Managing law practice technology

Presented by Barron K. Henley, at a seminar by the same name, held November 17, 2020

Parent trigger Legislation in the United States: A Key to Parent Empowerment in the Local Context

Parent involvement in public education has changed over time in the United States. Recently it has taken on a more radical dimension aimed at shifting the role of parents. These efforts are identified by some as parent empowerment and arguably may be part of a larger policy movement to secure parent voice in equity-focused education reform. The policy innovation allows parents with students in persistently underperforming schools to force a change in school governance. Since the passage of the first parent trigger law in California in 2010, three parent petition campaigns have forced a turnaround in school governance. The purpose of this study was to provide a baseline of understanding for the ways in which parent trigger legislation intersected educational policy and to investigate the extent to which the law supported the needs, values, and interests of local parent stakeholders. This qualitative study consisted of three ways in which to examine the legislative influence on parent empowerment: 1) a state-level document analysis of proposed and enacted parent trigger legislation; 2) interviews with the legislator and the education reform advocate responsible for authoring the first parent trigger law; and, 3) eleven interviews with key stakeholders involved in the first two successful efforts to use the parent trigger at Desert Trails Elementary in Adelanto, California and 24th Street Elementary in Los Angeles, California. A cross case comparison of the two school sites revealed that the needs and core beliefs of parent leaders aligned with the intent of the parent trigger law. However, an intermediary organization was required to help the parent stakeholders attain the resources, socio-political learning, and community building strategies necessary to effectively exercise their parental legal right. Moreover, factors within the local context affected the parent leaders\u27 implementation of the law. Levels of relational trust either mitigated or exacerbated the process. Finally, the use of the law was experienced by parent leaders as both personally and collectively empowering in shifting their role to decision maker. This study has implications for researchers, policy makers, and practitioners considering parent trigger legislation and parent empowerment as a solution for failing schools

An improved method for text summarization using lexical chains

This work is directed toward the creation of a system for automatically sum-marizing documents by extracting selected sentences. Several heuristics including position, cue words, and title words are used in conjunction with lexical chain in-formation to create a salience function that is used to rank sentences for extraction. Compiler technology, including the Flex and Bison tools, is used to create the AutoExtract summarizer that extracts and combines this information from the raw text. The WordNet database is used for the creation of the lexical chains. The AutoExtract summarizer performed better than the Microsoft Word97 AutoSummarize tool and the Sinope commercial summarizer in tests against ideal extracts and in tests judged by humans

A Case Study Of Teachers’ Perceptions On Teacher Leadership As A Model For School Improvement In SIG Schools

Developing teacher leadership in a rural, geographical isolated SIG school is a difficult task toward school turnaround. This research explored the impact of teacher leadership on the School Improvement Grant (SIG) process, the development of teacher leadership model standards, and the school improvement evaluation process through the qualitative method of case study analysis. This single case study was conducted at one designated SIG funded school in central West Virginia. The case study focused on understanding the impact teacher leadership had on the implementation of the SIG school improvement process. This study was based on 14 participant interviews that were transcribed and entered into NVivo. Coding cycles were then conducted on the transcribed interview data. The results of this case study were the development of five major themes that were established as teacher leadership model practices in SIG schools. These themes included collaboration, distributed leadership, positive culture, teacher buy-in and teacher leading teachers. This data allowed the research to recommend the creation of an online SIG school improvement network that would provide a SIG school a network of collaboration among SIG School to promote and develop teacher leadership model practice as an additional means of school improvement

Advanced Techniques for Improving the Efficacy of Digital Forensics Investigations

