From DSC:
Our oldest daughter showed me a “Bitmoji Classroom” that her mentor teacher — Emily Clay — uses as her virtual classroom. Below are some snapshots of the Google Slides that Emily developed based on the work of:

  • Kayla Young (@bitmoji.kayla)
  • MaryBeth Thomas 
  • Ms. Smith 
  • Karen Koch
  • The First Grade Creative — by C. Verddugo

My hats off to all of these folks whose work laid the foundations for this creative, fun, engaging, easy-to-follow virtual classroom for a special education preschool classroom — complete with ties to videoconferencing functionalities from Zoom. Emily’s students could click on items all over the place — they could explore, pursue their interests/curiosities/passions. So the snapshots below don’t offer the great interactivity that the real deal does.

Nice work Emily & Company! I like how you provided more choice, more control to your students — while keeping them engaged! 

A snapshot of a Bitmoji Classroom created by Emily Clay

 

A snapshot of a Bitmoji Classroom created by Emily Clay

From DSC:
I also like the idea of presenting this type of slide (immediately below, and students’ names have been blurred for privacy’s sake) prior to entering a videoconferencing session where you are going to break out the students into groups. Perhaps that didn’t happen in Emily’s class…I’m not sure, but in other settings, it would make sense to share one’s screen right before sending the students to those breakout rooms and show them that type of slide (to let them know who will be in their particular breakout group).

The students in the different breakout sessions could then collaboratively work on Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides and you could watch their progress in real-time!

A snapshot of a Bitmoji Classroom created by Emily Clay

 

A snapshot of a Bitmoji Classroom created by Emily Clay

 

A snapshot of a Bitmoji Classroom created by Emily Clay

 

A snapshot of a Bitmoji Classroom created by Emily Clay

 

A snapshot of a Bitmoji Classroom created by Emily Clay

Also see:

 

2020 in review: Legal software for working remotely — from abajournal.com by Nicole Black

Excerpts:

  • January: Virtual and chatbot assistants
  • February: Client relationship management tools
  • March: Top tools to help lawyers set up virtual practices
  • April: Document management software
  • May: Online payment tools
  • June: Secure online communication
  • July: Legal billing software
  • August: Time-tracking software
  • September: Contract review software
  • October: Litigation analytics software

 

 

Saving — and Enhancing — Music Education With Online Learning — from edcircuit.com by D. Travis Washington

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

I teach Choir and lead the Young Vocal Scholars Program, and before COVID arrived, we were excited to move forward on the culmination of learning through live performances. With school closure, all that changed, and we were forced to adapt to virtual learning. Through the initial transition, we discovered that online learning options such as Soundtrap could not only extend projects we were currently working on but expand music learning to previously unimaginable heights.

When Covid hit and we couldn’t continue with the traditional choir program, my school looked for remote solutions. Soundtrap was exactly what we needed. We began conducting Young Vocal Scholars choir sessions remotely through Soundtrap and filled our extra Soundtrap seats with students from the District 8 Choir who weren’t being served music at all — doing similar projects that we had been creating previously in my classes. It was incredible to suddenly recognize that there were far more students interested in music who could connect via their laptops and tablets at home.

Also see:

Soundtrap for Education empowers students and teachers to explore creative sound recording in all subjects, for all ages and ability levels.

Soundtrap revolutionized my classroom in a virtual setting. Students became more engaged than ever before. My “4-star artists,” as I refer to my highly motivated students, kept making songs. I recall one of them saying to me, “Music class was cool because we sang together, but Soundtrap is cooler because it allows us to make projects together and they sound good.” 

 
 

The Observatory is an interactive platform that allows you to do a preliminary analysis of 600+ legal technologies in the market today

The Observatory — from orrick.com with thanks to Gabe Teninbaum for mentioning this resource in his Lawtomatic Newsletter (Issue #112, 11/18/20)

The Observatory is an interactive platform that allows you to do a preliminary analysis of 600+ legal technologies in the market today (including some developed by Orrick):

  • Gain insight into features of legal tools
  • View leading categories of legal tech, from artificial intelligence to workflow automation
  • Understand tech use-cases for litigation, transactional and general solutions
  • Identify legal tech companies with diverse leadership

Excerpt from Gabe’s newsletter:

  • The Observatory: the tech-savvy biglaw firm, Orrick, has a new interactive platform offering data on 600+ legal technologies currently on the market.  A user can click on the type of tool they’d like to learn more about (e.g. document automation or contract management), click on various filters, then get a summary of what it does.  It also includes a narrative box for what makes the tool unique.  It’s easy to use, free, and also gives a nice preview for clients on the type of value the firm might offer them beyond run-of-the-mill representation.

