End of Guest Accounts at CALI.org

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Sarah Glassmeyer

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

Posted on August 8, 2012 by Sarah Glassmeyer

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!

Posted on August 1, 2012 by Sarah Glassmeyer

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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U of Minnesota Releases “Cultivating Change in the Academy”, Highlights Future of the Book

Posted on July 31, 2012 by Elmer Masters

This collection of 50+ chapters showcases a sampling of academic technology projects underway across the University of Minnesota, projects that we hope inspire other faculty and staff to consider, utilize, or perhaps even develop new solutions that have the potential to make their efforts more responsive, nimble, efficient, effective, and far-reaching. Our hope is to stimulate discussion about what’s possible as well as generate new vision and academic technology direction. The work underway is most certainly innovative, imaginative, creative, collaborative, and dynamic. This collection of innovative stories is a reminder that we are a collection of living people whose Land Grant values and ideas shape who we serve, what we do, and how we do it. Many of these projects engage others in discourse with the academy: obtaining opinion or feedback, taking the community pulse, allowing for an extended discourse, and engaging citizens in important issues. What better time to share 50+ stories about cultivating change than in 2012 – the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Land Grant Mission!

via University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy: Cultivating Change in the Academy: 50+ Stories from the Digital Frontlines at the University of Minnesota in 2012.

Produced in just 10 weeks, this book is a snapshot of academic technology projects and research underway at the University of Minnesota. Of more interest to me than the speed with which it was produced or the subject matter are the formats in which the book was released. First, it is a blog and a website. Each chapter is a post with the text of the chapter embedded as a PDF file. The blog has commenting enabled, RSS feeds and its own Twitter hashtag, #CC50, so that readers may engage the authors in ongoing discussion.  Second, the work is available in EPUB, .mobi, and PDF formats so you can read it on the platform of your choice. The work carries a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License making it possible to redistribute and reuse easily.

As I’ve stated in a prior post I think the future of books, especially textbooks and other educational materials lies on the web, not locked into some closed or crippled format. This book serves as an excellent example of the future of the book.

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Farewell to Austin Groothuis

Posted on July 19, 2012 by John Mayer

First of all, it’s pronounced “GREAT-house”, not “grue-THEW-ee-us”.

I learned that the first day I met Austin quite a few years ago when CALI hired him as a student intern. Later, we hired Austin into the newly created position of Communications Coordinator aka “Marketing Dude” because getting the word out about CALI ‘s many projects using blogs, podcasts, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and many other social media outlets was getting so intricate that we could not continue to do it in staff found time.

Over the past several years, Austin has splendidly increased awareness about CALI. He was becoming the voice of CALI – always calm, always polite, always ready to engage the comment hordes with a frank and honest reply. Austin made himself tremendously useful in so many other ways as well at the AALS booths, paralegal conferences, CALI Conference, etc. We got used to seeing his mug around and are diminished by his departure.

Austin is leaving CALI to join the ABA Antitrust Section. I know that he will be successful and I know that I will look forward to watching his successes in the future. Please join me in wishing Austin a farewell.

Sarah Glassmeyer, CALI’s Director of Content Development will be taking over many of Austin’s social media and community development functions. Emails to agroothuis@cali.org will be directed to her immediately.   

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How Law Schools Could Save Students $150 Million (updated)

Posted on July 18, 2012 by John Mayer

There are over 140,000* law students in the 201 ABA accredited law schools in the US. According to the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), higher education students spend an average of $1100 per year on books. Do the math and this comes out to 140,000 x $1100 = $154,000,000.

What if most of the books that students need for law school were free? Well, obviously, this would save students the cost of purchasing $154,000,000 worth of books each and every year.

How can this be done?

What if every law school in the country – all 201 of the ABA accredited law schools – nominated just one faculty at that law school to write a casebook and donated that book, in electronic format, to the commons under a Creative Commons license. The cost to law schools would not be zero, but collectively, the value to law students would be enormous.

The basic plan would be thus… Continue reading →

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#CALIcon12 Wrap-Up

Posted on June 26, 2012 by Austin Groothuis
John as Minifig

John welcomed attendees as a Lego minifig. He’s promised to outdo this stunt in 2013.

We’d like to thank Thomas Jefferson School of Law, sponsors, speakers, and especially attendees for making the 2012 CALI Conference for Law School Computing such a success!

As we’ve done with all previous years’ video, we’ll post this year’s recorded conference sessions on the CALI YouTube page (there’s a 2012 CALI Conference playlist if you scroll down) as soon as they are available.

There are some pictures from the conference on the CALI Facebook page. Feel free to tag anyone we missed, or even send us your own pictures from the conference.

See you in 2013, back where it all began: Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Make sure you’re registered for the CALI Conference mailing list to be the first to hear updates and news about the 2013 conference.

 

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CALI Annual Report & Infographic (A Message from John)

Posted on June 13, 2012 by Austin Groothuis

The 2011-2012 school year was a landmark year at CALI. I am, of course, thinking of the fact that we were founded 30 years ago, but 2012 is significant in more ways than an anniversary that happens to end with a zero. This year CALI:

You can find more details in the CALI Annual Report (PDF).

The work we do is possible because of the dues law schools pay. We increased dues recently in two steps –  first to $6250 in 2011 and then to $7500 in 2012 – in order to hire new staff, buy new lessons, commission new ebooks, and more.

We understand many budgets are tight and times are chaotic, which is why we thank each of you for the overwhelming support. We believe that your continued support of CALI is part of the solution. Legal education and law practice are changing in no small part due to the technologies that CALI researches. The recent CALI MOOC on “Topics in Digital Law Practice” was aimed at increasing awareness about just how significantly technology is affecting law practice in the 21st century.

To visually communicate some of the ways that your CALI membership brings value to your institution, we’ve created an infographic. Please share it with anyone in your organization.

If you have any questions, ideas, complaints, suggestions or comments, do not hesitate to contact me. 2012 is also my anniversary in that I have been working in legal education for 25 years this coming July. I feel a great responsibility in serving you as the Executive Director of CALI since 1994 and I look forward to working with you into the future.

With Regards,
John Mayer
jmayer@cali.org
@johnpmayer
312-906-5307

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900 CALI Lessons and Counting

Posted on June 4, 2012 by Austin Groothuis

We just published our 900th CALI Lesson on cali.org! The 900th lesson was Professor Steve Bradford’s “Inventory and the Cost of Goods Sold.” This is a true milestone for CALI. Congratulations to Professor Bradford on another great lesson, and to each of our lesson authors. We couldn’t do it without you!

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Learn to Make Ebooks at CALIcon12

Posted on June 1, 2012 by Austin Groothuis

EBook between paper booksIt’s getting easier to publish ebooks using freely available tools like Sigil and Calibre. What’s this have to do with your law school? Think open, ebook versions of your law reviews, journals, or custom course materials. All published in-house and at little cost.

We’d like to invite you to a day-long, DIY ebook workshop at the 2012 CALI Conference for Law School Computing. This is a technical, hands-on workshop limited to 20 participants.

Review workshop requirements and reserve your spot.

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