We’re very excited indeed to note that Professor Pam Karlan of Stanford Law School has made the first installment of her Fall 2013 Torts class materials on H2O; those materials are available at < http://h2o.law.harvard.edu/playlists/1995 >. Professor Karlan has added and selected an array of edited cases (some adapted from edits by other H2O users, such as Professor Jonathan Zittrain, and others she edited from scratch). Professor Karlan has also added many new introductions, and has included numerous links to videos and other external sources (see, for instance, her collection of materials for “An Introduction to Torts“.)
Cohen’s Civil Procedure
We are very excited to note that Professor I. Glenn Cohen’s Fall 2013 Civil Procedure digital casebook is available on H2O at < http://h2o.law.harvard.edu/playlists/1374 >.
Students in Professor Cohen’s course may make their own version (“remix” in H2O’s parlance) of the edited cases, and then add their own highlights and annotations (after deciding whether to set their version to public or private), which will be maintained in the print version (if the students decide to print their versions).
Other professors may adopt and adapt some or all of Professor Cohen’s casebook on H2O under the site’s CC-BY-NC-SA license (per the Terms of Service). As Professor Cohen notes in his “Acknowledgements”:
“I undertook this project in the summer of 2013 with the hope of helping students avoid the high costs of textbooks, generating content that could be used and improved upon by others, and tailoring my materials to my own needs. I hope you will enjoy and disseminate it widely. …”
Kalscheur’s Seminar on Church and State
Associate Professor Gregory Kalscheur, S.J., of Boston College Law School, has developed a set of materials on H2O that are slated to be used for part of his fall 2013 “Church and State” Seminar. You can read — and create your own remix — of Professor Kalscheur’s materials here: < http://h2o.law.harvard.edu/playlists/1324 >. The materials are arranged around topics such as “Introduction and History,” “Free Exercise of Religion in the Regulatory State,” and “Religious Displays and Religion in the Curriculum.”
Quinn’s Corporations – A Virtual Casebook
We’re very excited to note that Brian JM Quinn, an Assistant Professor at Boston College Law School who is visiting at Boston University School of Law this fall, has created “Corporations – A Virtual Casebook” on H2O. You can read — as well as remix your own version of — the casebook here: http://h2o.law.harvard.edu/playlists/1162.
New User Guide–How to H2O
Hot off the (digital) presses: the H2O team is pleased to announce that we’ve updated and significantly expanded the “How to H2O” User Guide. You can find it here: How to H2O User Guide. This version reflects and incorporates many of the design and user-experience changes that we have developed and implemented in recent months. We very much welcome your feedback, especially if anything is unclear or if we missed anything.
Adding new cases
H2O has nearly 4,000 cases — with more added every week — that users can edit by making a collage of the case and then applying their own layers, annotations, and highlights. The H2O team adds all cases into the platform. If H2O doesn’t have a case that you’d like to use, there are two ways that it can be added.
1. The preferred route is to send an e-mail to h2o@cyber.law.harvard.edu with a list of cases that you want to be added to H2O (please include, if possible, the short name and citation of each case).
2. The other option is to request a case via H2O itself. Login to your user account, then navigate to the cases section (by clicking the cases icon at the top of the window). Once you’re in the cases section, there should be a “Request case” button next to the search field. Click the “Request case” button, provide the relevant information for the case, and hit submit.
Under the hood: H2O application performance
A quick update on what’s happening under the H2O hood:
As the H2O community continues to expand — and now encompasses instructors at nearly a dozen universities — our team is working to enhance the speed and performance of the application. In particular, we’re working to improve the speed of page loads, including for the home page, search results, remixing a collage or playlist, and users’ dashboards. If you come across bugs or identify features you’d like us to develop, please send us an e-mail to < h2o@cyber.law.harvard.edu >.
By the way, we recommend that H2O is accessed through the most up-to-date versions of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
H2O in DC
**Updated July 8, 2013 with more specific logistical details**
On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 10th, Professor Zittrain and I will be presenting and demo-ing H2O at the George Washington University Law School Library. Interested faculty, law librarians, academic technologists, and others from around the area are welcome to join us, as we discuss the platform, its use to date at Harvard Law School, and the various faculty from around the country who are developing digital casebooks on H2O. The H2O team is grateful to Professor and Director of the Law Library Scott B. Pagel of George Washington University Law School for hosting us.
The 2:00 – 3:00 pm session will be primarily addressed to faculty, and the 3:00 – 4:00 pm session will be primarily addressed to librarians, academic technologists, and others. Both sessions will take place at:
The George Washington University
The Steven A. and Barbara Tasher Great Room
Jacob Burns Law Library
716 20th Street NW, Washington, DC
(Between G & H Streets)
Please e-mail us < h2o@cyber.law.harvard.edu > to RSVP.
HLS students: Expand H2O to become the norm
Last month, we were thrilled that H2O received a mention in a Bloomberg article by HLS students Raja Bobbili and Daniel Doktori titled “Harvard Law School Can Learn from MOOCs.” After noting that the H2O initiative “has reinvented the legal textbook by creating an open-source platform that allows students and professors to read collaboratively, sharing questions, edits and annotations,” Bobbili and Doktori conclude that “this effort should expand to become the norm.”
While continuing to develop free digital casebooks with HLS professors, our team is also working with professors from a growing list of law schools across the country. If you’re interested — as a teacher, students, librarian, or academic technologist — in helping H2O expand to become the norm, please let us know!
Today: Deploying the design overhaul
The H2O team is excited to announce that, as we’ve been foregrounding at the blog for a while, today our developers are deploying our design overhaul to < http://h2odev.law.harvard.edu >. You may notice that the site is a bit slower than usual, or that visual elements are in certain respects quite different than before. Please bare with us while we resolve any issues that may arise — and, indeed, please tell us if there are things that we need to fix by e-mailing us at < h2o@cyber.law.harvard.edu >. All of the functionality should remain intact — and, as we’ll explain in the coming days and weeks, there will be quite a few improvements to the platform, in terms of new features, bug fixes, and the like. Stay tuned.