Irony, Texas Style

From MSNBC

Dude — you guys plagiarized an honor code?
Draft of Texas school’s code bears uncanny resemblance to other schools'
The Associated Press
March. 30, 2008

SAN ANTONIO - Their goal was an honor code that discouraged cheating and plagiarizing.

However, the wording in a draft by students at the University of Texas at San Antonio appears to match another school's code — without proper attribution.

The student currently in charge of the honor code project said it was an oversight, but cheating experts say it illustrates a sloppiness among Internet-era students who don't know how to cite sources properly and think of their computers as cut-and-paste machines.

"That's the consequence of the Internet and the availability of things," said Daniel Wueste, director of the Rutland Institute for Ethics at Clemson University. "It doesn't feel like what would be in a book. You Google it and here it comes."

Student Akshay Thusu said that when he took over the project a month ago he inherited a draft by earlier project participants, including a group of students who attended a conference five years ago put on by The Center for Academic Integrity at Clemson.

Materials from the conference, which are used by many universities, were probably the main source of UTSA's proposed code, Thusu said. That's why parts of the Texas draft match word-for-word the online version of Brigham Young University's code.

BYU credited the Center for Academic Integrity, but the San Antonio draft doesn't.

That will change, said Thusu, who plans to include proper citation and attribution when the draft is submitted to the faculty senate.

"We don't want to have an honor code that is stolen," Thusu said.

Cheating. The Conversation Continues

From the Los Angeles Times

Exam cheating goes high tech, but its causes are nothing new
Students invent new methods, schools counter with new safeguards. But the
underlying issue of honesty has changed little.

By Carla Rivera
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 30, 2008

When six Harvard Westlake students were expelled last month for stealing midterm exams at the academically rigorous school, the incident highlighted an old problem facing educators: cheating. A 2006 national survey found that more than 60% of high school students said they had cheated on a test, and the number of self-admitted cheaters has steadily risen over the years. Students today can use an array of high-tech gadgetry, challenging schools to keep pace.

One click of the Internet opens a world of possibilities and temptations, devious and ingenious, with Web sites devoted to the best cheating practices, and cheating tutorials on YouTube. One YouTube compilation offers such strategies as taping answers under a tie and designing a T-shirt with a cheat sheet printed on the front in a form that can be overlooked as a logo. In another, a young man recounts his method of stretching a rubber band over a textbook and writing answers on it. When the rubber band isn't stretched, his writing looks like harmless ink stains.

Yet another video explains how to remove a wrapper from a drink bottle and create a duplicate carrying test answers. Although camera phones with pictures of an answer sheet, and text messages from friends outside the classroom are still the most ubiquitous electronic techniques, many schools have caught on and now ban devices such as cellphones and iPods during tests.

More recent innovations are button cameras, which have a wireless connection to a laptop computer that can then capture stolen test items, and pens capable of scanning a test and sending a video signal to a remote laptop to save the images. One 17-year-old senior, who attends a Westside high school, said he once turned in an essay for English class that he had taken off a Web site. He said he probably would not do it again because he believes it is now easier to get caught plagiarizing. The student, who gave only his first name, said he receives good grades and didn't feel the need to cheat now, but admitted that sometimes there is a lot of pressure.

"I don't think there's as much [cheating] going on as people think, but yeah, it's happening," said Christopher, interviewed at the Howard Hughes Center in Westchester. "It's mainly because society puts all this pressure on teenagers, saying you better do good or you won't get to college or you'll be second-rate."

Motivating students to cheat, educators said, are factors such as the pursuit of admission to the 'best' colleges and the fear that not cheating will put them at a disadvantage. And add to that the stories in the news -- dishonest athletes, politicians and even parents ready to behave unethically, for example, to obtain Hannah Montana tickets.

In the last few weeks, married New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned amid a sex scandal, and the supposed gang memoir of a mixed-race foster child named Margaret B. Jones turned out to have been written by Margaret Seltzer, a white woman from the San Fernando Valley who attended Campbell Hall, a private school in North Hollywood. "It's a mistake to talk about school cheating without referring to society at large," said Michael Josephson, founder and president of the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute of Ethics, a nonprofit consulting and training firm. "We need to connect these dots and ask what is our attitude toward cheating, because kids are going to absorb that attitude. . . . And cheating learned in school is habit-forming."

Many educators are searching for their own answers. David Bryan, head of New Roads School, a private campus in Santa Monica, dealt with a cheating scandal at his own campus a few years ago and recently spoke with a student who had been expelled from Harvard Westlake for the same thing. The student's family was likable and the student contrite, Bryan said. The student ultimately did not apply for admission, but Bryan is unsure whether he would have given the boy a second chance."On the one hand, why would I want to bring this kid into our community," said Bryan. "On the other, does that mean that we're supposed to give up on this kid and not give him a second chance?"

Schools increasingly are turning to test-security firms that use computer software capable of picking out anomalies in multiple-choice exams and identifying plagiarized material. Many more, such as New Roads, are also assuming responsibility for helping students to navigate the minefield of moral and ethical behavior with character-building curricula and ethics workshops.

Bryan said he was under no illusion that his campus was free of cheating. It was established in 1995 and has more than 640 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, spread over four campuses. Under the school's policy, students caught cheating the first time must forfeit credit for the assignment or test and do the work over again. A second occurrence will get them expelled.

An ironic subtext of a Society and Ethics class he led one recent morning was that several of those present had been involved in a 2005 cheating incident at New Roads in which about 50 students were briefly suspended for exploiting a computer glitch to get answers to a math assignment."I take as a given that young people are going to make bad decisions," said Bryan. "Now is the time to catch them, when the result is not going to be a federal indictment."

