DATE: Friday, June 27
TIME: 9-9.45am
SPEAKER:Dean Barry Boyer, State University of New York-Buffalo School of Law
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
The University of Buffalo Law School is in the process of transforming itself from a technologically primitive institution to a school that uses information technology as an integral part of its teaching, research and public service missions. This process of change can be described as a progression from a general vision for the Law School, to a set of specific goals and outcomes that can be achieved from specific strategies.
The vision for UB Law School was established in a curriculum plan adopted in 1993. The New Curriculum outlined in that report was built upon increased focus on specific legal practices, with students and faculty working in small-group settings where faculty could provide rich feedback on student work products. Information technology had two potential roles in this vision: it could make some aspects of curriculum-delivery more efficient, so that scarce faculty resources could be shifted to "higher value-added" instructional activities; and it could provide an environment for doing group work free from normal classroom constraints of time and space.
To realize the potential that IT offered, it was necessary to develop and refine operational goals for infrastructure (hardware, software, tech support) and course development (number and kinds of e-courses, use of IT in other courses and programs). An important part of goal-setting is developing a realistic understanding of the skills and attitudes of different user groups, which we approached through multiple channels: a survey research instrument administered to different user groups; opportunities to comment on draft technology plans; and discussions in focus groups and faculty meetings.
Progress in reaching objectives requires a series of strategies that range from scrounging the necessary resources to changing the culture of the Law School. Dialogue among faculty and tech support staff regarding the pedagogical advantages and disadvantages of IT is important for several reasons: it facilitates information-sharing and mutual support among those who are experimenting with IT; it helps keep the institution focused on pedagogy and lawyers’ analytic skills rather than hardware; and it develops a shared sense of what an ideal electronic environment for the Law School would look like. Since existing software products do not yet provide an adequate setting for group work in courses, innovation inevitably requires some compromising and "patching" among existing products.
Professor Andrea Johnson, California Western University School of Law, alj@cwsl.edu
SESSION DESCRIPTION
Professor Smith and a colleague have devised a course to be taught in the Spring of 1998 at several law schools at the same time. Students at each school will organize themselves into "courts" under a local faculty supervisor. The course is administered via the Web and will include a discussion list and a document archive for opinions rendered by the student courts.
Professor Johnson has used video-conferencing to link classrooms at different law schools and to access professionals in the legal community. Students engage in point-to-point and point to multipoint sessions where students roleplay and engage in simulations which are observed and critiqued by law faculty, government officials, and legal experts. Students use the internet and discussion lists to explore interdisciplinary issues in intellectual property, administrative law, antitrust, and constitutional law.
TITLE: WEAVING THE WEB INTO LEGAL EDUCATION
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: WEB IN LEGAL EDUCATION
SPEAKER(S):
Michael A. Geist, Associate In Law, Columbia University School of Law, mag76@columbia.edu, http://www.columbia.edu/~mag76
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
Utilizing an innovative format known as a "web lecture", this presentation will take participants on a legal education tour of the WWW by examining the many ways in which law faculty can bring the Internet to their teaching through the creation of helpful and exciting course web sites. This examination will include a look at how the WWW can be used as a new way to deliver traditional information, a new way to deliver new information, and as a new and effective teaching tool both in and out of class.
TITLE: The West Education Network for 1997
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: WEB IN LEGAL EDUCATION
SPEAKER(S):
Selected faculty
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
West Group has developed The West Education Network as a web-based online educational service. It uses innovative threaded discussion forums allowing participation from outside expert commentators, document publishing capabilities and linking to West content. Professors who have used TWEN(sm) will be discussing how they used the service and West Group representatives will be presenting the version that's being prepared for Fall '97 release.
TITLE: USING THE WEB (AND BEYOND) IN YOUR COURSES
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: WEB IN LEGAL EDUCATION
SPEAKER(S):
Professor Arnold Cohen, Villanova University School of Law, cohen@law.vill.edu
Professor Patrick Wisemen, Georgia State University School of Law, pwiseman@gsu.edu
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
What are the advantages and pitfalls of using e-mail discussion lists, web-based materials, real-time chat software and electronic casebooks in your courses? Professor Cohen and Wiseman will share some of their experiences and provide insights into how these technologies affect students and the learning process.
