Lex Ferenda

Kristen Murray of the Law School at George Washington University has written a note on technology and the classroom, specifically as in the case of the popular first-year legal research and writing (LRW) course, familiar to US law students in particular.

Her paper in a recent issue of the newsletter Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research & Writing, My E-Semester (alternative link), sets out a range of techniques she used last year, including a ‘paperless classroom’ based on PDF (and coursework returned with electronic comments), in-class document editing (complete with the author’s fears about typos on a big screen), the use of video and audio clips, and more. Lots of links to other law journal publications are included.

It’s a useful article, and doesn’t go overboard with new-new-new applications. Though some comments like “all of our classrooms have ’smart podiums’ and wireless Internet access; a classroom computer with full Microsoft Windows and Office capabilities and Internet access; a VCR, DVD player, and a video camera; and a camera that projects the images from the computer and video equipment onto an in-class screen” (in this part of the world, our larger lecture theatres have some of these, but our smaller rooms rarely do) and “Internet resources fall within the jurisdiction of my teaching assistant” just inspire the green-eyed monster!

Great use of a mixture of forms - poster advertising, viral marketing (through comments on websites, blogs, like-minded networks etc), word-of-mouth, word-of-email and a classy website to go with it.

Come to Camp Okutta.

Somehow I missed this one - while everyone and their dogs (yours truly included) seemed to welcome the Google Public Policy Blog, Verizon has been doing it for much longer. Google, of course, say that they’re “seeking to do public policy advocacy in a Googley way”, although I don’t see a huge difference between the Google Public Policy Blog and the Verizon effort (other than the fact that the Verizon lobbying position is a little different!)

Approval of Verizon’s blogging and transparency (though if only we could get them to stop throwing cash at politicians…12m a year and here’s a list) does not, of course, suggest approval of their views

John Markoff’s article on access to legal materials in yesterday’s New York Times has triggered a round of interesting blog posts Slaw, Citizen Media Law Center, Susan Crawford and Tim O’Reilly all chip in.

Carl Malamud, the subject of the story, is a hero. Confirmation comes from this wonderful letter (PDF) that he has just sent to West Publishing.

Some of the posts mention Tim Wu’s baby, Alt.law, a great site, or note that some cases are already available through various sources. The more the merrier, I say. There are few things more resonant (as examples of unfulfilled democratic promise) than locked-down, tolled, proprietary, restricted access to the fruit of the people’s courts.

sharona of Sharona’s Shambles and I are working our way through the longlist for the Booker Prize. While it’s not as much of a challenge as Christopher Beha’s year-long reading of the entire Harvard Classics collection, we are comforted by the knowledge that the good people at the Guardian Books Blog are doing the same with their “Booker Club” series of posts.

I’m not really a reviewer of fiction, and we’re reading for pleasure, but I’ll share some brief notes. No spoilers. Anyway, I started with Michael Redhill’s Consolation, which according to figures checked by the chair of the judging panel has the lowest sales on Amazon; it’s both novel and historical novel (with real-life borrowings from old and new) set in Toronto in the 19th century and the present day. It is a loving (but critical) portrait of the city in both eras, geographically accurate to a fault, and I rated it quite highly, while wondering if I would have had such affection for it had I not been a former resident of that fine city! It’s not a typical novel (although it is comfortably Can-Lit) and it’s also not the only historical novel on the list - but it may make some slow impact in this part of the world. I followed that with Nikita Lalwani’s Gifted (here’s a recent Guardian review), which I found to be a quick enough read, without a huge emotional impact (which surprised me) but with admirable portrayal of the young mathematical mind and some great insight on questions of race, family and identity. I tried not to do this, but I found myself comparing the book and the imagery with Zadie Smith and others, and personally I find it hard to love anything more than White Teeth, so it may be a little unfair to say that I enjoyed, but wasn’t overwhelmed by, this book.