There is no doubt that students are conflicted. Bryan posed a series of scenarios to his class, involving shoplifting, stealing, plagiarism, drug use and cheating, and asked: What is more important: friendship or values? Only one student admitted to cheating in the past year, and many said cheating and theft were wrong under any circumstances. But one, who said that his friends shoplift, said he would discourage them from stealing from a small mom-and-pop store but might encourage taking items from one owned by a big corporation.

Students said there is a temptation to cheat if the consequence of not cheating is a bad grade."You're afraid your parents will punish you and take things away from you, and maybe you really, really studied hard to pass," said senior Johnny Winestock, 17. The most recent survey conducted by the Josephson Institute, in 2006, found virtually no geographical or gender differences in the numbers of students who admit to cheating. Students attending parochial and private schools cheated at a slightly higher rate, as did varsity athletes.

And there is anecdotal evidence that top-achieving students also cheat at higher rates, said Josephson.The number of self-admitted cheaters peaked during a survey in 2004 at 72%, before falling to 61% in 2006. That is about the same number as 1992, when the first survey was conducted. But Josephson said it may be that fewer students are now willing to admit they cheat.

And he dismissed justifications that students are under more pressure than those of past years. "I'm appalled by that argument," he said, adding that it becomes a silent apology for cheaters. "If that's the case, then don't get mad at Enron, because they were under pressure, and don't get mad at Jason Blair [the former New York Times reporter who was found to have plagiarized and fabricated articles] because he was under pressure."

Many students themselves also discount the idea that they are overwhelmed."You have friends who are into a lot of drama," said Alyssa Atain, 16, who attends the private Vistamar School in El Segundo. "There's drugs and alcohol. You're thinking about college, and are you going away and are you strong enough to go away. But I've always pushed myself a lot to do well rather than feeling pressure from the outside. And one thing they do very well at Vistamar is teach you to take pride in who you are as a student."Richard Perlmutter, whose 16-year-old daughter Ruby attends New Roads, said he was attracted to the school in large part because "the culture here is that beating other people and getting ahead is not the primary objective."

There is an increasing body of opinion among educators that cheating may be an expression of the way schools approach teaching and learning. And as schools and teachers come to face more high-stakes standardized testing, the worse it will become, said Gary J. Niels, who has studied cheating behavior and wrote a 2003 paper on honor codes.

Studies found that when teachers were vague in explaining the relevance and importance of curricula, students perceived the lessons as a waste of time and were more likely to cheat. Fact-driven data that had to be "regurgitated," said Niels, also correlated to higher incidents of cheating.

Niels, who is head of the private Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh, also found that honor and integrity codes have little influence if they are purely adult or faculty driven. Although there are practical techniques that can reduce cheating, the entire school community must participate if it is to be prevented. Even with the ease of access to new technology, the Harvard Westlake students who were caught cheating took the old-fashioned route -- they apparently distracted teachers and stole history and Spanish exams while teachers weren't looking. School officials are dealing with the breach and are holding discussions with students about how to abide by the school's honor code. Six sophomores were expelled and more than a dozen students who allegedly viewed the tests were suspended.

Cheating among Millennials does seem consistent with some of their core characteristics and values: collaboration and high achievement. I've noticed in the last couple of years that my students seem to judge cheating off a willing participant (like a friend or someone who charges money for the information) less harshly than cheating that involves an unwitting participant. They seem to understand that cheating and plagiarism are theft and believe that they can be consented to.

When I was in college, applying for minimum-wage jobs, I remember that some companies had a kind of "honesty inventory" that applicants had to complete. I wonder if there's something like that that could be made part of the law school application. If cheating is going to rise (if these attitudes are prevalent in high school students now, we can expect it to continue at least until these folks get out of law school, 8-10 years from now), we ought to get on the ball in figuring out how to not only detect and punish actual cheating (which law schools are woefully deficient at -- more on that another time), but we probably also ought to figure out how to detect attitudes that could lead to cheating.

Your Students Are Waiting for You!

This week, I and some of my colleagues at Touro Law Center had the pleasure of spending some time with guest coach/mentor/speaker Paula Lustbader from Seattle U. School of Law. Paula came to talk to us about 1L orientation programs that ease students from their role as student-only to their role as member of a profession. One of the things she shared with us that she tells students is that their clients are waiting for them. Right now. They're just waiting for the students to learn what they need to learn to that the now-student/then-lawyer can help the waiting client. I liked that.

And it applies to us, too. Our now-elementary-students/then-law-students are waiting for us. They're in their elementary school classrooms as I write and you read. They're learning how to add, subtract, group, and estimate -- all skills that form the basis for the logical thought processes law school requires. They're learning how to get along with others in groups and pairs and how to work through a problem on their own -- all skills that form the basis for the relational and learning processes law school requires. They're being told that if they work hard, make good grades, and keep their rooms clean, then the sky is the limit. Some of those children have already decided: "I want to be a lawyer." Right now, we're imagining each other. Us, their future professors; them, our future students.

And they're doing some exciting things to prepare for their futures. Here is a great blog post with pictures about a collaborating writing exercise accomplished by students in different locations using Google Docs and Skype. Both applications are free, and they're so easy that . . . well . . . even a kid can do it. Spend some time today imagining one of those kids in the pictures 10 or 15 years from now sitting in your classroom, waiting expectantly for all the education they've known to move to a higher level.

Your students are waiting for you.

GoogleDocs Tutorial

Atomic Learning has a free Google Docs video tutorial available for a limited time. It's broken down into small pieces, so you don't have to sit through a tutorial of everything at once.

Millennial Power

The following story from the Modesto Bee (which will forever in my mind be linked to Ted Rowland's coverage of the Laci Peterson disappearance) demonstrates some of the best traits of Millennials:

• Initiative
• Collaboration
• Belief that they can make things happen
• Creativity (in some realms)
• Organizing power

UoP students use Facebook, MySpace to book rapper
By MICHELLE HATFIELD
last updated: March 25, 2008 08:09:52 AM

STOCKTON -- A group of University of the Pacific students showed the power of MySpace and Facebook and the strength of numbers when they successfully lobbied a rap star to perform at their campus Friday.

