Nesson here
From Cyberlaw
May 7
palfrey writes:
If you are teaching today’s Digital Natives but not using technology to do so, why not? And if you are, what’s your purpose in doing so? You may well have a good reason NOT to use computing in any way in the teaching process.
palfrey observes:
A professor at Harvard Law School, Elizabeth Warren, makes a compelling case about how she teaches using the Socratic method and the extent to which that method is about a highly focused, person-to-person exchange in the classroom (and associated benefits to onlookers who are not looking at IMs and smirking about what someone just sent them).
Elizabeth Warren values moments of total engagement. The architechture of her theater would minimize distraction. She teaches how to think and speak.
zach prager writes:
Dear faculty: Earlier this year, the Law School Council learned that you are considering a move to disable wireless Internet access during class. We believe that a decision to do so could have a significant impact (be it positive, negative, or mixed) on the classroom environment, faculty-student relations, and the overall satisfaction of the student body. To determine how students feel about the possible ban, we conducted a three-day online survey. The survey consisted of four questions, which 1057 students answered. Findings include the following: - 64.6% of respondents oppose a ban - 24.7% of respondents support a ban - 23.8% of respondents would attend class less often if wireless were banned - 38.7% of respondents would pay more attention if wireless were banned The complete results of the survey are attached, including unedited comments from 441 students. The Law School Council has not taken a position in support of or in opposition to the ban, but we encourage you to consider the views of the student body in making an informed decision. Sincerely, The Law School Council
April 15
Just sent out invitations to the discussion evening Fern and i will be hosting next week. i've posted the discussion papers. Should be fun.
And am just returned from Atlanta where i spoke about privilege waiver to an audience of in-house counsel, outside counsel, paralegals and tech staff who work on digital discovery compliance for companies. The session was organized and hosted by Lexis-Nexis AppliedDiscovery.com. i realized in preparing for the talk how long i've been following digital discovery issues, and how interesting the subject continues to be. Here's my talk.
March 22
leaving tomorrow to bring the message of our class to jamaica. thursday night the signing of the mou legally establishing a cyberschool. just spoke with kevin to set up a meeting with courtney and roderick to talk strategy of the jah cure story before the event of the mou signing and the speeches and party after.
shot a video with tree, heather dan and dave, one missing, for the public service auction coming up, me in a john travolta wig and tree as sam jackson, doing out dance, kagan and zittrain to jive it with a bunch of other skits, these same kids, heather dan dave and the one i'm missing, documenting the scene, so that we can cut a jive for cctv, bicycle & possum, up and out.
did the eon dance its the end of the world as we know it i feel fine
March 20
i've been thinking about my grading problem, stumpted for a long time, now at last an idea that seems worth airing. the grading problem in mine in the sense that i present and teach law and evidence from a different perspective yet pass out brutal B's, and there i am exposed just like the rest. So administered the grading system does damage to my credibility and my course. Here is the problem to solve. assume i am required to give grades anonymously with a median of B+ but distribution about the mean is up to me. nothing requires me to have a median below B+, even if only by a fraction. this leaves a range of possibilities which would yet avoid giving a rash of B's. i could give everyone B+. i could give one B and all the rest A-. i could give B's to all who communicated to me in their anonymous exam papers their willingness to receive a B, thus balancing the curve so those who care about A's would have some A's to get. Are there other possibilities which would allow me to retain the strength of my course and credibility yet conform to the posited grading rules and be fair?
March 14
This morning i received email from Roderick Gordon, a barrister in Kingston who had requested access to the prosecution's file in the Alcock case:
At 10:21 AM 3/14/2006, Roderick Gordon wrote:
Good morning:
I have received correspondence from the Crown Counsel assigned in the office of the DPP to search for the Alcock file and the DNA kit.
I repeat the text of the letter:
"Dear Mr. Gordon:
I have perused the transcript relating to the captioned matter. I also spoke with the Government Forensic Analyst. I was informed that vaginal swabs and smear were taken from the complainant, and tests conducted on these exhibits revealed the presence of semen. The Analyst pointed out that no DNA analysis was ever conducted on these exhibits because they did not have an independent sample from the prisoner to compare.
