traditions is to jointly sing the 12 Days of Christmas.

This year, we tried something a little different. On the last verse (where all 12 days are sung), we tried to "sing" the "sound" of the item ... uhhh ... it leaves something to be desired.

Click to listen or right click to download the MP3 - Mayer200612Days.mp3

Professor Stephen Safranek of Ave Maria School of Law created podcasts for all of his classroom lectures while teaching Contracts in the Spring 2006 semester and is doing the same this fall. I interviewed Professor Safranek (twice) and must thank him for his patience and equanamity as a technical glitch lost the first interview (Doh!).

Here is the podcast (11:34)- click to listen or right click to download. - SteveSafranekfinal.mp3

Ran across a useful interview that Charlie White conducted with attorney Jeffrey Hermes in four parts. They talk about various legal issues that have to do with podcasting like First Amendment protections, defamation, fair use and being sued. Worth a read..

Part 1 here

Part 2 here

Part 3 here

...and...

Part 4 here.

You know, this would have worked better as a podcast.

Elmer Masters and I spoke at EDUCAUSE today in a presentation titled "Podcasting the Classroom: Two Models".

Here is the Powerpoint deck from the talk. Elmer used a TiddlyWiki for his talk and I will post a link when I get it - EDUCAUSEPodcasting.ppt

Here is a link to the audio of the talk that I recorded. Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - Educause2006PodcastTwoModels.mp3

UPDATE: Here is a link to a screencast of the presentation that syncs the audio to the powerpoints.

This is my second interview with a law professor who teaches patent law. Professor Vince Chiapetta teaches at Willamette University College of Law and has been involved in patent litigation in the past.

The first podcast was with Professor Mary LaFrance of UNLV Boyd School of Law.

Vince was kind enough to entertain my questions and enlighten in me in many aspects of patents, patent law and patent litigation. He clarified many issue for me in regards to the BlackBoard v. Desire2Learn litigation.

I had the benefit of speaking with Vince the day after my return from EDUCAUSE in Dallas where one of the sessions I attended was the BlackBoard Town Hall which others have blogged about here (Chronicle article) and here (Al Essa's blog). This session left me with more questions than answers and these were fresh in my mind during my talk with Vince.

We talked about many legal issues and so I will come back to this post later and add some links to legal definitions or other articles to help us non-lawyers follow the bouncing ball.

UPDATE: I ran the audio file through Gigabox's excellent free tool Levelator to make it more listen-able (my voice boomed while Vince sounded distant) to good effect. The link is to the new version.

Click to listen to the podcast or right-click to download - Chiapetta2.mp3

As usual, none of the information in this podcast should be construed as legal advice.

UPDATE:

We covered a lot of technical territory in this podcast. Here are some links that relate to some of the topics covered...

• KSR v. Teleflex - a current patent case going before the Supreme Court soon. This is a link to a blog that talks about the case.
• The term I was searching for about 10 minutes into the podcast was "Skilled Artisan" and here is a link to the USPTO website that helped me. Use your browser (Ctrl-F) to search for "skilled artisan".
• Definition of Mens Rea from LII's Wex.
• More about the Sherman Act from Wex
• Walker Process Supreme Court case that ties together inequitable conduct and antitrust (link to Findlaw)
• Here's an article on "inequitable conduct" in patent litigation. I have not read this yet.
• Here's an article about the US District Court in Texas often referred to as the "Rocket Docket" for patent cases.
• Cost of patent litigration from Wikipedia..."...A typical patent infringement case in the US costs 1 - 3 million dollars in legal fees for each side. This is despite the fact that 99% of all patent infringement cases are settled. Legal fees in pharmaceutical cases can run 30 million dollars or more due to the fact that billions of dollars may be at stake...."
• Wikipedia article on software patents
• Article on "Markman Hearings" with this quote... "...While the form, timing and scope of "Markman" hearings vary from district to district and from judge to judge, the outcome is often dispositive of the entire case. This occurs because the interpretation of a patent claim, or "claim construction", is the central issue in most patent litigation. Whether the litigation focuses on patent infringement or validity, the core issue is often whether there is a narrow or broad interpretation of the patent claim...."