Digital forensics is the science concerned with discovering, preserving, and analyzing evidence on digital devices. The intent is to be able to determine what events have taken place, when they occurred, who performed them, and how they were performed. In order for an investigation to be effective, it must exhibit several characteristics. The results produced must be reliable, or else the theory of events based on the results will be flawed. The investigation must be comprehensive, meaning that it must analyze all targets which may contain evidence of forensic interest. Since any investigation must be performed within the constraints of available time, storage, manpower, and computation, investigative techniques must be efficient. Finally, an investigation must provide a coherent view of the events under question using the evidence gathered. Unfortunately the set of currently available tools and techniques used in digital forensic investigations does a poor job of supporting these characteristics. Many tools used contain bugs which generate inaccurate results; there are many types of devices and data for which no analysis techniques exist; most existing tools are woefully inefficient, failing to take advantage of modern hardware; and the task of aggregating data into a coherent picture of events is largely left to the investigator to perform manually. To remedy this situation, we developed a set of techniques to facilitate more effective investigations. To improve reliability, we developed the Forensic Discovery Auditing Module, a mechanism for auditing and enforcing controls on accesses to evidence. To improve comprehensiveness, we developed ramparser, a tool for deep parsing of Linux RAM images, which provides previously inaccessible data on the live state of a machine. To improve efficiency, we developed a set of performance optimizations, and applied them to the Scalpel file carver, creating order of magnitude improvements to processing speed and storage requirements. Last, to facilitate more coherent investigations, we developed the Forensic Automated Coherence Engine, which generates a high-level view of a system from the data generated by low-level forensics tools. Together, these techniques significantly improve the effectiveness of digital forensic investigations conducted using them

The Observer

Student newspaper for Central Washington University for April 4-10, 2019. Vol. 113, No. 1.https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/cwu_student_newspaper/5786/thumbnail.jp