Several hundred students visited Talib Kweli's MySpace and Facebook pages, asking the hip-hop artist to stop by the Stockton campus.

Social networking Web sites such as MySpace and Facebook have become almost mandatory for the "millennial generation," those who have grown up during the technological revolution.

The sites are easier and more convenient for the millennials to use than e-mail, said Elizabeth Griego, UOP vice president for student life and an education professor who has researched the use of social networking sites. Users can get instant updates and listen to music -- it's immediate feedback.

"Students are accessing these sites not just once a day, but multiple times a day," Griego said. "(MySpace and Facebook) are the two most powerful organs of this generation to communicate. They can pass information on lightning quick. It's easy to mobilize people in a short period of time."

A millennial is any person who reached college age after 2000, Griego said. UOP students visited Kweli's site, leaving him e-mail messages and posts pleading with him to come to the campus.

Kweli is an original member of the rap group Black Star, which he formed with well-known rap artist and actor Mos Def. He's described as a socially conscious rapper. He'll be paid about $40,000 for the performance; funding will come from ticket sales and student fees, said Jenn Mazzotta, assistant director for programming.

UOP's student government surveyed students for possible concert musicians, and Kweli was an overwhelming favorite, said Nick Kajimoto, arts and entertainment commissioner and business junior.

UOP's student leaders use MySpace and Facebook to organize annual trips and concerts. "They're really good networking sites. They just connect people,"
Kajimoto said.

Seeking Best Law Teachers

Michael Schwartz of Washburn has embarked on an ambitious project to find out what the best law teachers do that makes them the best law teachers. To start the project, he has to first identify the best law teachers, which he is attempting to do through an online nomination process. Anyone can nominate (including students) by going to the site Schwartz has set up: http://washburnlaw.edu/bestlawteachers/nominations/index.php

Nominees will be announced here:
http://washburnlaw.edu/bestlawteachers/nominees/index.php

Kudos to Mike for imagining and executing what will no doubt be a great contribution to law teaching, and kudos in advance to all the great law teachers who will soon find themselves listed as nominees!

"Should professors be on Facebook?"

Dear Millennial Law Prof:

I read the New York Times article, Professor as Open Book; it seems like a lot has been written lately on whether professors should be on sites like MySpace and Facebook. What do you think?

Millennials have an affinity for their parents and other authority figures that previous generations did not share. However, they also have a strong affinity for one another. They're on Facebook to network with each other, not with you. So while I don't think they care whether or not you have a Facebook page, I'm not sure they necessarily want you on theirs all time.

Remember that Facebook is online social networking. And I think it's analogous to offline social networking, i.e., parties, and similar rules apply.

Faculty Only: There are some parties that are just for faculty. Obviously, professors should attend those; it's inappropriate for students to crash.

Students Only: There are some parties that are just for students. Not only is it inappropriate for faculty to crash these, it's creepy.

All Skate: There are some parties that start out as "all skate" parties, i.e., both students and faculty are invited. Those are usually the functions that faculty attend "to be supportive." I'm thinking of the law review banquet, the honors dinners, the "proms." However, after a certain hour, they often revert to a student-only party. I think faculty should attend to be supportive and leave when (or before) it becomes clear that the reversion has occurred.

Celebrations: There are some parties that are for students, but relevant faculty are invited. Sometimes students will have a section party, end-of-year party, or thank-god-the-brief-is-finished party. And sometimes they invite relevant faculty (the profesors who taught their section or the course for which the assignment was just due). These are like the proms (see above), but it takes substantially less time to register our support. Go for 30 minutes; then head out.

The Internet is like a huge hotel with many ballrooms, each of which is hosting a different party. Just because you don't need an invitation to get into each party doesn't mean that crashing is okay with the hosts. I think that social networking and blog sites that are clearly intended to be "faculty only" or "student only" shouldn't be "crashed" by folks in the other group even though you can clearly wander in undetected. If you do wander in undetected, you probably shoudn't assume the privileges of an invited guest. In other words, just because students can read what's on faculty sites and vice versa doesn't mean you should feel free to participate and comment. If you don't think you can read a site that's clearly not intended for you without commenting, don't read it.

So is Facebook a party, or is Facebook a hotel? I think Facebook is now a hotel. When Facebook was restricted to students with a .edu address from a member school, it was clearly a party. However, now that pretty much anyone can be on Facebook and MySpace (which started out as a networking site for musical artists), it's a hotel. So you can go in to Facebook regardless of which party (page) you're going to. Specific Facebook pages, though, are still parties. So this raises two questions:

• Should professors host a party (have a Facebook page)?
• Should professors attend parties (participate in others' Facebook pages)?

Ray Ulmer of TargetX, a college recruiting blog, has this to say:

Millennials want to know the real you — blemishes and all. That
means being less of a control freak, being comfortable with student-generated
content, using communications tools like blogs and social networks, learning to find and tell good stories, identifying the intangibles that differentiate you from your competitors, and other practices that help students know the real you — so they can decide if your school is the right place for them.

I think this is what professors are afraid of, that we have to be on social networking sites to be relevant. But if that's not the real you, then Millennials understand that.

In response to a piece on the Chronicle's Wired Campus, several students commented:

Social media is about people coming to you and making people want to do that. Having a Facebook because you think students might want you to have a Facebook is not going to work because you’re not being “honest,” you’re trying to fit into what you think they want. Having a Facebook because you like the interface and can connect with people builds your own identity and doesn’t base that identity on who you think your students are.

Use it for YOU first, and if it works you won’t be disappointed. If it doesn’t work for you, drop it. Simple. Social spaces in and of themselves are not restricted to age groups or other demographics, but I tend to think of them like partitioned spaces with defined but permeable walls. You can always take a peak, but bear in mind you may not be welcome in the sandbox, biker bar, or frat party.