TITLE: LIVING ON THE BLEEDING EDGE - THE EXPERIENCE AT NOVA
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: LAW LIBRARIES, COMPUTER CENTERS AND BEYOND
SPEAKER(S):
Professor Billie Jo Kaufman, Nova Southeaster University School of Law, kaufmanb@law-lib.law.nova.edu
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
In just the past year, Nova has made progress on projects involving electronic course books, computer-based exams, wireless network connections, faculty use of web-based materials, electronic grade posting and course evaluation and others. Representatives from Nova will talk about these projects and discuss their experiences.
TITLE: ENCODED ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTION
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: LAW LIBRARIES, COMPUTER CENTERS AND BEYOND
SPEAKER(S):
Nick Finke, University of Cincinnati School of Law, nik.finke@law.uc.edu
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
The Encoded Archival Description. (EAD) contain electronic finding aids that ares a hot topic on the library front today. The EAD is a developing SGML standard that is being supported by, among others, the Library of Congress. Learn more about this initiative that is receiving serious attention from some larger libraries.
TITLE: PANDAS DON'T HAVE THUMBS" AND OTHER EVOLUTIONARY LESSONS FROM DIGITAL LIBRARY EXPERIMENTS AT PENN
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: LAW LIBRARIES, COMPUTER CENTERS AND BEYOND
SPEAKER(S):
Don Arndt, University of Pennsylvania School of Law, darndt@oyez.law.upenn.edu
Chris Cieri, University of Pennsylvania School of Law, ccieri@oyez.law.upenn.edu
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
The University of Pennsylvania Law School has been involved in several digital library projects over the past two years. Although the requirements of each of the projects has varied, one constant has been our emphasis on throughput and the quality of the final product. The
majority of our electronic material, approximately 90,000 pages, consists of digital images, raw text and an interface that allows the user to search on the raw text but view the perfectly rendered images. This database includes the archive of the American Law Institute and two collections
of Uniform Commercial Code drafts also issued by ALI. The papers of Judge Bazelon are next to be added. As a participant in the RLG Studies in Scarlet Project, we are converting over 100,000 pages of text into digital images which will be accessed via SGML encoded indices. A small
subset of the most important material will also appear in SGML encoded full text. As a participant in the RLG Webdoc project we are using Adobe Capture to create PDF files with mixed text and image of the last five years of the Law School's journals. Finally, to produce an archive of back Law School exams with sample answers we used optical character recognition to convert the paper exams into ASCII files which we then edited and converted into HTML format documents mounted on our Intranet. In this presentation we will review our experiences with each of the projects and summarize what we see as the advantages and costs of each approach.
TITLE: STUDENT PRINTING REDUX
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: LAW LIBRARIES AND BEYOND
SPEAKER(S):
Sandy Braber-Grove, Vanderbilt University School of Law, braberg@library.vanderbilt.edu
Michael Bentkover, Chicago-Kent College of Law, mbentkov@kentlaw.edu
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
Should schools charge for student printing? With recent policy changes from LEXIS-NEXIS and West, is there a choice? Can printing be used to educate students about the "real" world? Sandy Braber-Grove and Michael Bentkover will lead the discussion Bring your opinions to this perennial favorite discussion session.
TITLE: Integrating Windows NT into your Netware Network
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATIONS
SPEAKER(S):
Dave Eckert, Marketing Manager, Novell, dave_eckert@novell.com
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
Novell traditionally has provided the infrastructure that connects clients and services from a variety of vendors. Windows NT now provides a more secure and reliable client platform or offers possibilities for hosting applications, but at the expense of increased administrative overhead. Novell offers a number of products which manage workstations, users and groups for servers, or applications. Session participants will gain an overview of these products and receive a CD containing the products and related documentation.