Explore The Observatory from Orrick dot com to help you identify potential fits for your legaltech related needs

 
 

Musical Mentors collaborative mobilizes and expands in response to pandemic — with thanks to Bristol Jones for this resource/information
Organization connects musicians in need of work with students lacking access to music instruction
(Emphasis below from DSC)

New York, NY — November 12, 2020 — Musical Mentors Collaborative (“MMC”), which provides free private music instruction and instruments to students who would not otherwise have access, announced today its Winter Gala to benefit the 1:1 Music Fund which will enable the organization to provide 10,000 more lessons in the years to come.

MMC was founded in 2009 as a partnership between Columbia University students and PS 145, a neighboring elementary school in Morningside Heights, and incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit in New York State in 2011. Since 2009, MMC’s university chapters have provided over 7,500 lessons to more than 450 students in the United States.

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 caused dramatic and painful changes in the musical community. Many performing arts institutions were forced to close indefinitely, and many talented musicians found themselves out of work.

In response, MMC launched a teaching fellowship in early April to pay professional musicians to teach one-on-one virtual lessons to students without access to private instruction. Teachers include members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as collaborators of Herbie Hancock, Lauryn Hill, and others. The organization has since onboarded over 35 teaching artists and nearly 200 students. Since the onset of the pandemic, MMC has paid more than $150,000 to its Teaching Fellows and shipped over $30,000 worth of instruments to students, collectively in support of over 1,300 virtual lessons.

“We are inspired by the response from the musical community, and immensely grateful for the support musicians have shown MMC students. These students represent our musical future and would otherwise lack access to the instruction and mentorship they deserve,” said Zack Susel, Co-Founder and Executive Director of MMC. “We are excited to announce our Winter Gala in support of our 1:1 Music Fund, through which we aim to provide 10,000 more private lessons in the coming years.”

In support of its growth and response to the pandemic, MMC has recruited 12 Grandmentors to lead pedagogical development, including GRAMMY® award winning pianist Emmanuel Ax, and Tony® award winning composer Jeanine Tesori, social work experts, and faculty from The Juilliard School and Curtis Institute of Music.

About Musical Mentors Collaborative
Musical Mentors Collaborative connects musicians with underserved students around the country. Since launching in 2009, MMC has taught over 8,800 free private lessons across instruments and genres, furthering their goal to support young musicians through one-on-one instruction. MMC operates chapters at universities across the United States, and mobilizes professional musicians through their selective Teaching Fellowship.

For more information, visit www.musicalmentors.org. | Instagram | Twitter

Musical Mentors Collaborative connects musicians with underserved students around the country.

Also see:

 

The Dice Q3 Tech Job Report Tech Hiring and COVID-19: What You Need to Know

The Dice Q3 Tech Job Report: Tech Hiring and COVID-19: What You Need to Know — from techhub.dice.com
The report, issued quarterly by Dice, provides exclusive statistics and analysis on the tech hiring landscape, including top cities and states, top employers and the most sought-after skills and occupations.

From DSC:
One can quickly see how valuable this information would be as a data feed into an AI-based, next-generation learning platform.

The platform would connect the marketable skills with the courses, websites, blogs, RSS feeds/streams of content, etc. that would help a learner quickly and affordably build such in-demand skills. Given the shortening half-lives of many kinds of information, such a service is needed desperately…especially now with the impact of the Coronavirus.

Also relevant: See how ISTE built its upcoming virtual event!