Sp if you like Facebook or want to try it out, go ahead.

Here's some good advice from Bridget Crawford at Feminist Law Profs:

Professors in cyberspace are receiving some unflattering attention, but being a prof on Facebook and other social networking sites does not automatically put one in the Faculty Who Share Too Much Information category. I find Facebook an easy way to keep in touch with alumni, and I’ve discovered some interesting groups Like “Feminist Bloggers Unite!” and the International Association for Feminist Economics.

And even more good advice from Millennial Professor for those who want to participate in Facebook on a personal level but not to be visible to students:

I have a facebook profile that is private (my students cannot search for me). This profile affords me several benefits: (a) I can communicate with friends from my college years, (b) I can conduct research on facebook with students from other institutions, and (c) I am able to post pictures of family/friends without having undergraduates viewing them.

Be ready to use your good party manners; be prepared for others not to use theirs; and let us know how it goes!

E-mail Etiquette for Millennials

I share this post from Life Before Noon not because it's revolutionary or new but because it comes from Millennials. Advice from Millennial peers on using e-mail professionally may just sink in. And it's always nice to see the young people encouraging one another to behave.


The point about practicing good e-mail etiquette with professors certainly got my attention. I've started requiring properly written e-mails (no "u" for "you" or other text messaging conventions) from students before I'll answer them. It gives them extra practice writing, teaches a little professionalism (which was the original goal), and it predisposes me to view their requests and questions much more favorably (a little bonus for everyone that took me by surprise).

More of those Nice Young People

Starting with Life Before Noon, I stumbled onto a network of Millennial blogs that paint a very different picture of Millennials than the media portrays. These nice young people are much more of what I was expecting (and experiencing for the most part) and far less of what I've been hearing about until very, very recently. Here are a few of their blogs worth checking out (and even recommending to your students; a little peer pressure couldn't hurt):

Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist: Advice at the intersection of work and life

Penelope Trunk writes career advice for a new generation of workers. She explains why old advice - like pay your dues, climb the ladder, and don’t have gaps in your resume - is outdated and irrelevant in today’s workplace. She has a reputation for giving advice that is counterintuitive but effective, like take long lunches, ignore people who steal your ideas, and stop vying for a promotion.

Trunk is known for test-driving her advice before spewing it. Her own career choices have been featured by Time magazine and the Guardian as examples of the new issues people face at work today. Both the New York Times and Business Week cited Trunk’s writing as especially in tune with this new workplace. In her personal life, Trunk routinely (often awkwardly) demonstrates buzzwords before they buzz, like the quarterlife crisis, portfolio career, and shared-care parenting.

Her book is Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success (Warner Books, May 2007.)

Trunk spent ten years as a marketing executive in the software industry and then she founded two companies of her own. She has endured an IPO, a merger and a bankruptcy. Prior to that she was a professional beach volleyball player.

Brazen Careerist

What’s this site all about?
Remember those college career centers that you never used? You probably wish you had taken advantage of them (like we do), but now (maybe) it’s too late. Well that’s what we’re here for. We’re an online career center aimed at Generation Y — young professionals who want to design and define their careers using the new rules for success.

What’s a Brazen Careerist?
A Brazen Careerist knows that defining your own career, finding the right field, and pursuing it are key ingredients to a fulfilling life. Like the tag line suggests, when you define your career on your own terms first, you control your life.

Where are all the good bloggers?
Right here, of course. The Internet is loaded with talented writers, but there is no way to easily search for them. The Brazen Careerist network is made up of a vibrant, curious and ambitious group of career-minded bloggers, passionately covering a variety of fields: personal development, entrepreneurship, public relations, technology, marketing, and politics, each blog offers a unique, informed perspective to our ever-expanding audience.

Are all the network bloggers writing about careers?
No! We believe that everyone should write about their passion. If your current job isn’t focused on your passion, then you should do whatever you can to turn your passion into your career. Whether you want to be a fashion designer or the next great pro volleyball player, then you should be actively writing and reading about those interests. So join our conversation and make your voice heard!

Twenty Set

Twenty Set was created by Monica O’Brien. Monica originally had the idea to start a blog about topics she was interested in, such as gaining wealth and becoming an adult, in order to build her personal brand and establish a name for herself in social media circles. As a younger member of the twenty set, she struggles with the concept of success and how to achieve it, and wanted to share what she has learned with other people in their twenties who may have the same questions.

Young Go Getter

YGG began as a small forum back in August of 2005. It was originally created as an alternative to the other entrepreneur forums available at that time.

Since then, it’s grown into a large community of young go getters spread across the globe. It’s no longer just a forum. It’s exactly what our tagline says it is, the business playground for entrepreneurs young at heart.

We’re now on version 4 or so, built upon the lessons learned from the mistakes we made in the previous versions and the invaluable feedback from all of our members. It will continuously evolve as we make more mistakes and experiment with the standards implied upon most communities.

Hopefully YGG becomes a daily read for you and enables you to develop contacts and businesses that you normally wouldn’t.

Millennial Women Speak

As with many areas in the blogosphere (except feminism and parenting, it seems), male bloggers outnumber female bloggers. The same is true of blogs by Millennials about Millennials. But I've just found a great blog written by women: "Life Before Noon: A Millenial's Manual."

Life Before Noon is meant to be a voice for and by the Millennial Generation.

All five creators are college seniors with our looming graduation date fast-approaching. We want to foster an environment that promotes a dialogue about Millennials’ transition after college.

Through this dialogue we hope to generate a positive, respectful community that is open to all opinions. We don’t claim to be an authority, but we hope to help guide the conversation, while we ourselves navigate this period of life.

Here's just a sample of what these impressive collegiate women have to say:

On leadership

Leadership is about stepping outside of yourself. While our generation is inherently concerned with failure (myself included), we often focus too much on our personal advancement.