TITLE: THE BORDER BETWEEN INTRA AND INTERNETS: SOLUTIONS FROM NOVELL
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATIONS
SPEAKER(S):
Dave Eckert, Marketing Manager, Novell, dave_eckert@novell.com
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
As more organizations utilize web technologies in their traditional LAN and connect to external
networks and the Internet, the area or border between the internal and external becomes a critical
concern. The main issues on the border are security, performance, and productivity. The newest technologies from Novell work with both Novell and other vendors' products to address these concerns. This session will review these border services technologies.
TITLE: THE LEXIS-NEXIS 1997-98 NEW SOFTWARE PREVIEW
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATIONS
SPEAKER(S):
Selected LEXIS-NEXIS Representatives
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
This session will showcase previously unreleased software that will be distributed to the legal education community this fall. The format of the session will be presentation and demonstration and will focus on new features and functions of the LEXIS-NEXIS Office suite of products for Windows® 95 users. Featured software includes:
TITLE: PUBLISHING INTERNET-RICH LEGAL CONTENT
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: TECHNOLOGY FOUNDATIONS
SPEAKER(S):
Guy Huard, University of Montreal, huard@droit.umontreal.ca
Nick Finke, University of Cincinnati School of Law, nick.finke@law.uc.edu
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
Mr. Huard works at the University of Montreal team on Internet technologies for the Law. They have systematicaly explored and used SGML for their Web projects since 1995. They have published the Canadian Charter Collection containing 900 cases on the Web as SGML documents, and the Tribunal des droits de la personne containing 170 case, with retreival fields exploiting the SGML tagging. Mr. Huard will discuss issues relating to the design of DTDs used in this project and Nick Finke will talk about the tremendous benefits of using this method for web publication.
TITLE: ELETRONIC LEGAL EDUCATION FROM MATTHEW BENDER
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: E-PUBLISHING & COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION
SPEAKER(S):
Barbara DeYoung, Matthew Bender, bdeyoung@bender.com
Tom Speyer, Matthew Bender, tspeyer@bender.com
Ken Halajian, Matthew Bender, ken.halajian@bender.com
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
Last year Matthew Bender showed attendees their first CDROM on the Folio Views platform
containing various titles from our professional line of bankruptcy law products. This year they will be demonstrating a pre-release version of the latest AUTHORITY CDROM library called LEGAL EDUCATION which contains about 25-30 casebooks and discretionary student
titles. The presentation will include a discussion of what our next steps are in providing electronic materials for classroom use and, feedback from attendees on what they would like to see developed in the way of additional links and materials to enhance the existing content
TITLE: The Future of CALI
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: E-PUBLISHING & COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION
SPEAKER(S):
John Mayer, CALI, jmayer@cali.org
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
This Session will be a discussion of possible future directions for the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction.
CALI is your organization and many opportunities exist for CALI to better server the needs of law schools. What are those opportunities? This session will be part brainstorming, part discussion, part idea-generating and will rely heavily on the audience to voice their opinions about where CALI should go in the future. Come to this session to contribute your thoughts and help CALI better serve its members.
TITLE: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY ISSUES OF ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: E-PUBLISHING & COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION
SPEAKER(S):
Joleen Willis, Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon, willis@whad.com
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
This session will begin with a discussion of the rights belonging to the author of an electronic work and cover the issues involved in publishing and distributing a work from an author's point of view. Topics to be covered will include: the divisibility of rights in a work of authorship, copyright and trademark issues, special issues related to multimedia, rights clearance, subcontractor and employment issues, commercialization and issues related to publishing on the Internet. In addition, we'll discuss how to create intellectual property "barriers to
entry" to your market.
TITLE: The West Education Network for Electronic Publication
DATE: Friday, June 27
TRACK: E-PUBLISHING & COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION
SPEAKER(S):
Selected faculty
SESSION DESCRIPTION:
A key feature of The West Education Network (sm) from West Group is the ability to publish your course materials to a "virtual classroom" on the web. A unique feature of this publishing capability is the link to underlying West content from the documents you publish. Professor's who have used the TWEN (sm) publishing capability will discuss how they've used the service and West Group representatives will be presenting the version that's being prepared for Fall '97 release.