It was pointed out to the Analyst that the prisoner was now amenable to giving a sample of blood for DNA analysis. However, upon revisiting the matter I was informed that the frequency of the DNA found in the vaginal smear was too occasional and as such it was not possible to get a proper reading to make a comparison. I was therefore advised that it would be useless for the prisoner to submit a sample at this time.
I therefore advise you accordingly.
Yours sincerely
I. Reid (Mrs.)
Crown Counsel (Ag.)
For Director of Public Prosecutions"
roderick
RODERICK GORDON
ATTORNEY-AT-LAW
ADVOCATES' CHAMBERS
SUITE 26, SEYMOUR PARK
2 SEYMOUR AVENUE
KINGSTON 10, JAMAICA, WI
March 10
Fern and i would like to provide opportunity for those interested in continuing the conversation we began in Evidence. We propose dinner and discussion in small groups (10 or so) at my house at evenings throughout the rest of the spring semester. Because the purpose of these meetings is to stimulate dialogue, groups will not be random - instead you'll have the opportunity to talk with the author of an essay that interests you. The ultimate goal is to gather groups in which at least one other person's essay interests you and at least one person is interested in yours.
Participation is entirely voluntary, but to participate you must share your essay. You are free to edit your essay to remove personal details or material you do not wish to share; you may also, if you prefer, substitute your exam answer instead. In any event, if you want to participate, please "reply" to this email attaching your edited document.
Once you have so responded, your essay will be posted to the wiki in a manner that will give others opportunity to indicate their interest. This will be done anonymously, through HLS ID numbers.
We look forward to our conversations, and to the adventure of making this work. I'll keep you posted on progress.
crn
March 5
i had to login this morning in order to edit. this change comes because we were being spammed by bots piling hidden links to pages whose googlejuice they would enhance. i made a change on our front page to add Essay of the Day.
March 1
How to moderate dispute. Here is an excellent paper on the topic: "There Must Be a Better Way."
would you like to write a brief for credit under my supervision to the New England Journal of Medicine governing board making the case for open access peer review, likewise to the membership, board and consuming public for Harvard Law Review. if so, please get in touch.
would you like to become a PITF fellow to help organize, fill out and spruce up our wiki, paid work. if so, please get in touch.
February 28
Students, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, it is time to calm down. we have been doing damage to ourselves. your papers evidence how much you learned. your bsa evaluation comments give evidence that collectively you found value in our class and would recommend it overwhelmingly. i believe we have reason to be proud of what we have so far accomplished. Yet it is this wiki which is our open face. Here the hostility and sharpness in the invectives used against each other show that collectively we are not a happy crew. Internal to us there are enmities which have surfaced and festered. Let us put to work what we sought to teach and learn. Moderate ourselves. Moderate our space. Moderate our disputes. Our challenge is to govern ourselves. we are the law.
February 25
February 24
Read and responded to the response to exam and grades pages last night and talked with fern about it this morning before taking sammy to the vet, then riding there alone in the car with sam recorded an audioblog.
Damn, the mic cable was loose, all lost after the first minute. But something like this:
February 24, 2005, on the road to Woburn with Sammy in my lap. I'm in conversation with an anonymous student who poses the question, what am i teaching, what and how and whether i have taught you. My student is lethally intelligent, articulate to point of poetry, able to take my course and put it in context, able to play the game of what is true and who are you, the bird is in your hands. It beautifully shows a value of anonimity in the net: Is it he or is it she? and puts me in mind my torts class in which all my students climbed on their desks and danced but two, one a guy, one a woman. When asked to explain the guy said he stayed sitting because he felt like it; the woman said she sat to protect me from the criticism that my students didn't have a choice.
February 22
Well, i didn't get my grades in on the monday, which was a staff holiday, and i didn't get them in on tuesday, which was not. today by 2pm, that is my goal.
February 17
Getting to the end. Grades will be in from me on the 21st.
February 16
Kevin is coming to Cambridge on Saturday afternoon, two days from now. John Palfrey has invited him to speak with his class on Monday. Let's organize a reception for Kevin at the Berkman Center for 5pm Saturday afternoon, all who may be interested in connecting invited, beer, soft drinks and snacks, possibilities for sending out for pizza.
