CALI Lessons for Paralegal Students and Programs

CALI lesson aren’t just for law students…many of our lessons are entirely appropriate for other legal academic programs.

For paralegal students and programs, we just made it a little easier to find lessons that would work for your courses.  The CALI for Paralegal Students and Programs page on our website has links to several model paralegal course syllabi.  Within those syllabi are links to CALI lessons that would work for those courses.

If you are with a paralegal program and attending the AAfPE National Conference in Savannah in mid-October, look for CALI’s Director of Curriculum Development Deb Quentel – she’ll be there and happy to answer any questions you have about incorporating existing CALI lessons into your paralegal courses or about writing your own CALI lessons.

Image credit: Adapted from cartoon image by Eric Molinsky.  One of the 100s of creative commons licensed images available on CALI’s Flickr account.

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Instruction Spotlight: The EdTech Primer

One of my goals with the Instruction Spotlight series of posts on CALI Spotlight was to create a list of basic explanations to some of the major educational theories and ideas out there, both to teach myself as well as provide a resource for the CALI user base.  Well, as with all of my good ideas, someone has already thought to do something very similar to that.

Today I discovered The EdTech Primer, created by CALIcon2012 Plenary speaker Audrey Watters.   This is a wiki that is aimed at explaining educational theories and concepts to a “techie” audience.   It’s a new-ish site, but there’s already a nice list of articles available. To give you an idea, some of the topics covered include:

All in all, a great resource to check out if you want to dip your toe in some educational theory without committing to reading an entire book or taking a grad school class.

Photo credit: Drawing by Eric Molinsky.  One of the many CC licensed images available on CALI’s Lesson Illustration Flickr set.  Help yourself!

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Scheduled CALI.org Website Outage

Sunday September 2, 2012, (this weekend) there is a scheduled website outage for website maintenance.  CALI.org, CALI lessons, Classcaster, eLangdell and the CALIcon websites will all be affected and offline.

The maintenance is scheduled for 8:00am – 12:00pm (NOON).  After that, all of the websites will be back and running and in better shape than ever.  We’re sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause.

 

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/caliorg/  One of the hundreds of available CC licensed images that CALI hosts on Flickr.

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Professor Created Course Materials Survey

As you may know, one of the projects we work on here at CALI is eLangdell Press, which creates and distributes open law school casebooks.  We do this because we believe educational materials should be Open – that is to say, able to be remixed, reused and ideally free. We’re not the only ones trying to create alternatives to the traditional commercially published casebook – Harvard’s Berkman Center has H2O and I keep stumbling upon individual professors that create their own casebook supplements and alternatives.

That’s actually the problem – we only learn about most of our fellow travelers in this area by accident.  A tweet here, a comment at a conference there – we actually don’t know how many professors are out there doing their own thing, why they do it or how.

Let’s change that.

Below you’ll find a FIVE MINUTE survey for professors that create their own course materials.  It can be as complex as an entire casebook alternative published on the web or as simple as handing out copies of a relevant case from the local jurisdiction.   If you can’t view the embedded survey, it can also be found here: http://cca.li/kG  Please help us distribute the survey and encourage any one you know that this applies to to take it.

 

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tangysd/

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Hotmail Accounts Banned from CALI.org

Due to a near-site killing influx of spammers and other internet ne’er-do-wells using Hotmail, we’ve had to ban all CALI.org accounts that are affiliated with a Hotmail email address.  Unfortunately, this will cause a number of legitimate registered CALI.org users to be banned from our system.  This is a small percentage of our total users, but still a decent amount of people.

If you use Hotmail…

There are two options available for banned hotmail users.  You can…

(1) Send an email to webmaster AT CALI.org with your name and a non-Hotmail email address that you wish to use with your CALI account.  The switch over will have to be done manually, so it’s entirely foreseeable that the process may get clogged up.   If you want instant gratification and access….

(2) Create a new account using a non-Hotmail email address.  Please note, if you do choose this option, you will lose all access to previous lesson run information. You will also need a valid authorization code from a member institution as part of the registration process.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact me at Sarah AT CALI.org.

Thanks,
Sarah

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Instruction Spotlight: Flipping the Classroom

Flipping the classroom is a deceptively simple idea.  Instead of students learning via in-class lecture and then working on homework afterwards, the flipped classroom has students prepare for class ahead of time (the literature on the subject most often suggests by watching a lecture screencast or listening to a podcast) and then using class time to apply this new found knowledge.

If you want more detail, but in a still easy to digest format, Educause has an entry in their Seven Things You Should Know About series on Flipped Classrooms. (PDF)

While it seems easy enough, there are a few potential problems with using a flipped classroom approach.  (1) Professors would have to create, record and post a lecture before class.  This requires technological know how and possibly some equipment and software purchases. (2) Brand new in-class exercises will have to be created that are effective in engaging students. (3) Faculty will have to trust students will actually do the work ahead of time so that the class can hit the ground running when they meet in person.