Citation impact discerning self-citation: improving user interaction

Tese de mestrado em Engenharia Informática, apresentada à Universidade de Lisboa, através da Faculdade de Ciências, 2012CIDS (Citation Impact Discerning Self-Citations) é uma ferramenta web que usa o Google Scholar como repositório dados de publicações, para calcular o impacto de citações das mesmas. Existem outros repositórios de dados que poderiam ter sido usados, como por exemplo, Scopus e Web of Science, mas uma vez que têm uma cobertura de publicações inferior à do Google Scholar, o CIDS usa este último. Muitas métricas foram propostas para medir o impacto das citações, tais como o h-index e o g-index. Essas métricas têm em conta um conjunto de publicações que normalmente pertencem a um autor e, no caso do h-index e g-index, produzem um número discreto. Este número é uma medida quantitativa do impacto das citações feitas por um autor. Para automatizar o cálculo das métricas, várias ferramentas foram desenvolvidas, tais como a HPP, o Microsoft Academic e o CIDS. O CIDS diferencia-se dos outros por discernir auto-citações. De acordo com o HPP, uma auto-citação é uma citação em que pelo menos um dos autores de uma publicação é também autor da publicação citada, que é precisamente a definição utilizada pelo CIDS. A versão do CIDS (3.0) que me foi entregue, embora fosse mais rápida que a versão antecessora e com a possibilidade de filtrar publicações, não permite que um utilizador tenha em simultâneo mais de um resultado de impacto de citações, isto é, se o utilizador tem dois grupos de publicações e gostava de ver o resultado do impacto de citações calculado para cada um desses conjuntos, tal não é possível. Essa versão também não permite a filtragem de citações de publicações, não tem um mecanismo de cálculo do impacto de citações de grupos usável, e também não funciona no navegador Internet Explorer, um dos browsers mais populares na internet. O meu objetivo com este trabalho foi criar uma nova versão do CIDS (3.1) que superasse alguns dos problemas acima descritos e ainda ter mais algumas funcionalidades. As funcionalidades projectadas são as seguintes: a atribuição de uma área privada para o utilizador para que possa consultar o progresso das suas interrogaões de pesquisa do Google Scholar, o utilizador com mais controle sobre seus resultados finais, ajudar o utilizador em tarefas repetitivas através da detecção de padrões do seu uso, e corrigir o CIDS para que possa ser executado em todos os navegadores de internet (também apelidado de compatibilidade cross-browser). Uma funcionalidade já existente no CIDS anterior (3.0), a análise bibliométrica de um grupo de autores, também seria renovada e estendida, ficando mais automatizada e permitindo ao utilizador poder ser notificado quando os seus resultados estivessem prontos para visualização. Após a realização do trabalho, algumas das funcionalidades propostas não chegaram a ser desenvolvidas: compatibilidade cross-browser (embora tenha havida esforço nesse sentido) e a ajuda em tarefas repetitivas, devido a restrições no tempo de desenvolvimento. Ainda assim, a implementação das restantes funcionalidade propostas tornou, na minha opinião, o CIDS numa ferramenta mais capaz e fácil de usar. Através de um esforço extra, o CIDS é agora uma ferramenta que consegue saber quando é que o Google Scholar o bloqueia e como reagir a esse evento (ligando/desligando o acesso, conforme a resposta obtida). Também permite filtrar citações, bem como alterar o seu tipo (de citação própria para não-própria e vice-versa), o que permite ao autor corrigir dados erróneos que possam advir do repositório de publicações do Google Scholar. E, para além de permitir ao utilizador poder ter várias queries de pesquisa em simultâneo, devido a uma reestruturação efectuada, a análise de grupo de autores, que outrora necessita de três passos incómodos para ser realizada, agora necessita apenas de um, e ainda notifica o utilizador quando é que essa análise de grupo termina.CIDS (Citation Impact Discerning Self-Citation) is a web tool that uses Google Scholar as a publication database, to calculate citation impact. Others databases also exist, such as Scopus and Web of Science, but their coverage is lower than the coverage of Google Scholar, so CIDS uses the latter. Many metrics were proposed to measure citation impact, such as h-index and g-index. These metrics take into account a set of publications, usually belonging to one author, and, in case of h-index and g-index, output a single discrete number. This number is a quantitative measure of citation impact. To automate multiple metrics calculus, several tools were developed, such as HPP, Microsoft Academic and CIDS. CIDS differentiates itself from the others, by discerning self-citations. According to HPP, self-citation occurs when at least one of the publication’s authors is also author of the cited publication. The version of CIDS that was delivered to me, albeit faster than its predecessor and with a manual publication filtering process available, did not allow a user to have more than one citation impact result, that is, if the user had two groups of publications and wanted citation to be impact calculated for each one, that was not possible. It also does not allow filtering citations of publications, does not allow several queries calculus simultaneously for one user nor it works on Internet Explorer, a popular web browser. My work objective was to create a new version of CIDS that overcome the issues previously mentioned and with more functionalities. These new functionalities consisted in assigning a private area to the user for his queries, user having more control over his final results, help the user in repetitive tasks by detecting patterns in his usage and fix CIDS so that it can execute on all major browsers (cross-browser compatibility). Previous CIDS’s team functionality would also be enhanced to help the user performing group analysis faster. Even though some of the functionalities stated before - cross-browser compatibility and the help on repetitive tasks - were not implemented, the remaining ones were and, in my opinion, contributed to a better tool, perhaps a reference in citation impact tools

Regulating Habit-Forming Technology

Tech developers, like slot machine designers, strive to maximize the user’s “time on device.” They do so by designing habit-forming products— products that draw consciously on the same behavioral design strategies that the casino industry pioneered. The predictable result is that most tech users spend more time on device than they would like, about five hours of phone time a day, while a substantial minority develop life-changing behavioral problems similar to problem gambling. Other countries have begun to regulate habit-forming tech, and American jurisdictions may soon follow suit. Several state legislatures today are considering bills to regulate “loot boxes,” a highly addictive slot-machine- like mechanic that is common in online video games. The Federal Trade Commission has also announced an investigation into the practice. As public concern mounts, it is surprisingly easy to envision consumer regulation extending beyond video games to other types of apps. Just as tobacco regulations might prohibit brightly colored packaging and fruity flavors, a social media regulation might limit the use of red notification badges or “streaks” that reward users for daily use. It is unclear how much of this regulation could survive First Amendment scrutiny; software, unlike other consumer products, is widely understood as a form of protected “expression.” But it is also unclear whether well-drawn laws to combat compulsive technology use would seriously threaten First Amendment values. At a very low cost to the expressive interests of tech companies, these laws may well enhance the quality and efficacy of online speech by mitigating distraction and promoting deliberation