February 15, 21
My brain is not capacious enough to absorb all you are teaching me as i read your exam papers. Even more than your outside-of-class papers these exam responses often speak with awesome directness and insight. DO NOT SHARE. If permission os asked and opportunity to edit afforded before permission is given, might the valance on share might shift? The wiki, what will make it live? Suppose it fills with message and response about fundamental questions in our lives, who we are, what we are trying to do, what we are doing? i see that the wiki transforms the process of education by giving us means to make it what we want it to be.
What should be the stucture we strive to create for ourselves? What is the competitive atmosphere to which we aspire? Competition to draw out the best in ourselves.
February 14
Did you have a real good time, did you learn enough as you were going along to stay ahead of the guilt trip you are imposing on yourself? happy valentine.
today up on beacon hill our legislators are deciding to make marijuana possession in small amounts a flat fine offense. to me this makes huge sense. if all who enjoy a weed among the flowers of life could combine willing energy the wiki would blow the opposition away. we've got the talent, we've got the time, we can pay an occasional flat fine.
February 11
cross post from eon
Happy Birthday. Welcome the age of Aquarius. i feel mystery in my life i have not solved and time runing out to solve it. Solving it would wash away all past disappointments. i feel time draining me down the pipe of life. i see sammy failing, and think of you, ivy, sister, neice, lost and found.
sitting across from me last night a doctor, a man who grew up near fern, whose families. he smiles at me through a fuzzy mustache, his hair wispy brown strands against his bald pate, and casey next to him with an oped in the Times today about amber waves of grain. we talked of open access peer review as a principle at the core of academia, a conceptual idea instantiating truth in process. Evidence of the power of this concept looms before our eyes in wikpedia, which is just the first of the stunning leaps to come in the design of organizations of willing energy. we constitute ourselves an academic universe, judge ourselves and organize ourselves to produce truth as common wealth.
where is the for-profit corporate world in this evolving generativity of knowledge? have faith, ride along. profit flowing from academic generativity. cross post to biotech.
February 10
Is anyone who might like to work with me on a paper telling the Jah Cure/S... story in response to this call for papers:
CALL FOR PAPERS regarding Restorative Justice issues - Restorative Directions Journal, a Canadian based, internationally distributed, multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal is presently seeking submissions on the following topics: ... The Role of Apology in Criminal Justice or .. Other topics in Restorative Justice.
I'm making good progress now once again on your papers, looking forward to being snowed in with them, but i am not going to make the grading deadline. Expect your grades to be late by a week. Sorry.
February 8
Back up and running, reading papers once again. Tonight I will be exploring how to connect Jamaica and China, 5pm Pound 104.
February 7
Still not up. Typing here on Fern's machine, the hard drive from my departed laptop still in the hands of Berkman, my tempo of reading your papers disturbed. Just changed our Evidence front page by moving up the question and suggestions i'd missed below. *Keep the Wiki Alive!
- But how???
- can we have a stories section: sort of a quick note/anecdote/share life area? and how can we get involved with Kevin, Hurricane, etc. on a local --> international level?
- But how???
Started biotech yesterday with its wikispace, see left of navigation bar, excited at the prospect of asking this new class to look at what you have done and are doing and help us keep our wiki alive even as we help them.
February 6
Zittrain called this morning to say that he liked my February 3 journal entry. He says he’s eager now to have a blog. I can’t wait, I love this man, love his wit and humor, his power of analysis, the breadth and depth of what he knows about life and tech. Z and Beckerman, can’t wait. Beckerman is his life-long buddy who writes comedy. Together they are a pair.