Throughout my college years, I have done minimal volunteer work. Granted I have volunteered a couple hours here and there each semester and donated money to causes, but that’s where my volunteering and philanthropic work ended. I was engrossed in advancing my studies, my activities, my internship, my job, my work, my blog, me, me, me, me. Of course I cared for the community and environment, but I was so overly consumed with advancing myself that I was blind to advancing the people in need around me. I had a case of Millennial passion and fear of failure to the max. I also wanted to wear that fancy suit.

On professionalism

What is professionalism? Wouldn’t it be great if you could buy it in a book, find it on the Internet or take it in pill form?

While trying to find myself over the past 3.5 years, I have transformed from a student into a young professional-in-training by taking several critical steps, mostly without even knowing. By becoming more professional in school situations, I have felt more prepared to enter the working world. Here are a few ways I have tried to become a young professional-in-training while still in college:

Having a mindset of a professional. Go to work, the library and class to get school work done. Set aside other times for socialization on or off campus. Meet with other students to work on group projects in a professional manner. Write e-mails to professors and peers in a timely manner.

Asking questions and listening. Knowledge is power.

Dressing the part. Sweatpants are for the gym and sleeping.

Finding a job or internship. Having a job or internship on or off campus requires the time management that is necessary for success in college and the working world. Jobs and internships allow students to gain technical and interpersonal skills.

Following the “24 hour rule”. Aim to get major assignments done at least a day in advance. This will leave time for editing or review, both in school and on the job.

Getting there early. Follow the old “if you are five minutes early you are on time, if you are on time, you are late” adage.

Having confidence. College is usually a welcoming community. Take advantage of everything your school has to offer, you may gain skills, knowledge and friendships.

I think of professionalism as a mindset that can be practiced in college. By taking simple steps to change our mindsets while in school, hopefully the transition into the real world will come easier during our first”real” job.

And in that post, the headings were even grammatically parallel!

If you want to see the best of what this generation has to offer, check in periodically with Life Before Noon. I wonder if any of the women want to go to law school . . .

Opening in Selected Cities: One Handheld Per Child

From Crave at CNet:

Kindergartners get 'Teachermate' handhelds

Brazilian schoolchildren aren't the only ones not waiting around for the much-delayed One Laptop Per Child computer--many kids are turning to alternatives right in the USA.

Non-profit Innovations for Learning today unched the "Teachermate" in Chicago public schools, a $50 handheld device that it calls "the world's most affordable solution for providing one computer to every student in a classroom." It's obviously not the most powerful handheld, but it should be plenty for the kids in kindergarten through second grade for whom it is intended, with a 2.5-inch color LCD, built-in microphone and speaker, 200MHz ARM processor, 512MB of memory, and a 4-hour battery. "Software for the handhelds includes a complete K-2 reading and math program that aligns with the Chicago Public Schools' reading and math initiatives," according to its press release.

Today's launch focuses on all 500 of Chicago's public elementary schools, which will receive the devices over the next two years under a program funded by JP Morgan Chase and the Chicago Community Trust. Other cities to get the computers include New York, Detroit, New Orleans, San Antonio, Phoenix, and Denver.

And remember, if you want to get an even earlier head start, there's always the "Baby Laptop."

Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater, part 2

Law21, a blog by Canadian lawyer and journalist Jordan Furlong, has an interesting take on the question of cheating versus collaboration. It's interesting to see Xer logic ("be practical; this is how law practice works") applied to Millennial behavior (collaborating in as many aspects of life as possible) on an ethical issue that I don't think either generation full "gets."

All I can say is, I’d love to see the law school that tries to flunk a student for setting up a Facebook study group, as Ryerson University in Toronto did this week. Maybe this is a generational thing — I’m officially an X’er, though my leanings are more millennial — but I can’t see how an online discussion group does anything but facilitate learning, not circumvent it. And more to the point, how it’s any different from students gathering in an empty room on campus to do exactly the same thing. I expect Ryerson will change course within a matter of days.

What strikes me, though, is that the way in which we expect students to accomplish tasks in school is very different from how we actually accomplish tasks in our workplaces. If you’re working on a factum or a memo and you’re not sure about something you’re writing, do you head down to the library for an afternoon of thrashing through the authoritative source materials till you’ve learned what you need, “showing your work” as you go? No. You walk down the hall and ask a colleague who’s more familiar with the subject to explain it to you. It’s faster, easier, cheaper for the client, and almost certainly more effective in understanding the concept.

Teamwork is how things get done now, without exception, in the professional world. Law firms boast about “open-door policies” whereby lawyers exchange ideas with each other, and they make great efforts to pool collective knowledge into KM systems. New recruits are quizzed on their ability to work well in groups and contribute towards successful team dynamics. Corporate deals and major litigation require concerted, collective efforts to achieve goals. Online listservs like Solosez are a lifeline for sole practitioners. Corporate law departments want closer working relationships with their outside counsel. In short, no one succeeds in the legal environment by shunning collaborative efforts.

Yet law schools still devote the majority of their time to testing what an individual student can do on her own, not what she can accomplish in a group setting. Unlike MBA programs, where students work on cases in group after group, many law students can graduate without ever having contributed to a team project, learning how to integrate their expertise into a diverse set of personalities and workflow preferences. If there’s any truth to the old charge that law schools “don’t prepare students for law practice,” it’s not in failing to teach professional skills per se, but in failing to train students to learn from each other, to treat knowledge as a gift to be shared, and to give the best of themselves towards the success of the team.

Any law school that wants to earn a real competitive advantage, in terms of producing graduates ready to professionally collaborate, should think seriously about revamping its curriculum to encourage the academic equivalent of Facebook groups: live, in-person, problem-solving working groups, with rotating memberships to ensure you’re not just working with people you like. Increasingly, lawyers will succeed or fail on their teamwork skills; law schools have an obligation to reflect that.

