Scraping the Teknoids Mailman PiperMail Archive

Putting this here in case anyone finds themselves in need of something to scrape a Pipermail web archive of a Mailman mailing list. This bit of Python 3 is based on a a bit of Python 2 I found at Scraping GNU Mailman Pipermail Email List Archives. The only changes I made from the original are to update somethings to work in Python 3. It works well for my purposes, generating a single text file of the teknoids list archive from 2005 to today.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import requests
from lxml import html
import gzip
from io import BytesIO

listname = 'teknoids'
url = 'https://lists.teknoids.net/pipermail/' + listname + '/'

response = requests.get(url)
tree = html.fromstring(response.text)

filenames = tree.xpath('//table/tr/td[3]/a/@href')

def emails_from_filename(filename):
print (filename)
response = requests.get(url + filename)
if filename[-3:] == '.gz':
contents = gzip.GzipFile(fileobj=BytesIO(response.content)).read()
else:
contents = response.content
return contents

contents = [emails_from_filename(filename) for filename in filenames]
contents.reverse()

contents = b"\n\n\n\n".join(contents)

with open(listname + '.txt', 'wb') as filehandle:
filehandle.write(contents)

And Who Says Law Students Wouldn’t Benefit From More Tech Training?

Frustrated by ridiculous bills for routine “commodity” matters, Flaherty decided to strike back, and recently launched his technology audit program, where firms bidding for Kia’s business must bring a top associate for a live test of their skills using basic, generic business tech tools such as Microsoft Word and Excel, for simple, rudimentary tasks.

So far, the track record is zero. Nine firms have taken the test, and all failed. One firm flunked twice.

“The audit should take one hour,” said Flaherty, “but the average pace is five hours.” In real life, that adds up to a whole lot of wasted money, he said. Flaherty uses the test to help him decide winners of the beauty contests, and to set rates and set performance goals. “I take 5 percent off every bill until they pass the test.”

via Big Law Whipped for Poor Tech Training.

This article is full of fun facts including things like less than 30% of associates know how to use the save to PDF function of Word with the rest printing then scanning documents to PDF. The reality here is that just because someone knows how to turn on computer and start typing does not mean they have any idea how to use the machine or the applications needed to function in the profession. Seriously, buying stuff on eBay should not be considered an advanced computer skill.

This presents a huge opportunity for the legal ed tech community (let’s call them Teknoids) to step up and provide the sort of instruction and training that is needed to turn smart law students into techno-capable lawyers. The practice of law is becoming more and more technical every day. Innovations in practice technology are requiring an increasing level of sophistication that isn’t going to get picked up on the street. Law students need training in the use of technical tools of their chosen profession. It is that simple.

I think this calls for something well beyond the LPM seminar or other small classes that reach only a fraction of the students. This sort of training needs to be required of each and every law student. Some of it can be added to the required research and writing programs as sessions that look at the features, basic and advanced, of standard software tools like word processors and spreadsheets. Make those programs paperless. Require students to use available tools to create PDFs and submit their work electronically. Require faculty to review and comment on the work in the same electronic format. Simply being able to master these tasks would probably get most law students through the audit described in the article.

Perhaps law schools should develop their own tech audit, a sort of technical bar exam. Students who complete the exercises would receive a certificate that indicates they’ve achieved a certain level of technical competency in a set of software tools. Wouldn’t it be great if law schools had access to some sort of platform to create these sorts of exercises, distribute them to students, track student results, and issue certifications? You with me here? This is something that could be done with the CALI platform. CALI Author for creating and authoring the exercises, Classcaster for Lesson distribution, the CALI Lesson system for student tracking. It’s all there, just waiting for someone to pick it up and run with it.

How about it Teknoids? Care to step up and get a piece of the change coming to legal education?

 

Flipping The Legal Classroom Featured At #CALIcon13

The flipped classroom concept has been seeing a lot more attention in law schools of late. The idea is that students learn basic concepts outside of the classroom, typically through reading or the use of recorded lectures or lessons, and then come to the classroom to learn how to apply their new knowledge, discuss key concepts in depth, and demonstrate mastery of the material. in many ways this not so different from the traditional Socratic method employed in many law school lecture halls.

This year’s CALI Conference for Law School Computing, June 13 – 15, 2013, at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law features a number of sessions devoted to the flipped classroom. Three sessions will explore the real world application of the concept in different law schools around the United States and Canada. Other sessions will explore topics related to changes in the way the law is being taught including developing and using electronic course materials, building distance education components for courses, the use of gaming theory in teaching law, and the use of collaborative tools.

The sessions the deal directly with the flipped classroom model are:

Other sessions that touch on changing how law is taught include:

If you are interested in changes happening in legal education today and in interacting with the folks putting those changes into practice in law schools around the country, you should be in Chicago for the 23rd Annual CALI Conference for Law School Computing, June 13 -15 2013 at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law.

Did you know you can video archives of past CALIcons on the CALI Youtube channel?

 

**Disclaimer: I’m CALI’s Internet guy and am responsible for organizing the CALIcon agenda.

Dewald On Blending the First-Year Contracts Classroom At Utah

We wanted the students to watch the videos prior to class. Instead of spending 30 minutes lecturing about the Restatements and then discussing them, the students came to class prepared to do the discussion. This reduced the time necessary in class and also facilitated a deeper discussion.  The time savings was used throughout the semester for more in-class group work. In class time was constructed assuming the students had watched the videos.

via Law School Ed Tech – Blending the First-Year Legal Classroom.

This is a great article and information is carries should serve as an example to law schools on how things should be done. Aaron provides great detail on the background in setting up the contracts course, how the videos were created, and the results from surveying the students who took the course.

The playlist of videos is on YouTube.

Twitter Live Search Widget Released, Is Way Cool.

The widget, found here, allows you to enter any search query, along with a title and a caption. The widget will then be built next to the input fields so you can see what it looks like. You can also edit its color and dimensions. If you like it, you simply grab the code and put it on a webpage. From there, it will continuously update in real-time with new results from the query you set.

via Twitter Unveils A Live-Updating Search Widget .

Set this up on Teknoids to try it out using AALL2009 as a relevant search and it works well. The code produced was easily inserted into a Drupal 6 block and added to the site. It will certainly provide an excellent way to leverage twitter on your site.

Windows 7 RC D/Ls End August 15th, Get ’em While They’re Hot

Still on the Windows 7 Beta,? You need to move to the RC and fast. Starting July 1st, the Beta will start to reboot every 2 hrs and expire Aug 1st.

Want to download the RC? The RC download program closes August 15. After that, you won’t be able to get the download, but you can still install the RC and get a key if you need one. (To get a key, just go to the Downloads page and follow the instructions.)

via Windows 7 Release Candidate downloads will end August 15th – Springboard Series Blog – The Windows Blog .

All teknoids everywhere need to grab a copy of this and get it running because you’re going to see it sooner rather than later and you need to get away from XP.