February 3
Disaster this morning, coffee spilled on my laptop, splitzzzt, shorted out, tan liquid dripping from the keyboard. No problem. It's had Fern and me thinking though about a possible algorithm for discussing the very interesting and provocative set of your 1500 word papers, each marked only with your id number. For this i will have to send you all email again to ask your permission and willingness to participate, this time OPT IN, not opt out. Suppose, once we have your affirmative permission to share in manner to be described, that I make the first two hundred words of each permitted paper available for all within the sharing group to read, here on the wiki, with link in each to the whole paper for anyone who wants to read further. Suppose further that we ask you to pick the top ten you would like to discuss with its author and register your picks by placing your ID number immediately beneath the two hundred word excerpt. Once this process is complete Fern and i will put you into groups of eight such that we maximize the number of people in each group who want to read each others papers. The idea is for you to be in a discussion group in which there is at least one personr you want to meet and talk with and one person who wants to meet and talk with you. On a schedule stretching out through the spring, Fern and I will invite each group to our home for dinner and discussion.
elbow here: this is a great idea
- that reminds AlMac at User:AlMac/Geeky#Accidents_happen but also see Talk:Main Page ... you want to avoid the vandals being able to get into the students work products.
February 2
Dinner with Charles Fried last night led to email from him this early morning with his new book attached, Modern Liberty, to be published later this spring. I've been reading, feeling the beginning of adventure, the dawning of opportunity to engage. Here delivered to me by a dear friend his focused intelligence on the question of our individual and collective politics that is most troubling to me. As i read it, i comment with reaction. i realize there is question whether we agree, whether my reaction will put me at odds with Charles, or whether as his argument unfolds i will find myself encompassed and embraced. My thought is to blog it, a paragraph at a time, as i read it, inviting reaction from a perhaps growing audience as the argument progresses, building toward a conference celebrating the book's publication in a manner designed to focus the attention of all who love and hate America and the liberty Americans enjoy.
Here is Charles Fried's Opening Statement and provocative question from me.
February 1
Hello All,
I've been reading your papers (with considerable pleasure) and occasionally referring to them in my journal entries on our class wiki, posting and linking to them when i do. i have purposely avoided posting papers of a personal character, not having your explicit permission to do so. If any of you object for any reason to my linking to your paper, please send arielle an email message noting your objection with your ID number. She will send your objection and number on to me without your name, and i will be pleased to honor your request.
Here's the other side of OJ and Scott Peterson. I find myself almost reading these aloud, wondering whether there would be interest in a series of audio pieces for podcast and radio.
January 31
the rush continues. Elizabeth Stark on IM from Rio talking about overmundo. Email from Wayne about his electronic music class on the net:electroblog -- fyi - our big, bloggy experiment. here's hoping it really takes off: http://electro-class.net/
- Welcome to ElectroClass!
- Hello MUSI E-145 Students!
- Welcome to our class blog. This is the space where we will be building a class-wide listening ;journal, posting our production projects and final projects, and - I hope - engaging in a lively ;conversation about electronic music, its history and aesthetics, and any related or relevant ;topics.
Way to go Wayne. i want to sign up for this course just for the fun of listening and learning to the music.
In fact just about to write an email to Andy Herz, lawyer for the Henzell's company that owns to right to The Harder They Come. We've got problems I'd like to share with you. We need help in putting the deal together to make The Harder They Fall.
More papers.
January 30 mid morning
Working on two projects in the off time from reading your papers. pokeruniversity and jamaicadiaspora. Time to get back to you. Blown away by the metamyth applied to the rehabilitation saga of battered women; see it in the rehab story for men as well, see it as the story of movement from a confinging psychospace to broader understanding and more stable sense of self.
January 30 early
Reading your papers, morning tea beside me, the bar of my massage chair running up and down my back, music in my ears, in the world of what you are learning and thinking about. Yesterday i receive an invitation to attend a conference in Taiwan. Last night before bed i read the last chapter of Thunder Out of China, an account of China in the period of the Second World War, a story of Kuomintang corruption, communist growth and america's dubious diplomacy. This morning the first paper i read addresses the disputed election of 2004 in Taiwan, in which the Kuomintang party was displaced by the Green party by a small and disputed margin. "China has authorization to occupy the island, without United States intervention, if Taiwan is “in a state of internal conflict.” This fact, along with the widespread social unrest, all the more clearly highlighted the court’s responsibility ..."
Shall i go to Taiwan? Yes. I hear it's a good place. My mom went and had a great time.
January 28 later
Vengeance is mine saith the lord. Is this the law lord speaking? where are you in this; are you and your brother not the most powerful court. how would your mother and father respond to your plea for understanding and remorse?