 

How to Work Remotely as a Lawyer: A Guide — from clio.com by Teresa Matich; with thanks to Nelson Miller for this resource

Excerpt:

Whether you’ve looked at working remotely as a lawyer in the past (or as a paralegal, legal assistant, legal professional) with dreams of traveling the world, or whether you’re looking into it for the first time now, this guide contains clear, practical tips for opening a remote legal practice without interruption. We’ll cover:

  • 10 steps to follow for successful remote work
  • What to do if you still need to meet clients in person
  • Tips for how larger legal teams can succeed when transitioning to remote work
  • A basic list of tools to use for remote lawyering
  • Examples of law firms that have worked remotely in some capacity (or are currently doing so)
 

Virtual Reality: Realizing the Power of Experience, Excursion and Immersion in the Classroom — from nytimes.com
A framework for teaching with New York Times 360 V.R. videos, plus eight lesson plans for STEM and the humanities.

A Guide for Using NYT VR With Students

  • Getting Started With V.R. in the Classroom
  • Lesson 1: A Mission to Pluto
  • Lesson 2: Meet Three Children Displaced by War and Persecution
  • Lesson 3: Four Antarctic Expeditions
  • Lesson 4: Time Travel Through Olympic History
  • Lesson 5: Decode the Secret Language of Dolphins and Whales
  • Lesson 6: Memorials and Justice
  • Lesson 7: The World’s Biggest Physics Experiment
  • Lesson 8: Journey to the Hottest Place on Earth

 

 

Baker McKenzie’s New AI Project: Knowing What Clients Want, Before They Do — from law.com by Victoria Hudgins
Baker McKenzie announced it’s collaborating with an AI technology developer to help it predict clients’ future needs. While the software may have less-than-perfect accuracy, lawyers still see a significant benefit.

Excerpt:

Baker McKenzie is betting on AI-powered analytics to help evolve its legal services. The firm on Monday launched its global innovation arm Reinvent in collaboration with software developer SparkBeyond. Through Reinvent, Baker McKenzie will leverage SparkBeyond’s AI technology and a host of firm and third-party data to predict what services clients will need, and the unseen drivers of client demand.

The software will use data it collected from the firm’s previous and current matters, as well as data from third-party sources that provide news, economic and census information, to generate predictions of future risks for a client. The risks are ranked based on their likelihood.

 

The Advantages of Teaching Soft Skills to CS Undergrads Online — from cacm.acm.org by Orit Hazzan; with thanks to Sarah Huibregtse for posting this out on LinkedIn.

Excerpt:

At first, I wondered whether teaching soft skills online is even possible since, unlike theoretical courses, I assumed that close face-to-face (F2F) interaction is required in order to practice such skills. Eventually, I realized that teaching this course online has, in fact, some advantages, that this teaching format opens up new opportunities, and that this medium can even foster several soft skills that I had not previously considered teaching in the F2F format. This blog demonstrates these advantages by focusing on the use of the breakout rooms option available in Zoom, which I used extensively in the course.

 

Soft skills mentioned by CS students

 

Expert Tips for Using PowerPoint Presenter View (2 screens, Windows) in Zoom or Teams — from thinkoutsidetheslide.com; with thanks to Tamara Kravits for this resource

Except:

In this article I want to share some of the expert tips for using the features of Presenter View. I will use the common scenario of Presenter View showing on one screen while the slides show on a second screen which is shared in the meeting platform. This allows easy access to all the Presenter View features.

If you need to add a second screen, check out the options in this article and if you want to learn more about using Presenter View in different setups, I have complete guides to using Presenter View in Zoom and in Teams.

From DSC:
Along the lines of using two monitors with a videoconferencing application, below is a graphic I created for our faculty members at the WMU-Cooley Law School.

Ways to setup your two monitors and jump around different applications

Also relevant/see:

 

From DSC:
When reading the abstract of the article/research entitled, “Does Telemedicine Reduce Emergency Room Congestion? Evidence from New York State,” I wondered again:

Will the growth of telemedicine/telehealth influence the growth of telelegal?

I think it will.

We show that, on average, telemedicine availability in the ER significantly reduces average patients’ length of stay (LOS), which is partially driven by the flexible resource allocation. Specifically, the adoption of telemedicine leads to a larger reduction in ER LOS when there is a demand surge or supply shortage.

Also see:

Holopatient Remote Uses AR Holograms For Hands-On Medical Training -

 

Care over IP

 
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