Every year in my legal research courses students would always ask for more hands on experience with the materials.  And every year we replied that we would have loved to given them the opportunity, but it never seemed possible with the number of students and the amount of resources in the library. The closest I came to it was photocopies of book pages so they could “play along” as explained how a resource was used.  I wonder if my lectures could have been recorded and then meet with small groups in the library for hands on practice?  Instead of a few 50 minute classes a week, while the student in class time would remain the same,  this could easily grow into a dozen or more hours of class meeting time for the professor.

Legal research courses are skills based and coming up with a hands on element isn’t that difficult. What about traditional law courses?  Could they work with a Flipped scenario given the fact that the lecture and the students’ interaction with the professor during the same are the cornerstone of traditional legal education?

Of course, traditional legal education is, by many standards, not very useful or practical.

Maybe a Flipped Classroom scenario could be a way to interject some real world experience into the legal academe?  A way to introduce the new holy grail of “practical” and “skills based” learning into the curriculum?

In this scenario, students read cases ahead of time as usual and then review material (usually a lecture) provided by the professor.  Now for the hard part: What to do in class that doesn’t fall into the usual trap of a one on one Socratic dialog while the rest of the class plays solitaire on their computer? I think small groups should also be avoided whenever possible because, let’s face it, one person ends up doing most of the work while the restt are shut out either willingly or not.  Obviously in-class activities will vary wildly depending on the subject taught and drafting a will or interpreting a contract clause isn’t going to work every week.

I did have an idea on how CALI could assist with this, however.

Okay, you all know and love the CALI lesson library. (If you don’t…900+ lessons, written and edited by law professors and librarians, checked several times and routinely for quality and accuracy before they get published.) But did you know that you can by pass the system, write your own lesson using the CALI Author software and publish it via “Autopublish”?  It won’t get the official CALI stamp of quality and only people that have the link to it can use it, but it otherwise it has all the bells and whistles of a regular CALI lesson.

So here’s my plan: Students read cases, professor pre-records lecture.  (And, come to think of it, he or she could use the CALI Author software to publish their lecture materials.)  Before class, professor also transforms his or her standard Socratic song and dance into a CALI Autopublished lesson.  One main version CALI lesson projected on classroom display and simultaneously each student can individually work through it on their personal computing device.  Discussion can occur in between questions/sections of the CALI lesson.   Afterwards, students’ scores on the lesson would be available to the professor so there would be accountability for their in-class work.

So that’s one way it could work in a law school setting.  I have to admit that I’m not entirely sold on the idea of a flipped classroom in law schools, but it’s not the worst idea that I’ve ever seen either.

Have you tried a flipped classroom?  Let us know how it worked out in the comments.

 

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mischiru/

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Instruction Spotlight Series

Welcome to the first of a series of blog posts on CALI Spotlight that focuses on pedagogy, instructional theory, educational technology and other related topics.

Some background: Prior to coming to CALI last year, I taught semester-long legal research courses as well as numerous one-shot bibliographic instruction sessions in American law schools for about five years.  My formal training to do this consisted of a three hour course on Bibliographic Instruction that I took during my MLS course work. With regards to that course….well, without going into too much detail, let me just say this: A major component to the course was teaching us to properly use an overhead projector.

p.s. This was in 2005

So let’s just say I didn’t really have any formal training on how to be a professor in a higher educational setting.

I picked up what I could from more experienced co-workers, my own trial and error and the occasional relevant conference presentation, but I never really knew if what I was doing was RIGHT.  Was there a better way for students to learn the material I had for them? Was I wasting my time creating hours of homework assignment that neither assessed nor reinforced what I was trying to teach?  I had no idea, but I also never really had the time to figure it out.

Jump ahead to the present day and my current position at CALI.  Once I left the confines of academia, I began to see more and more that there are dozens of educational theories and processes out there, most of which are new to me. And now in addition to my previous worries about educational theory and technology, I wonder if what we’re producing at CALI is useful.  Are there areas that we should be branching into?

Since the idea of going back to school or even taking a class right now fills me with unspeakable dread, I’ve decided to embark on a self-teaching mission to learn about whatever I can with regards to higher education theory and practice.  Since I suspect that many of CALI’s membership are in a similar position, I thought I’d post about it on Spotlight. Think of these as concentrating on the I in our name – The Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction.  They’ll all be tagged with “Instruction Spotlight” so you can find them.  This will likely be an irregular regular series, depending on what catches my attention and how much time I have to read books.  I also hope that we can generate some discussion and I welcome guest posts.

So here we go…

 

Photo credit: Adapted from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/caliorg/6141366214/ , one of CALI’s many CC licensed images on Flickr.  And note, not only can you use them, but you can edit them like I did here.

 

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End of Guest Accounts at CALI.org

Up until a few hours ago, users had the option of registering as a GUEST at the CALI.org website.  They couldn’t access lessons – that’s always been a benefit just for our members.  The GUEST account option was there in case we ever needed to have registered users that weren’t members.