When the media is reporting on a new story that involves a court case or a legal issue, they naturally turn to legal experts to provide commentary. Many of those experts are law professors and I know of many law schools that provide lists of law professors with expertise who are willing to speak on to reporters. It's a common way to get the law school's name into the media and out to future applicant pools.

Schools with good media contacts might take this a step further and contact their media sources offering law professors when a new story breaks.California Western School of Law takes this a step further and adds a public service twist.

They are posting 10 minute podcasts from their faculty on current legal issues.

"... Law in 10 is a weekly podcast produced by California Western School of Law, which brings you an expert analysis of the latest legal news, all in 10 minutes..."

CWSL is posting one of these podcasts per week and so far have covered such topics as the legality of Presidentt Bush's military tribunals, a local (San Diego) police shooting incident and changes to the legal workplace due to generational gaps (and others).

Ten minutes is more than you would get on CNN or Fox when they turn to an expert and these podcasts not only benefit the listeners, they benefit the law school and the faculty who are speaking.

It's a brilliant idea.

An excellent article in the TimesOnline compares the podcasting of university lectures to time-shifting television shows like you can do with Tivo or other digital recorders or like you can do when you download televisions shows from iTunes or watch videso on YouTube.

I think this is an apt comparison. Podcasting gives students more options to integrate their learning into their busy schedules. Podcasts lets the student attend the class and re-attend the class again and again. Some of the students who responded to our survey about the Legal Education Podcasting Project admitted to listening to some podcasts several times.

Isn't that a good thing?

The article mentions the sticking point with some faculty and universties...

"... The primary reason for not wiring up the lecture hall is the fear it will upset the traditional classroom dynamic. Podcasts will become a study aid for the truant student, goes the thinking, and if the podcasts catch on, students will skip class en masse and the entire learning experience will be thrown into turmoil..."

Our student survey also revealed that very few students admitted to skipping class because of the availability of the podcast. The instructors (who we also interviewed) reported no noticable change in attendance patterns, but it may be too early to tell.

TechnicianOnline reports that Professor Robert Schrag at North Carolina State University offered his students podcasts for $2.50 per download. One day later, the Chronicle reports that he was asked to stop this service almost as soon as it was reported and discussed on Slashdot.

The students seemed happy to have the service available. I am not certain that having to pay for the service above and beyond the cost of tuition is a great idea, however.

We had a student (link to interview with the law student) volunteer to record and post all of his instructor's lectures and we provided him with a digital recorder to do so (after he got permission from the instructors, of course) and I have blogged on the idea that students would probably be more than willing to handle the small amount of work necessary to create and post the podcasts. With CALI providing the blog, disk space and bandwidth via Classcaster, there is almost no cost to law faculty who want to make their classroom lectures available to their students and others.

I was most gratified to read this quote from the TimesOnline article quoting Sally Feldman, the Dean of Westminster University’s School for Media, Arts and Design and chair of the university’s web group...

"... One of the reasons the podcast will become as essential as the pen and paper is because of the growing need for accountability in the classroom, she adds: "It is about time that we started being more concerned about performance in education."..."

I see accountability as the "stick" in this discussion, but it can also be a "carrot" where faculty can learn from each other's lectures or even from listening to their own podcasts. We don't talk much about professional development of law faculty as educators and podcasting may be a way to back into that conversation.

Need to get back into "law school mode"? Here are some podcasts that are up your alley.

Elmer pointed me to the NPR-sponsored website for Justice Talking where they post MP3s of shows that are law-related.

Recent programs posted include...

• Immigration Reform
  
• Collecting DNA from the Accused: Will it Help or Hurt Law Enforcement?
  
• The Roberts Court: What Can This Term Tell Us About the Future of the Court?
  
• Are Lawyers Necessary in all Cases?

... and others.

For you lawyers, you can get CLE credit for listening to the shows via a link on the site.

Here is another in a series of interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project.

Professor Charles Shafer of the University of Baltimore School of Law created weekly summaries for his evening division Torts class.

This podcast is 29 minutes long.

Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - CharlesShafer.mp3

As posted earlier, I gave a talk at AALL with Jim Milles. Here is a link to a screencast version of my portion of the talk (audio synced with the slides).

This screencast is 27 minutes long.

Jim Milles and I co-presented in a talk at the American Association of Law Libraries conference in St. Louis on Monday, July 10, 2006.

