Marginalia

The blog. Notes in the margins on teaching, technology, librarianship, and the occasional firebrand opinion.

December 3, 2018

Second Class Recap

I have had the privilege of teaching Law Practice Technology for FIU for a second semester. Developing this course has been an iterative process. Since this semester had four more weeks to fill than the summer, I took this opportunity to retool the course and…
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November 27, 2018

Design Thinking & Librarians

There has been an increasing amount of discussion about design thinking and the law . However, there seems to be a dearth of parallel conversation in the law library circles.* We have already proven ourselves resources for legal technology initiatives. It is vital that we…
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July 26, 2018

Open Access Advocates in EU Call for Support

In April, the EU set the fox to guard the henhouse by subcontracting Elsevier to monitor Open Science . The open access push in the EU and its advocates have had issues with Elsevier for a long while . It is not surprising that the…
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July 18, 2018

KIND of a Big Deal

I am planning to write a full review of the Latino Caucus' ribbon fundraiser for Kids in Need of Defense , but I wanted to provide a quick update as everyone was so excited about it. We sold every one of the 300 ribbons (including…
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July 9, 2018

Mid-Course Review - pt 2

I've included some of the legal tech course staples, like a time-keeping assignment and weekly discussions. However, I've tried to find ways to encourage students to take charge of their own learning as much as possible because this is an online class. Part of that…
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July 7, 2018

Mid Course Review - pt 1

Several assignments are now in and graded, and we are over halfway through the semester, so it seems like a good time to review how the course is going so far. I'll be teaching it again in the fall, and I have already identified some…
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June 24, 2018

Tech Competencies For Librarians

Edit: This like was updated to direct to the open preprint. Over a year ago, I responded to a call for proposals to the Journal of Academic Librarianship. I was just a few months into my new job and fresh out of library school. I…
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June 22, 2018

For Family

Every story I read about the children separated from family hurts my heart more, and I feel as though it is a bit more difficult to breathe each time. It hits me deeply as my Abuela had to leave two of her four sons, my…
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June 1, 2018

Class Preparation: Assignments & Syllabus

My goal when I was trying to decide what assignments to give my students was to make mimic tasks they might have to perform in practice. This made a timekeeping assignment an obvious choice, but I wanted to challenge them more. More specifically I wanted…
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April 7, 2018

Display the Tech

Law school technology courses are becoming ubiquitous. There are several sessions at AALL, CALI, TechShow and most regional law library association conferences. There are websites for sharing materials and discussions threads about best methods. All this is part of the push to graduate more tech…
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April 4, 2018

Class Preparation: Objectives!

While staring at that list, I began pondering what I wanted the objectives of the course to be. Ideally, I wanted them to be SMART , but I find that measurability can seem arbitrary if you set a specific number. For example, I do not…
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March 31, 2018

Class Planning: What to teach?

I was ecstatic when I was offered the opportunity to design and teach an online legal technology course. I have loved technology as long as I can remember. I was six the first time I "helped" my father build a computer. However, I am aware…
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March 20, 2018

Firebranded

When called on in crim law, I sometimes gave unexpected answers that disrupted the planned and expected flow of the discussion. You see, my professor had a philosophy background as well as a legal one and often started by asking questions with seemingly obvious answers.…
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