For light relief, the Guardianistas (literally) judged the books by their covers in this post.

Politics: Web 2.0: An International Conference

Has there been a shift in political use of the Internet and digital new media - a new Web 2.0 politics based on participatory values? How do broader social, cultural, and economic shifts towards Web 2.0 impact, if at all, on the contexts, the organizational structures, and the communication of politics and policy? Does Web 2.0 hinder or help democratic citizenship? This conference provides an opportunity for researchers to share and debate perspectives.

This looks good. At Royal Holloway on the outskirts of London, and organised by Andrew Chadwick, author of a recent and useful book, Internet Politics.

Check out the excellent coverage of State Of Play V (in sunny Singapore) from Andres (of Edinburgh) and Nic (of QUT). Lucky, lucky people.

It’s interesting to note (from Nic’s most recent post) what David Post is saying about the regulation of virtual worlds. Post’s writings were at the core of cyberlaw debates in the not-too-distant past, and thus it’s interesting to see his distinctive, complex and libertarian perspective (which I’ve always enjoyed, without quite accepting!) applied to the current flavour-of-the-second.

I was delighted to see this Financial Times article this weekend about the one and only Charlie Nesson (last discussed here) and his plans for poker and education (which he explained on his own blog here). Nesson is talking about this in Singapore (and no doubt elsewhere), thus getting the FT coverage. Game on.

This week sees the release of some new episodes in the infinite Trapped In The Closet musical/dramatic work (don’t make me call it a hip-hopera). Some would say that it’s by R. Kelly, but personally I think it’s all a big trick, steered by the Global Association of Satirists and Parodists (GASP).

TITC has, so far, given us an infamous South Park episode (which used the title as a link into some fun Tom Cruise bashing and managed to get a Scientology theme in there somehow; here’s a link to the R Kelly parody), an 11-minute Weird Al Yankovic song, now with a video (Trapped In The Drive-Thru), a fanatically detailed Sims recreation, not to mention a host of fun, amateur takes like Trapped in the sock drawer and an odd sketch involving Barbie, Batman and friends. A detailed (too detailed) Wiki entry contains information on some broadcast TV ‘tributes’ (such as Mad TV’s Trapped In The Cupboard, all about cereal and other important things).

All hail the interweb.

A helpful document on (radio wave) spectrum has been prepared by the Parliamentary Office for Science and Technology (POST), a small team that supplies advice to the Houses of Parliament and the various committees on sci&tech issues.

The note (download PDF) is remarkably clear and does present a range of perspectives (although of course it is all in most moderate and polite language). I am sceptical of the OFCOM approach to spectrum (which is based on rapid liberalisation, auctions and market forces, not to mention an unusual definition of technologically neutral proceedings which I find daft) and I think the note accepts a particular philosophy of liberalisation as an uncontested background fact (which, in the light of the Communciations Act 2003, it may well be!), but then again … I would say that.

An ongoing process that is very, very interesting, and summarised well in the note, is the ‘Digital Dividend Review‘, or what to do with a chunk of ‘UHF’ space that will be vacated through the move from analogue to digital terrestrial television. It is the UK counterpart to the high-profile 700MHz proceedings in the US (where the conditions for an auction of a part of the UHF space are being debated) and the ‘white space’ questions (former buffer zones between channels and what do to with them, not to mention what to do with the various people using the buffers for low-power things).

A front page article in this week’s Times Higher Education Supplement reports on an increase in student complaints at the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) across the water.  It’s based on the OIA annual report, which should appear later in the day here.  More from the Guardian.

The OIA was created by the Higher Education Act 2004 (there is no Irish equivalent) - it replaced the traditional system whereby university ‘visitors’ (who still exist and continue to handle other appeals/disputes/matters) would hear complaints from students. Broadly, the higher education community in the UK was in favour of the OIA but everyone is struggling to make sense of the new statistics - are there more problems, are students more aware of their rights, or are we all just too litigious?