Here is a link to my powerpoint slides - InvasionofthePodcastPeoplet.ppt

Jim will be posting his slides and perhaps a recording of this presentation as a podcast at his podcast blog, Check This Out.

Later, I will be posting a link to a screencast version of my part of the talk.

Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - InvasionPodcastPeople.mp3

Thanks for Fred Barnhart at Loyola University -Chicago School of Law for inviting me to speak.

This is a podcast of a presentation given by Larry Farmer of BYU law school at Subtech 2006 in Oslo, Norway.

The title of this talk is "New Computer Tools to Facilitate Learning in a Legal Interviewing & Counseling Course", but Larry covers some very interesting ground that belies the title.

This podcast is 1 hour, 2 minutes and 45 seconds long.

Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - LarryFarmer.mp3

This is a podcast from Subtech 2006.

This talk is titled "Using a VLE to Support Reflective Learning and Personal Development Planning Within a 1st Year Law Module" given by Sefton Bloxham and Andrea Cerevkova of Edge Hill University.

This podcast is 47 minutes long.

Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - Bloxham_Cerevkova.mp3

Here is a story from Diny Peters, a consultant to European law schools who I worked with on the Rechtenonline project in the Netherlands several years ago. Diny is a delightful and insightful person who talks about working on the Rechtononline project which was (and is) a very ambitious project for the Dutch.

The podcast is 4 minutes 44 seconds long.

Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - DinyPeters__Interview.mp3

Here is another short (1 minute) story from Subtech 2006 told by Jon Bing of the University of Oslo.

Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - JonBing_Interview.mp3

As part of a workshop during Subtech 2006, I had participants interview each other asking to share a story about a success or failure in using ICT in legal education.

This short podcast (4:30) is Claes Martinsson of the Göteborg University in Sweden. The interviewer is Diny Peters from The Netherlands.

Click to listen to the podcast or right-click to download the MP3 - ClaesMartinsson_Interview.mp3

This is another podcast from Subtech 2006 which I attended in Oslo, Norway.

Professor Giovanni Sartor, Marie-Curie Professor of Legal Informatics and Legal Theory. European University Institute, Florence spoke on "Proprietary and Communal Knowledge: The Case of Open Source"

The podcast is 56 minutes long.

Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - GiovanniSartorSubtech2006.mp3

Here is another short podcast which is a discussion between Ralph Amissah and Stefan Bengtsson about Success (or Failure) Stories using IT in Education.

Ralph has worked on SiSU project (website here) for quite a while.

Stefan is a multimedia developer at Lunds University Faculty of Law in Sweden.

This podcast is 9 minutes and 2 seconds long.

Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - Amissah_Bengtsson_Interview.mp3

Here is another podcast of a presentation given at Subtech 2006 in Oslo, Norway on Friday, June 20, 2006.

The speakers were Paul Maharg, Pat McKellar, Sefton Bloxham and Karen Barton.

The title of the presentation was "Current E-learning Projects, and Also a 'state of play' Presentation: Overview of What's Happening in the UK Currently as Regards Legal Education, and Where the Possible Futures of the Discipline Lie".

The powerpoints for the presentation are here.

Paul Maharg blogs about it here.

From the viewpoint of this American, the Brits are doing amazing things with technology that is deeply relevant and intelligently driven by the pedagogy in legal education. There is almost too much information to absorb here.

I refer you to the following for more information...

• Ardcalloch Virtual Town for Legal Education
• Siberdam (Dutch Ardcalloch) project- slideshow here (in Dutch)
• Using e-portfolios in legal education
• LUVLE - Lancaster University's Virtual Learning Environment
• Zeugma - Paul Maharg's (and soon others) who blog on legal education and technology in the UK.

This podcast is 55 minutes and 19 seconds long.

Click the link to listen or right click to download the MP3 - MahargMcKellarBloxhmaBarton.mp3

Here is the first of several podcasts from Subtech 2006 conference that I attended in Oslo, Norway this past week.

Tom Bruce, Director of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell gave a talk that was was insightful and probing and wickedly funny. At one point he played a Flash animation that must be experienced to be understood - link here.

This podcast is 31 minutes long.