January 28 early morning
i am reading your papers, fascinated and thinking, learning as i go, questioning. suppose i were to post one occasionally for you to consider along with me. Like the paper i read yesterday about tookie williams that's had me thinking ever since. Strands of started thought weave through my reading of your papers that came after. Could tookie have done better? Was his appeal crafted to a decisionmaker who leads the staff of state employees who tried and reviewed his case? How does plea of innocence cut? Did tookie ever write a letter to the victims of the crime? Are victims only those dead and raped or they and all who love them? What would Jah Cure's letter to shamika say. You would do almost anything to have your friends back, all those people who came to support you, the world within which you have been emotionally existing, acting out your issues unresolved. What were you saying by your actions? Not the words you spoke and have blacked out, at least not for their truth value, but the statement you are making by drunking and saying them. You hurt your friends by wresting control away from them. You show them they cannot trust you. What is the love you lost and long for and cannot find. Why can you not choose?
The liar paradox, i am lying now, this statement is false, parsed by philosphers to show unoccupied middle ground. did tookie die because he did not speak to those who loved the people killed. those who believe he murdered. How can he credit their point of view yet still represent his own? Can one respect without crediting.
Tookie Williams, Jah Cure, and you, have the same problem, punishement and clemency, avoid punishment, gain clemency. You are abject, admitting your humiliation with your adjectives yet not recognizing your crime. Disgrace the synonym of discovery. That's how i learned Alan Stone's lesson, the case of kiwi camara, harvard law school 2002. i need to write an open letter to grace and to michelle, and to those who believe i injured them and were thus injured themselves. The problem just the same as the letter to tookie and jah cure. i feel the segway from your feeling of imprisonment, your plea for clemency, to theirs and to my own. i have done good works yet this in itself is not enough for clemency. Is it a precondition for clemency that one admit one's crime? What if one must lie to admit? If one is thought to be lying in order to gain clemency then can insincerity be grounds for withholding it?
suppose hamas says we are not really going to wipe you out, we are just pretending because that is the tightest focal point of the hatred that isreal and its supporters have generated in the arab islamic world. at core people trust their hatreds. As much as people try to deny them to themselves. points of hatred become focal points for political organization with war its ultimate diplomacy. So play the cube of thruth with me, who speaks two faced? Remember, it is an arab with whom you are deal, you a jew. who more finely understands the thruth.
poker
January 27
wish i had a look here of eon.
involve your character in telling your story
January 24
Wayne suggests to me that i take note in an accessible way of the tech innovations in teaching that we are finding ways to make work. This suggestion came after i explained david russcol's question tool and how great it feels to be in a feedback loop with a class. "You do call yourself dean of cyberspace," he said, gently urging me to step up to the role. David, could we not set up your tool to work for every aspect of our school?
- The code is available under the GPL. I'm happy to share it with anyone who wants to make use of it.
January 23 - evening
Chloe showed me how to put up pictures. Here's one.
Having dinner with Wayne, my son in law (Becca and Fern are in California hiking in the hills of Calabasas), so it will be a bachelors night. He's got the lead article in this week's Phoenix, on [The Rise of Reggaeton]. While reading I've been listening to Wayne's music, and seeing music in the work you have given me.
January 23 - morning
Good night's sleep after great "Save the Internet" party at David Weinberger's house, greeted at 6:30 a.m. with IM from Kevin, talk with him for a bit, then get back to putting finishing touches on my exam. Snowing outside, heavy big wet flakes. My feet get cold when i get the paper from the front stoop. Spend some time poking and clicking my trusty machine sending digital bits here and there, then off to print and copy. i feel i've neglected this journal in the rush of everything else. This wiki has life if we give it life. It lives on energy and organization. i'm still wishing for a page for folks keeping up with the wiki that integrates all that's new. How would one do it?
i'm planning to put up the exam on the wiki, nine minutes from now, it now being 9:51 a.m.
- <)
January 20
Last day class coming up, closing statement. In preparation i listen to the first day, my opening. Started with who you are, where you are in the process of learning law, how you learn, what you learn, expressed hope that you would come out of the class as masters, creators, further toward the goal of finding your role in the law, your passion, with better grasp of how we understand and build message, individually and institutionally, how we prove the truth to ourselves and others, individually and institutionally.