It's two-two-two tips in one!

Dear Millennial Law Prof:

I've tried Google Docs, but I think it would be more useful if I could place page numbers on the pages when they print. Is there a way to do that?

Yes there is!

This link provides a way to add them.

But now that you have the instructions for adding page numbers to Google Docs, how are you going to keep track of those instructions? As a matter of fact, how do you keep track of all those helpful tidbits and articles you find on the web? You've probably discovered that your Favorites list is not the most effective storage place for things you want to use later for research, especially since marking a web page doesn't guarantee it'll be there when you go back. Google Docs to the rescue! You can just copy the information from the web (if there's a Print option for articles, you might want to click that button before copying) and then paste it into a Google Doc. Using the folders in Google Docs, you can organize it anyway you like!

If you use Firefox as your web browser, there's even a handy add-in called gDocsBar that will retain the formatting of web pages when you drag-and-drop them into a new Google Doc.

Using Cell Phones as Clickers

I wrote a while back about the use of cell phones in class. My first response to that idea was that there are some frontiers even the most tech-savvy among us are not willing to explore. But then I was coaxed into it by the folks at Poll Everywhere who shared with me that they had polling software that could be used with students' cell phones. So there's yet another alternative to the expensive clicker systems.

It works using text messaging. WAIT! DON'T STOP READING! If you don't already know how to text, it's actually pretty easy. For sure, it's no more difficult than making a phone call or sending an e-mail. The first step is to go to the Poll Everwhere site and create the poll, including the options that participants can choose. Then the site generates the text message that students will submit for each option. As students start weighing in, the results show up in real time on a slide that you can view from the site or that you can download into PowerPoint. If you don't want students to see the results until everyone has weighed in (and the site will tell you how many responses you've received), then you don't have to reveal the screen until then.

Below is the trial poll I did. The results are based on the 8 friends of mine who responded. Four said they wouldn't use cell phone polling; one said she would; and 3 want to wait and see what happens. The other 7 people I sent it to either didn't want to spend the money on the text message or couldn't figure out how to text message (or didn't want to serve as my teaching technology guinea pigs . . .). Obviously, that's not representative of our Millennial student population, but -- since it was a sample composed entirely of law professors -- I think it does say something about how many law professors are likely to use this.



Obviously, you can tell from the Poll Everwhere site that it's a company, not a non-profit like CALI just thinking of as much cool stuff as possible to share for free. However, the pricing on Poll Everwhere is still dramatically less than the pricing on the clicker systems. If you have a class of 30 or fewer students, then you can use it for free (for up to 1,000 responses, I think). So for those of us who teach small sections, it's free. For larger sections, the pricing starts at $9.99 per month.

There is the matter of the cost of text messaging to the student. However, with more and more cell phone plans offering unlimited text messaging, this becomes less of an issue, maybe even a non-issue. Granted, all students may not have cell phones, and all students certainly may not have the pricey plans that include unlimited texting. Poll Everywhere does offer an option for responding from a laptop. And the days when no student has either a cell phone for text messaging or a laptop are dwindling quickly.

So if you're feeling adventurous, give it a try!

Cheater, Cheater, Pumpkin Eater

The New York Times offers lesson plans and other tools for educators at its NYT on the Web Learning Network. Of particular interest to me is the one on academic honesty and plagiarism. Setting aside the irony of having the New York Times provide a curriculum on plagiarism (just Google "New York Times" and "plagiarism") and the fact that it's designed for primary and secondary education, it still looks like a handy resource for any professor looking for resources to teach about the ethics of learning. And it couldn't come at a better time.

Certainly cheating and plagiarism have always been with us, but it seems like previous generations at least knew when they were cheating and made a decision to cross the line or not. And previous generations seemed to self-police better (not my particular generation; Xers know that it's only cheating if you get caught). But these days, I hear more and more stories of Millennial students who cheat in various ways but seem to either not know they're cheating or -- because of a scale of moral relativism where some cheating is not as bad as other cheating -- just don't care that they're cheating. The moral relativism concerns me as does the oblivion to which acts are honest and which are dishonest.

I'm wondering if at least a piece of the problem isn't that the word "honor" doesn't seem to mean what it used to. For these kids, "honor" just means smart, as in "Honor Society." You don't have to be particularly honorable to get into the Honor Society; you just have to have good grades. But I hasten to add that no generation makes up its own values out of whole cloth. The Millennials are the product of the generation that raised them . . . Governor Spitzer. Surely the pressure by parents to excel, excel, excel has something to do with the Millennial attitude that cheating just isn't the sin it used to be.

Spring Forward, Baby!

I have never been so happy to spring forward in my life. In fact, I usually loathe springing forward. As a lifelong Texan, the past 39 years of springing forward have meant that two weeks of spring was upon us, to be followed by 4 months of sweltering heat, during which we were supposed to pretend that it was bearable because of our front porches and Mint Juleps. I've rarely had a front porch, and I've never had a Mint Julep. My favorite summer activity has always been lounging next to the pool and then rolling into it once an hour to float. It may actually be one of my favorite activities of all time. But it doesn't have to be 109 degrees with 98% humidity to enjoy it. At some point, extra degrees of heat are just harbingers of doom. There's a line from Out of Africa when Meryl Streep first arrives in Africa to get married and one of the Brits who had been there for a while comments on her wedding hat: "It's not much of a hat." Meryl Streep tells her, "it's meant to be stylish," to which the Brit deadpans, "People die from sunstroke here."

But this year is different. This year, I'm in New York. I love cold weather (or my version of it -- I lived in Lubbock for 5 years, where there's actually snow . . . and of course wind that will sheer your face off). New York's mild winter this year has been the perfect introduction for me and my little Texas family. But it's been bleak. And gray. And wet. For a long time. I'm not complaining, just observing. So for the first time, I'm really anticipating spring, the way we're meant to. I notice buds on trees in my yard. I've noticed the first sprigs of green coming up in my flower beds (planted, naturally, by the previous owner). I still had the standard reaction to learning that we were going to lose an hour last night: ugh. But then today happened. It was crisp outside, to be sure, but it was glorious, and it lasted until 7:00 p.m.

