<CONTENT /> v.4

And that sounds right to me in the groups market. Charlie says the least common denominator in the groups market are these three functions:

1. A customizable site to call their own, even if it just has information as to what the group does and how to sign up.
2. A way to communicate internally, via a one-way or two-way listserv, depending on the group.
3. A way to do RSVPs for events.

So using the less is more mantra, someone should build just that, make it drop dead simple, and then build the killer API that lets everyone build on top of that. It may be that the big social nets are in the best spot to do that. Or maybe not.

A VC: Thinking About Groups

Yep, it sure sounds a lot like OG for Drupal.  In fact it sounds a lot like what I’m building right now to allow faculty and students at law schools to come together and form ad hoc groups around classes, ideas, scholarship, organizations, etc. 

Tags: drupal, Fred Wilson, organic groups, groups, elangdell

Charles R. Nesson, a professor at Harvard Law School, says the key for professors is to know when laptops are good for class and when they’re not.
“Technologies are not good for everything,” says Mr. Nesson, who is also a founder of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “Sometimes they destroy some good things along with the opportunities they make available.”
In Mr. Nesson’s classes, laptops are good for looking up legal material. During class students are encouraged to find the right evidence rule on the Web and to contribute to a class wiki, a communal Web site they frequently edit and update.
He says laptops are not good, however, during and immediately following a guest speaker’s presentation. He requests that the computers stay shut, signaling to students that they should all participate in discussing issues the speaker raises.

Law Professors Rule Laptops Out of Order in Class - Chronicle.com

This just isn’t going to go away.  I think the real answer here is for law school tech folks and interested faculty to actively pursue and advocate for constructive ways to use laptops in class.  Make the laptop a useful tool rather than a distraction. 

As for laptop use, shouldn’t this be a matter decided by law profs and their students on a class by class basis, even perhaps on a day by day basis? If so, law profs might want to read Kevin Yamamoto’s (South Texas College of Law) article, Banning Laptops in the Classroom: Is it Worth the Hassles? [SSRN]. Yamamoto argues that laptops should be banned unless their use aids the learning process.

Law Librarian Blog: Banning Laptops in the Classroom: Is it Worth the Hassles?

This just isn’t going to go away.  The referenced article looks fascinating and I’ll certainly give it a read.

Tags: elangdell, laptops, lawschool

Future-safe archives (Scripting News) - Dave is concerned about his digital legacy surviving him.  This is a huge issue, really.  Who is going to archive all of the stuff that is out there?  I remember the dread that appeared in the law library when the ‘papers’ of a wealthy alum turned up one day along with his request that it be kept for future generations of legal scholars.  To us it looked like boxes of stuff from his garage (which it was).  Once we got inside the boxes it turned out to be a treasure of research and writing in a particular area of the law.  So we built a collection out of it.  But libraries are ill prepared to handle large amount of archival material.  Digital stuff is even worse. 
There is no doubt that the things Dave is concerned about are valuable now and for the future, but keeping them around is a hard question.  I think that there is a certain amount of irony in that the best suggestions for long term archiving mentioned in the comments are to just put everything into hard copy, have it well bound, and distribute it to libraries.  Books are the longest lived, most stable, most accessible archival format mankind has found to date.  Maybe we sgould jusat be thinking about what is really worth archiving and print it out.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: davewiner, archives, books

Now that Facebook has opened up its pages to independent software developers, there are plenty of course-listing applications like this one floating around. And none of those tools seem especially popular: According to VentureBeat, the most widely-used course-listing tool has less than 3,300 “daily active users.” Applications like Courses might be useful, but their success will depend on whether students decide that Facebook is an academic tool, not just a social one.

Course-Listing Tools Hit Facebook - Chronicle.com

This is a big issue.  CALI is building a space for law students and faculty that allows them to create and collaborate in an academic environment (see http://w.cali.org/ for a sneak peek).  I consider it to be an anti-social network:)  The point of the space I’m designing for CALI is to promote the education of law students and support the scholarship of law faculty.  Right now, this tends to be a bit of a solitary pursuit, but we hope that, given the tools, law students and faculty will adopt to the collaborative nature of the environment and being working together and sharing the results with each other and ultimately the world.  I’ll keep you posted.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: CALI, eLangdell, Drupal