December 23, 2008
In the recent edition of the Albany Law Magazine, Professor Nancy Ota shared her thoughts on the use of laptops in the classroom.
Last semester, she experimented with banning laptops in her 1L Contracts class.
Her conclusion:
From my perspective, the laptop ban improved attentiveness and class participation was better than in the second semester. Since I cannot attribute these benefits solely to the ban, after the one semester experiment, I am working toward a compromise for the upcoming school year that will begin to integrate laptops into the classroom experience.
Click here to read her article.
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Laptops, Legal Education, Technology | 
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Posted by Darlene Cardillo
December 20, 2008
The good news is that Gonzaga University School of Law and Washburn University School of Law have decided to collaborate in a joint sponsorship of the renamed and reconstituted Institute for Law Teaching and Learning. Professors Michael Hunter Schwartz (Washburn) and Gerald Hess (Gonzaga) will co-direct the Institute.
The Institute will once again publish The Law Teacher twice annually, providing an outlet for law teachers interested in sharing teaching ideas and their thoughts about the law school learning process. In a nod to the modern age, The Law Teacher will be published electronically.
The Law Teacher magazine was going to be published for the last time December but this joint sponsorship has enabled its contunued publication.
To read the Fall 2008 issue, click HERE.
My article entitled “The Use of Clickers in the Law School Classroom” appears on pages 13-14!!
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Legal Education | 
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Posted by Darlene Cardillo
December 19, 2008
Last Spring, we were fortunate to be able to videoconference with George Washington Unversity School of Law the Government Ethics class each week to 4 students who were taking the class but were externing in DC.(See related posts: http://albanylawtech.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/spring-semester-tech-happenings/ and http://albanylawtech.wordpress.com/2008/06/04/videoconferencing-survey-results/).
This spring, we have 6 students participating in the Semester in Government externship in DC but GW cannot provide these students with a room and videoconferencing capability.
As a result, we will try using Adobe Connect. The plan is to have students go to: http://albanylaw.acrobat.com/bierman and with a webcam be able to participate in class. The worst case scenario will be that we have to disable their audio & video and they will see & hear the class and participate through texting in the chat pod.
We hope to test it on Jan. 8, 2009, a week before the real class begins.
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Legal Education, Online/Distance Learning, Technology | 
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Posted by Darlene Cardillo
December 18, 2008
This was our first semester of exams with many of the students using their Mac laptops. In the past past, we have only allowed PC users to take their exams on the computer. Last spring, we allowed Macs but there were only 2 that dared.
Besides the complaint that they had to purchase Windows, there were NO problems. It couldn’t have gone smoother.
I believe that we are sticking with ExamSoft and I predict that we will have more Mac users in the future.
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Posted by Darlene Cardillo
December 10, 2008
In an article in the recent ABA journal, “a variety of legal education reformers suggested that the iTunes one-website, one-button framework would be the type of makeover that legal educations needs.”
The article continued with a recommendation made at a conference on the future of the legal course book for “a online teaching database” where professors would create their own course materials.
Another proposal highlighted was to add electronic innovations such as video games.
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Posted by Darlene Cardillo