To listen in your browser, click the link or right-click to download the MP3 - TomBruceSubtech2006.mp3

As part of a workshop I ran with Deb Quentel at Subtech2006 in Oslo, Norway, I had participants interview each other on the topic of "Lessons Learned using ICT in Legal Education". This admittedly broad subject lent itself to telling stories that could cover a wide swath of subjects and the podcasts I will be posted indicate this. These "interviews" were unscripted and off-the-cuff and the room was rather noisy with half-a-dozen interviews going on at the same time. First lesson about podcasting to learn - find a quiet space. I could not post some of the recordings do to the ambient noise making the subjects voices almost unintelligible.

This is first of several podcasts and is the interview between Professor Paul Maharg of the University of Strathclyde (Paul blogs here) and Professor Peter Martin of Cornell Law School. Peter is a co-founder of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell.

This discussion between Martin and Maharg is 12 minutes long.

Here is the link to the podcast. Click to listen or right-click to download - Maharg_Martin_Interview.mp3

This is an podcast interview in our continuing series of podcast interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project this past semester (Spring or Winter) of 2006.

Professor Robin Craig of the University of Indiana-Indianapolis School of Law recorded the classroom for her Property II course.

The podcast can be found here - click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - robincraig2.mp3

This is the next interview in our series of interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project this past semester (Spring or Winter) of 2006.

Professor Thaddeus Pope of the University of Memphis School of Law recorded the classroom for his Health Law course.

This podcast is 38 minutes and 46 seconds long.

Here is the link to the podcast. Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - ThadPope.mp3

This is the next in our series of interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project this past semester (Spring or Winter) of 2006.

Professor Steve Bradford of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of Law recorded weekly summary podcasts for his Securities Regulations course.

This podcast is 22 minutes and 36 seconds long.

Here is the link to the podcast. Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - SteveBradaford.mp3

Here is the next in a series of podcast interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project this past semester (Spring or Winter) of 2006.

This interview is with Professor Peter Henning of Wayne State University School of Law. Professor Henning created weekly summaries for his Professional Responsibility course.

This podcast is 30 minutes and 50 seconds long.

Here is the link to the podcast - click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - PeterHenning.mp3

This is an interview with Don Zhou who is a 1L at William Mitchell College of Law and the Head of Technical Services in the Law Library. He heard about the podcasting project and approached several professors in courses that he was taking and gained their permission to post recordings of the classes on the law school's internal BlackBoard course websites.

This was an especially interesting podcast because Don provides insights from the student perspective and he repesents an interesting model for introducing podcasting into legal education that I had not considered before. Because Don did all the work of setting up the digital recorder, converting the files and uploading them to a website, he lowered the barriers to podcasting for the faculty in the courses he took. Whatever his motivations, he personally benefited and also shared that benefit with the other students in his classes.

This podcast is 20 minutes and 40 seconds long.

The link to the podcast is here - click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - DonZhou.mp3

This is the next in our series of interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project this past semester (Spring or Winter) of 2006.

Lee Peoples is the Associate Director for Faculty, Research and Instructional Services and teaches at the Oklahoma City University School of Law and created weekly summaries for his class Advanced Legal Research, Foreign, Comparative and International Law.

This podcast is 18 minutes and 15 seconds long.

Here is the link to the podcast. Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - LeePeoples.mp3

Here is the next podcast interview in our continuing series of interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project.

Professor Norm Garland of the Southwestern University School of Law used podcasting in his Constitutional Criminal Procedure course. Professor Garland also makes extensive use of Powerpoints and is experimenting with posting videocasts of his classes (audio + Powerpoints) as well.

Here is the podcast. Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - NormGarland.mp3

This is the latest interview with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcastaing Project this past spring semester.

Professor Carole Buckner of Western State University School of Law used podcasting in her Civil Procedure II course.

The podcast can be found here - click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - CaroleBuckner.mp3

Here is the next in our series of interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project.

Professor Karin Mika of Cleveland State University - Cleveland Marshall College of Law used podcasts in her Advanced Legal Research course.

This podcast is 31 minutes and 48 seconds long.

Here is the link to the podcast. Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - KarinMika.mp3

This is the next in a series of podcast interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project.

Professor Aaron Fellmeth of Arizona State University School of Law recorded the classroom of his Patent Law class. He is a self-proclaimed "fast talker" and believes that the podcast helped his students because they could go over the material a second or third time.