And it means that things are about to warm up. Warm up. Not heat up. Just warm up. Last summer, we got here in July, just in time for what New Yorkers called "heat." Everyone kept fussing over the heat: "It's such a shame you got here right in the heat of summer. New York gets so hot!" It's the cutest thing we'd ever heard.

So what has this got to do with the generational gap? Perhaps just this: It demonstrates that the post-technology-revolution generations really do think everything about us --including the surrounding weather patterns -- is interesting and that posting it on the Internet is perfectly appropriate.

That egocentric image is not the most flattering thing in the world, but I don't care, man. It was sunny day in New York until 7:00 p.m. That's news everybody ought to appreciate.

Laptop Hide & Seek

A couple of years ago, K.K. DuVivier and Jill Ramsfield gave a presentation at the Legal Writing Institute's Biennial Conference called "Teaching to Eyebrows." Among other things, it addressed teaching to multi-tasking students. I loved that title; it perfectly captures the image of the law student hidden behind her laptop.

So a few weeks ago, I was at another law school and had the opportunity to observe a class in which the students all had 8 1/2 x 11 laminated printed placards with their names in 2" letters. I learned from the faculty at the law school that all students were required to place those placards in front of them in all classes (or was it jus first-year classes? I forget.). A lot of students -- on their own initiative -- had taped the placards to the front of their laptops.

Suddenly, the least visible became the most identifiable. Voila!

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm thinking about it for the fall.

Uh-oh

No questions in the Millennial Law Prof Inbox for tomorrow. Anybody have a question? Bueller. Bueller.

Google Docs v. Microsoft Office Live Workspace

Microsoft Office Live Workspace is now publicly available. It's the alternative to Google Apps, which was the alternative to Microsoft Office.

See a comparison of Office Live and Google Docs here.

For law school collaboration projects, I still like Google Docs better because it allows for real-time collaboration. Office Live does not.

More on Twitter

I'm fascinated almost to the point of obsession with Twitter, the way I was about GoogleDocs about a month ago.

Here's a description of what it is and what it does from TechLearning:

Question: What is Twitter, and why are my students so obsessed with it?


The IT Guy says:Twitter is one of those ingenious ideas that is kind of hard to explain. That's not going to stop me from trying, of course!

Twitter is a combination of several different popular technologies, including phone text messaging and online instant messaging. You start by setting up an account at the previously-mentioned website. After you create the basic login name and password, it will offer to look though your email address book for friends who have also created Twitter accounts, but if you aren't comfortable with that (goodness knows I'm not), there is a teeny little "skip" option in the upper right-hand corner.

After that, you can start by filling in the large box that appears on the screen labeled "What are you doing?" You have 140 characters to use, so it has to be short and to the point. Then anyone can go to www.twitter.com/[your login name] and see what you have entered.

Ok, so it's short and to the point, but what is the point of doing this? The attraction is in the details. First off, once you have an account, any of your friends who also have accounts can "follow" you, which means your individual postings (which are called "tweets"—really, I'm not kidding) will show up on their page. Of course, you can choose to follow others and get their tweets on your page. And to take it to the next obsessive level, you can set up your account so that you can post your tweets from your cell phone, and receive a text message every time someone you are following posts a tweet. That's part of the powerful draw of it—you can use it with a computer or a cell phone, which means most of our students have constant access to it.

It ends up working like a slow-motion online chat, and the more people you are following or who are following you, the more entertaining it becomes. And like any powerful technology tool, it is being transformed into uses nobody would have imagined. Some professional groups are starting to use it to set up the equivalent of private news networks, sharing breaking information and rumors. One Macintosh website used it to broadcast the content from Steve Job's keynote at Macworld. It's limited only by users' imaginations.

It's also something to be very aware of in our schools. Students will of course be bugged when it's blocked on school computers, and it makes the use of the cell phone in school all that more attractive. It also allows much faster spreading of rumors. Instead of someone having to text message or call twenty friends one at a time, they can post a tweet and everyone gets it at once. If they all forward the information through their tweets, you can see how blindingly fast information (true or not) can be disseminated.

I imagine hundreds of professors sitting in sessions at some academic conference or another (but definitely NOT the one that you're currently organizing), Twittering to each other about what's going on in each session. Slowly, like a natural phenomenon, you see people back out of whatever session they're in to assemble at the most interesting of the sessions in the "tweets." I think that's one of our dirty little secrets: when we catch on to the technology, we're every bit as incorrigible as our students.

I set up a Twitter account, and my software-engineer husband agreed to do the same so I could check it out. I thought Twitter was goofy, until I got the first tweet from my husband. It was an inane detail of his daily work life, yet I was immediately hooked by how quickly I could get the information and how easy it was to share.

Are you ready to incorporate student cell phones into the classroom?

I think the answer for the vast majority of us would have to be a resounding, "hell no!"

However, David Socol, Michigan State University College of Education's special education technology scholar, scoffs at the idea of continuing to use clicker technology in classrooms, especially when most -- if not all -- students already have a device capable of doing what clickers do, and so much more:

"Everything a clicker can do, can, of course, simply be done by embracing the mobile phone and text message capabilities almost all students carry with them. This kind of sophisticated classroom interaction via the mobile phone is in use in many nations. ..."
And, Socol added, the cell phone technology can do so much more, "allowing things other than guessed multiple choice answers to be transmitted. Short answers, even
mini-essays, math solutions, all easily flow through text messaging."