January 12
8a.m. in Austin North, prepared for class, ready to rock and roll. Actually, ready to explore and talk about deeply serious issues in the law of evidence and the lives we lead within its embrace. Feedback memos raise the where are we, where are we going question. We have embarked and are moving along a path of learning law and our roles as lawyers. Who is to say what is to be proved and how. What are the algorithms that guide the machine in which we play our part. Each offense has elements, each to be proved. One mode of acceptable proof of an element is a believable witness who directly perceived the element's occurance and convincingly tells us so. A second is by proof of a set of evidentiary pieces not the element itself but from which we draw a convincing inference proving the element. Each of these routes to proof bifurcate in a pattern of concerns mixing directness of connection between the offer and the proof, issues of privilege, and efficiency concerns about presentation. To grasp the pattern and see it played out in the structure of trial procedure provides you a key to understanding many rules.
January 11 - afternoon
First, my apology to Karen Suber, whose injunction to me not to share with her name is writ big and bold with underlines. I am appalled that I let her memo through in the sorted pile. Truly, I am sorry, not just to her but also for my lost credibility and contribution to my reputation for being insensitive to the privacy of others. I pledge to be meticulous henceforth, but of course you've heard that before. Damage has already been done.
I've read quickly through what you've said directly to me in this week's feedback memo. In your first feedback memo to me last week a gender line stood out with fear of rape on one side, fear of false accusation on the other. This time the first division line that strikes me is between those who like my apparent switch from bullshit to rule&problem and those who don't. I don't see it as a switch myself except in the sense of visit to an important part of the evolving story of the law of evidence in detail sufficient to allow you to see the regime being overthrown. How do these rules and the ways of doing things respond to the challenges of cyberspace? Another day of detail tomorrow as you grasp the structures of articulated relevance designed to protect the victim on the stand. Reputation. What is it? What is mine? How has the specific act of my intrusion on the privacy of Karen Suber affected it? Were I on trial for intruding improperly on a student's privacy (another student, not Karen), would my reputation be provable evidence against me? Would my misstep with Karen's feedback memo be provable evidence against me? Would my act in putting up the Chalabi piece?
Yes, I will lift the shades or raise the lights when we are in discussion. Tomorrow and from here on out we are back in Austin North equipped with individual mics.
January 11
Here's where links to our journals go. Here's the start of mine for today, Wednesday, January 11, 2005. If you can see a dispute from the other side, you can make progress towards resolving it. You can speak with the other in a way to which the other will listen. I would love you to listen to eye on the media and my reading group on socrates. I would love you to see Jon Zittrain do a Fred Friendly type seminar on Privacy and State Surveillance, next Wednesday night in Ames Courtroom, with the likes of Charles Fried and Cass Sunstein on the panel. I would love to organize poker again for Friday Night, and figure out whether there are enough of us wanting to watch the Patriots game on Saturday night to warrant gathering in a room with a big screen and the usual lavish refreshments and DJ Wayne&Wax and friends.
Rubin Carter will be with Kevin in Kingston on Tuesday next, webcasting (and podcasting if someone will teach us how to do it) from Kevin's SET center. Kevin, Rubin and Courtney Kazembe are then coming to Cambridge to be here on Thursday. I would love to gather a large audience for them on Thursday night.
Please, help this happen. You are a most amazing class.
I have found a role I like. It was given to me by Alex Lee when she called me Poppa. It's a role i once had with my children, Becca and Leila, and now am coming to feel i have again. I attend Z's class and marvel at his grasp and skill in teaching. I i-m Kevin and feel his strength and compassion. I prepare for you today.
From Rodney King and Stacey Koon to hearsay exceptions, from the biggest of the big to the smallest of the small, i would love to teach you how to understand and do it all.
i'm going to Zittrain's class this afternoon to give our students there an assignment: wiki the shit out of zittrain's paper. Help him hone it to a power piece, strong base, sharp point, nothing extra.
So groups: time for you to say yay or nay; would you like to do a project as a group, expressing yourselves here in our wiki? Please express yourselves with the ethos you have at your core? Some surprise you spring upon us on our last day of class.