This podcast is 20 minutes and 32 seconds long.

Here is the link to the podcast: Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - AaronFellmeth.mp3

During my podcast interview with Professor Scott Burnham, we were joined by James Cramer, Director of IT at Montana who discusses a survey he conducted of students who were in Professor Burnham's Contracts courses in relation to their use of the podcasts. We also talk about technical issues, equipment setup, staffing and the future of podcasting at the University of Montana School of Law.

This podcast lasts 25 minutes and 10 seconds.

Here is the link. Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - jamescramer.mp3

Very interesting stuff in this podcast. Montana is going to pre-subscribe their incoming students to the RSS feeds of podcasted classes next fall. I believe they are also starting a new laptop requirement in the fall which makes this possible. All student machines will also come pre-installed with Audacity and iTunes.

This is is our third interview with a law faculty podcaster who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project this past Spring 2006 semester.

Professor Scott Burnham recorded weekly summaries and recorded the classroom for this students. (Full disclosure, Professor Burnham is on the CALI Board of Directors).

This podcast is 17 minutes and 15 seconds long.

Here is the link. Click to listen or right-click to download the MP3 - scottburnham.mp3

Immediately after talking to Scott, James Cramer, the IT Director at Montana joined the conversation to discuss surveys that were conducted of the students who were in Scott's class and on some of the technical issues surrounding the setup of recording the classroom (both students and instructor).

This is the second in a series of podcast interviews with law faculty who participated in the Legal Education Podcasting Project. This interview was conducted on Friday, May 26. 2006 with Professor Willliam Gregory from Georgia State University School of Law.

Professor Gregory recorded the classroom for his students (including extensive presentations by his students) while teaching Securities Regulations. You can listen to his podcasts here.

This podcast is 26 minutes long.

Listen or download - WilliamGregory.mp3

Update: I re-worked the recording in Audacity to remove as much of the static that crept into the recording. The podcast link below links to the new recording.

This past spring semester, CALI conducted the Legal Education Podcasting Project where over 30 law faculty used podcasting in their courses. We conducted surveys of the students mid-semester and are in the process of conducting an end-of-semester survey as well.

We also are interviewing the faculty about their experiences and their thoughts on how podcasting affected their students and their own teaching.

This is the first of a series of interviews to be posted and it is with Professor Jennifer Martin of Western New England College of Law.

Professor Martin's class podcasts can be found here.

This podcast is 33 minutes long.

Here is the podcast link. Listen or download. JenniferMartin2.mp3

The inimitable Doug Kaye, CEO of the Conversations Network and a thoroughly enjoyable person to listen to has a podcast on recording phone calls and live events for podcasting. This is a geeky talk, but there is are few people with more on the ground experience in recording for podcasting.

He has advice on devices, microphones, Skype, ISDN and even live-casting.

More great podcasts on the geeky side of podcasting at the Podcast Academy event here.

Here is another podcast that is fascinating, entertaining, educational and thought-provoking. Bruce Sterling is a write of science fiction and a futurist as well as a non-fiction author. The image above is clickable to his latest work on "space and time objects" or "spimes".

The podcast is from 2006 O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference via the ITConversations folks. It's worth a listen.

The good folks at Creative Commons have put together a Podcasting Legal Guide that is comprehensive and thorough as seen by these non-lawyerly eyes. I thought this quote from Larry Lessig's forward was particularly apt...

"...This Guide is an excellent resource for anyone who wants to figure out how best to follow the law. It is also an outstanding recommendation for the non-profit I run, Creative Commons, for as you will see as you work through the insanity that copyright law has become, Creative Commons is a simple alternative to this complex mess..."

My emphasis.

Reading through guide does give one a sense of looking for the white rabbit or more appropriately, the Mad Hatter. Lots to study here.

----

Update: Just realized that one of the authors of the Podcasting Legal Guide has also participated in HigherEdBlogCon with two Quicktime movies that you can watch. The presentation is titled Legal Issues in Podcasting the Traditional Classroom.

Here is a slightly easier way to find podcasts from the 2006 AALS Annual Meeting held in January of this year. I took the lists from all four days, combined them and stripped off any sessions that were not podcast and stripped out the session descriptions. Only the sesctions, titles and speakers (and of course links to the podcast) are included. Using your browser's find function (Ctrl-F), you can find a podcast for the section or speaker that you want.