Where on earth, you might ask, have teachers actually done this successfully? Saskatchewan, of course! The Star Phoenix reports that a Saskatchewan high school principal and teacher have implemented a pilot project using students' cell phones:

"These are tools and there's no use burying our heads in the sand and not taking advantage of them," said Taylor. "We're preparing these kids for the world and people in business are carrying cells as tools for communication."

The idea began with a group of frustrated teachers on a Friday in early January. They were discussing how cellphones were disturbing class, which sparked the idea of using the cells as classroom aids. Taylor then approached Dolman to get the idea rolling.

From that point, the students were involved in the program development, said Dolman. "Some of the kids were saying, 'Are you sure you want to do this Mrs. Dolman? Isn't this just going to be one other thing you'll have to control with us?' " she said. "But I'm happy to report, I've only had positive results."

The class has used the phones as part of a recent book study, which involved students sending responses to their teacher's questions in video and audio formats.

Students have also started using the calendar and alarm features as agenda alternatives, which Dolman said has increased productivity drastically. Taylor said there have been mixed reviews from other teachers and parents. Critics say it may just represent another distraction in class, a further breakdown of proper English or a tech-dependency nightmare.

"I think the way people learn has changed since a generation ago," said Taylor. "People were saying similar things about calculators when I got out of university."

And lest you think that this is an idea that only a Canadian could love, American professors report using the cell phones, particularly in conjunction with Twitter:

David Parry, an assistant professor of emerging media and communications at the University of Texas at Dallas, says he was reluctant to try the technology. Mr. Parry's first instinct was that Twittering would encourage students to speak in sound bites and self-obsess. But now he calls it "the single thing that changed the classroom dynamics more than anything I've ever done teaching."

Last semester he required the 20 students in his "Introduction to Computer-Mediated Communication" course to sign up for Twitter and to send a few messages each week as part of a writing assignment. He also invited his students to follow his own Twitter feed, in which he sometimes writes several short thoughts — not necessarily profound ones — each day. One morning, for instance, he sent out a message that read: "Reading, prepping for grad class, putting off running until it warms up a bit." The week before, one of his messages included a link to a Web site he wanted his students to check out.

The posts from students also mixed the mundane with the useful. One student Twittered that she just bought a pet rabbit. Another noted that a topic from the class was being discussed on a TV-news report.

The immediacy of the messages helped the students feel more like a community, Mr. Parry says. "It really broke down that barrier between inside the classroom walls and outside the classroom walls."

Twitter limits messages to 140 characters. Writing professors at the college level have even used it for in-class writing exercises as a way to force students to write concisely.

Parry's statement that using Twitter has "really broke down that barrier between inside the classroom walls and outside the classroom walls" raises a question, though:

Is that something we want? I don't want to be on call 24/7 anymore than my students want to have to think about my class 24/7. Twitter, in particular, raises a question about discretion. Shouldn't there have to be some lag time between the moment I think something and the moment I send it out to 40 people? Professors have already noticed a lack of filtering between what Xers and Millennials think and what they say; I would hate for that to get continuously worse. However, if they are going to lose their filter entirely, I like that what they say is going to be restricted to 140 characters.

Millennials Expect Distance Learning

The Appleton, Wisconsin, Post-Crescent reports on the use of "virtual schools" in K-12 education. Virtual schools differ from home-schooling in that virtual schools are actually part of the public education system and must follow public education requirements. And virtual schooling is not an all-or-nothing proposition. Students are allowed to supplement their traditional public school experience with virtual classes.

The reasons families choose to enroll in virtual schools are varied.

"I always tell people I have 300 and some kids and 300 reasons why they are here," said Michelle Mueller, WCA principal.

"A lot of reasons are religious. Families want to know exactly what their child receives for an education. Something new I'm hearing is safety, with everything in the news."

About 50 percent of WCA's 390 pupils come from families who would otherwise home school privately.

Their parents want accountability, curriculum and a certified teacher, said Mueller. Her students take all the state standardized tests kids in traditional public schools take.

Connie Radtke, eSchool online learning program leader, said teens choosing online courses include traveling athletes and models, kids with cancer and kids who have been expelled.

Some take courses not available at their school, or have a class scheduling conflict.
They retake a class online to improve their grade, or just want the online experience.

Part-time virtual school student Devon Lehr, 17, of Grand Chute, is a full-time student at Appleton West High School, where she is a junior. She has supplemented her public-school education with virtual school since freshman summer when she signed up for health, her first online course. Personal financial management, creative writing and a world history honors class followed.

At 2:30 p.m. Tuesday, Lehr opened her laptop at home and checked that day's assignment for an online bioethics course she takes through Appleton eSchool.

"There are people from all over the world in my class," she said, "so it's really exciting."

Lehr, who plans a career in broadcasting, chose to take online courses so she could fit
other classes into her schedule.

Lehr said she loves everything about taking courses online.

"You can do it in the car, on the couch, at school. It's so flexible and all you need is time and a computer."

With virtual schools operating in 42 states, it seems like a safe bet that we'll all have students accustomed to distance learning in our classrooms very soon if we don't already. Within the next decade, we'll have students in our law school classrooms who have incorporated distance learning into their traditional education for as long as they've been in school.

Colleges already have sophisticated offerings in distance learning, and many state bar associations offer online CLE courses. To remain relevant to Millennials -- who are being encouraged to select schools based on "fit" rather than on ranking and reputation -- law schools should increase their distance learning options.

Some law schools already use distance learning; at this point, though, distance learning offerings are often largely faculty-specific, meaning that if the one person who's tech-savvy enough to offer distance learning leaves, there go the law school's distance learning opportunities. Of course, as Xer faculty become a larger segment of law school faculties, and as Millennial faculty begin filtering in (within the next 5 years or so), the ability to offer effective online courses will expand. Law schools should also consider mining those international summer abroad program relationships to offer cross-cultural, international opportunities for all students, not just those who can afford the time and money for a summer abroad. Online courses seem like they would appeal to law school administrators, always looking for a way to offer more with fewer resources.