presentation wrapup: “New Skills, New Learning”

Gene Koo — Tue, 22 May 2007 23:01:24 +0000

I presented my research findings today at the weekly Berkman luncheon — I was very excited by the turnout, with a substantial number of clinical professors/instructors and librarians, from as close as downstairs (Harvard Legal Aid Bureau) to those logging in from DC and California (that I was aware of, at least). Update: Video was posted to MediaBerkman on Wednesday.

The challenge of a presentation like this — and indeed, the study itself — is that my topic is broad and the research shallow. Thus, the questions that people raised at the beginning and end spanned quite a few disparate and unconnected points, with quite a few scattered around uses of specific technologies. The format of a crowded lunch talk didn’t quite lend itself to a participatory conversation as I would have liked — there was so much knowledge and wisdom in the room that I felt it a shame to have answered so many of the questions myself (inadequately, I felt).

We did emerge with one possible next step: establishing a commons of resources (probably multimedia) that professors and instructors can use to animate (perhaps literally) their teaching. It’s the kind of project I could imagine CALI taking on.

Speaking of which, I will be presenting a more focused version of this same talk at the 2007 CALI Conference for Law School Computing.

E-Discovery hits the White House?

Gene Koo — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 19:06:45 +0000

A little off-topic here, but I find it amusing how e-discovery is quite possibly about to hit Gonzalez et.al. Applied to private corporations, e-discovery is a major and expensive undertaking, and has repeatedly revealed embarrassing information about the seamy (or, perhaps, quite normal) underside of corporate life, but when leveled against the government, and the President no less, it suddenly raises issues of governmental transparency. An employee’s emails belong to her employer, so in what way does Gonzalez’s email belong to us? Must it belong to us, as Congressman Waxman seems to be suggesting?

Also mentioned in the NY Times coverage is a former email rentention policy of 30 days (far, far short of the 5 years required of SEC-regulated firms), which apparently was rescinded in favor of manual deletion. Besides the issues raised by the present controversy, what will policies like this do to future Presidential libraries and historians? We fret about our possible future inability to decode our own media, but what about even having any data at all?

I was particularly impressed and amused by Senator Leahy’s comment, quoted in the Globe, “You can’t erase e-mails, not today; they’ve gone through too many servers.” I like a politician who can talk technology.

video vidi visum : virtual » technology: Legal

presentation wrapup: “New Skills, New Learning”

E-Discovery hits the White House?