Well, we never really did have that need.  And the GUEST account option created some confusion for our members who accidentally registered as guests and then wondered why they couldn’t access lessons.  But most importantly, GUEST accounts became a conduit for spammers to attack the CALI.org site, which slowed its performance down and sometimes even completely took it offline.

So, starting today, no more GUEST accounts will be allowed at CALI.org.

If you are currently from a member organization and have a guest account, you will need to change your registration to reflect your member status.  You’ll need to get an authorization code from your organizations CALI representative. (Hint: If you can’t find them, ask in the library.)  Once you have your authorization code, follow these steps:

  1. Login to your account at www.cali.org.
  2. In the right menu column (under your name or login username) click “My Profile”
  3. Click the “Edit” link to edit your account.
  4. Scroll down to the text box labeled “Authorization Code” filled with the word “GUEST.”
  5. Type in your school’s Authorization Code, and hit ‘Tab’ to verify the code.
  6. Select your year of graduation or staff/faculty group from the list that appears then scroll down and click save.

This handy video explains the process for those of you that like to see how something is done.

If you have any questions about switching over your account, please don’t hesitate to email me at Sarah AT cali.org

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daquellamanera/

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Fall Semester Housekeeping

Fall semester is almost upon us, which means it’s time to review some information to make working with CALI easier for you and your students.

DVDs and Authorization Cards

By now you should have received your box of the famous (or perhaps infamous) CALI DVDs as well as your authorization code cards.  If you have not, please contact LaVonne Molde, our Director of Membership Services. Please distribute to your 1Ls as part of your orientation programs.

Believe it or not, the DVDs do come in handy during times of Internet outage or on those rare moments when the website crashes.  However, as someone who used to routinely trip over a box of CALI DVDs in my office back when I was a law librarian, I do understand that the DVDs aren’t always a welcome addition to an office decor.   If you have DVDs you aren’t going to use, please contact me at Sarah AT CALI.org and I can work with you to get them recycled properly.

Registering with CALI

Please encourage your students to register with CALI as soon as possible.  There are two benefits to this: (1) They can access CALI lessons throughout the semester and stay on top of their education. (2) It cuts down on the panicked emails and phone calls to you from students looking for the authorization code during finals.  CALI’s Marketing Blog has a bunch of resources (including print and digital sign templates, email form letter suggested language, etc) for you to use to promote CALI at your school.

(Also, if you could, double check to make sure your library website or other sites that link to call use the correct URL of www.cali.org )

Registering with CALI is fairly easy.  All students need is a valid email address (and it doesn’t have to be their school one) and an authorization code from their school.  The most common mistake is that they register as a GUEST instead of as a registered user.  This FAQ has answers to how to fix that as well as solutions to other registration issues. There’s even a video showing how to register.   Please feel free to embed that video in your library blog or course website.

Classcaster

Speaking of library blogs or course websites, if you have need of one and aren’t satisfied with the commercial offerings, CALI’s Classcaster is available for you to use.   You just need a valid CALI username and password to sign up.  Classcaster is powered by WordPress – it’s easy to use and highly customizable.  If you can use word processing software, you can create a very professional looking website with Classcaster.  Questions? Contact Elmer Masters, our Director of Internet Development.

New Outreach Blog

Finally, with the loss of former Marketing Director Austin Groothius from CALI’s staff, [everyone pause and look sad for a minute] we have a big hole to fill in many ways.  While we could never actually replace Austin….I’m replacing Austin.  At least as far as marketing portion of his job goes.  To that end, you’ll be hearing a lot from me in the coming weeks and years about how CALI can better serve you and all of our members as well as how you can best use the tools we provide.  Instead of overloading your email inboxes, I’ll be putting tips on how to use CALI products over at the CALI Outreach blog. The first post explains a little more. The CALI Spotlight blog will remain as a current news and awareness portal for CALI information as well as our staff’s more thoughtful and perhaps provocative posts about legal education and technology.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/caliorg/7018724267/ One of the many 100s of CC licensed cartoons available for you to use on CALI’s Flickr.

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Elmer Masters – One of the Fastcase 50!

Congratulations to CALI’s own Director of Internet Development Elmer Masters for being named one of the Fastcase 50!  Created in 2011, the Fastcase 50 is an annual list of the Top 50 of “law’s smartest most courageous innovators, techies, visionaries and leaders.” Elmer was awarded this prize for the innovative work he does on the Free Law Reporter, Classcaster and eLangdell Press. We’re very happy and proud of Elmer and couldn’t think of a more deserving winner. We also want to congratulate the many Friends of CALI that were named to this year’s class.

Elmer joins 2011 Fastcase 50 Winners John Mayer and Sarah Glassmeyer, which brings the CALI staff total up to 3 or 50% of us. Not many places can boast that percentage!

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