The text was too big to fit into a blog post, so it can be found here on the CALI website.

As I have mentioned before, I listen to 10-20 podcasts a week and I am going to make it a point to blog about the best that I come across. These types of posts will be rather infrequent.

The first podcast is Stephen Downes giving a talk in Tennessee. He is a Senior Researcher at Canada's National Research Council. In this talk, Stephen goes way beyond the curve to project the end of education as we know it and I found his arguments quite compelling. Stephen is one of our great thinkers in this space and his talks are complex, home-spun and accessible at the same time.

The second podcast is from Mark Prensky giving a talk in Shropshire, England about gaming and its use in education. He ranges widely, but makes insightful points about how gaming has rich possibilities for integration into formal and informal educational spaces.

Give them a listen and let me know what you think.

I listen to a lot of podcasts - 10 to 20 per week while I am walking my dog or driving to/from work. Mostly these are presentations given at conferences or talks/brown bag seminars at schools by scholars and the amount of knowledge available in these fora is fantastic.

In the past week, I listened to three mind-expanding talks about the future that really made my head spin with ideas and information.

The first is Peter Cochrane giving the keynote at the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony conference given on January of 2006. Peter really brings it all together about RFID, telephones, telepresence and the use of sensor networks and telecommunications. I felt myself getting smarter listening to this.

The second is Mary Meeker from Morgan Stanley speaking at the Web 2.0 conference in 2005 and she provides a succinct and rapid overview of the adoption of all kinds of technologies around the world including WiFi, broadband and mobile phones. This podcast is extremely dense and you will benefit from multiple listens.

The third podcast is a talk by John Smart called How to be Tech Futurist and is ostensibly about a new area of education on future planning. He starts out a little slow, but about 10 minutes in, he starts dropping amazing asides and insights about the future of computing, oil, complexity theory, physics and nanotechnology that I had never heard so well expressed. It's a fast, breath-taking and ultimately optimistic podcast.

If you are trying to make sense out of the chaos in the tech marketplace, these three podcasts will expand your thinking and give you perspectives that are difficult to find without extensive research.

Back in December, I interviewed Professor Patrick Wiseman of the Georgia State University College of Law_ about his experiences in podcasting. He offers excellent advice to law faculty interested in creating audio materials for their students.

Interestingly, Professor Wiseman got started recording his classes so that he could listen to them himself and so improve his teaching. This an excellent side-benefit of podcasting.

:Q1. The big question, of course, is ... Has attendance to your class dropped because students can listen to your lectures outside of class?

There was some evidence of this when I first started to record my classes (Spring 2003). At the time, although I had an attendance requirement, it was on the honor system. On one particularly bad occasion - students with legal writing papers due did not show up, and maybe 60 of 80 students were present - I complained that my "supplement", the recording, was being used as a "substitute" and that my generosity in making the class available in recorded form was being exploited. (Having said, and recorded, that, I
stopped the recording and put that up as the class podcast for the day! I did, in fact, record the rest of the class and made it available weeks later.) The students present suggested that I start taking roll. I did so, and attendance has not been an issue since. In fact, last semester, I reverted to the honor system (while promising to take roll if attendance seemed to drop off) and it was not a problem!



:Q2. Has the fact that you record your lectures changed how you teach or what you present in class?

I'm careful to speak in complete sentences, and I try to remember to repeat student questions before answering. Sometimes, of course, the class is very conversational and some of that gets lost in the recording (another reason why the recording is no substitute for being there). And I suspect I'm tempted to "lecture" rather than converse because that will be more useful in recorded form. Some courses I don't record at all because I specifically want them to be as conversational as possible (First Amendment, e.g.). I suppose one could record some classes within a course - those that are setting ground work - and not others, but I've not really tried to make that distinction. I did not record a Q&A review session recently, but told students that if they wanted its benefit they needed to be there.

I'm also "tied to the podium," because that's where my recorder is, whereas I used to prowl the front of the classroom. (Use of the SmartBoard tends to keep me there now as well.) I think being in one place for most of the class is probably a good thing. (But having a lapel mic might be nice as it would free me up to prowl once more!)



:Q3. Explain the technical setup - what hardware is used to record the lecture, what software is used to process it in post-production,