Tag: TCD

Holocaust Memorial, 2009

| 1 Comment
| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops

Holocaust Memorial Day image, via UN General Assembly site.The national Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration takes place on the Sunday nearest to 27 January every year (that is the anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Berkenau, and has been designated as Holocaust Memorial Day by the UN General Assembly). This year, it is Sunday 25 January next.

Witnesses of War, cover, via Random House website.As part of that commemoration, my Trinity colleagues in the Department of History and the Herzog Centre for the Study of Jewish and Near Eastern Religion, along with the Holocaust Educational Trust of Ireland (HETI), will host this year’s annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture this evening.

Dr Nicholas Stargardt, Magdalen College Oxford, author of (among many other publications) Witnesses of War. Children’s Lives Under the Nazis (Random House, 2007; amazon) will speak about

Jewish Children in Hiding

It is in the Thomas Davis Lecture Theatre (Room 2043), in the Arts Block, Trinity College Dublin, at 7:30pm (college maps and directions here). All are welcome to attend. Further information is available here and here.

Update (26 January 2009): Holocaust survivors remember victims with moving Mansion House ceremony…

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Laptops in class

| 6 Comments
| law school, Legal Education

Laptops in law school classroom.In the Law School in Trinity, the proportion of my students using laptops in class has increased year by year, though they have not yet reached the levels attained in US law schools, where the vast majority of students have laptops in class. Whether this is too much of a good thing, however, is now a serious matter for debate: are benefits of the technology outweighed by the capacity for distraction (taking notes vs updating facebook)? The University of Chicago School of Law has turned off wireless internet access in class, Harvard Law School has considered banning laptops in class, various individual law professors have actually done so or negotiated them away, and there is even a law review article on the issue. Now, Law School Innovation reports on an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education, headlined “Survey Gets Law-School Students’ Thoughts on Laptops, Writing, and Ethics” (sub req’d). Some extracts:

Law-school professors are fed up with students using laptop computers in class to surf to Facebook, eBay, everything but LexisNexis. And some have even banned the distracting machines. But results from a new survey show that an outright ban might not be such a good idea.

…

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NUI Maynooth vs TCD at the top of the Sunday Times university rankings

| 3 Comments
| Universities

University students, image from Times OnlineThere are lots of university league tables out there; and the University of Edinburgh maintains an excellent page assessing these various leagues and rankings. For example, Times Higher Education (rankings), Newsweek (pdf), Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Wuhan University all produce annual tables of universities worldwide. Similarly, most of the UK newspapers produce tables of the UK’s universities (Guardian | Independent | Telegraph | Times). The Sunday Times annually produces just such a list but also has a parallel list of Irish universities. …

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The Judiciary: Who they are and their everyday work

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| Conferences, Lectures, Papers and Workshops, Irish Law, Irish Society, judges

TCD School of Social Work and Social Policy logo, via their website.The School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin will host a presentation by Prof Sharyn Roach Anleu under the above title at 4pm, Thursday 2nd October 2008, in the Robert Emmet Lecture Theatre (Room 2037, Arts Building (Map)), Trinity College Dublin.

Sharyn Roach Anleu is a Professor of Sociology at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, where The Judicial Research Project is undertaking wide ranging socio-legal research concerning the Australian judiciary as a legal and social institution and as a professional occupation. The presentation will examine the social and career background of members of the judiciary and their everyday work to create a picture of the judiciary as a professional occupation, working among and dependent on other professionals, including social workers.

More information is available here (doc), and from the School of Social Work and Social Policy.…

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Blawg Review #164

| 16 Comments
| Blogging, data retention, Irish Society, James Joyce, Law

0. Prolegomenon, or Why me?
Dust jacket of Gabler (ed) Joyce Ulysses via James Joyce centre websiteToday is Bloomsday, the centrepiece of a weeklong festival in Dublin celebrating the day in 1904 on which the events of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses unfold, which is the day Joyce first formally went out with Nora Barnacle (the story is told in the enthralling movie Nora; other movies with 16 June references include The Producers and Before Sunrise). In the novel, all human life is there; and Eamon Fitzgerald’s Rainy Day is currently by far the best guide to the important things in life: democracy, football, and technology. Expect a Bloomsday post today (this is last year’s; update: this is this year’s). Just like Oh Brother, Where art Thou?, the novel loosely parallels Homer’s Odyssey, and this blogpost will very very loosely parallel Joyce’s Ulysses (or at least his chapter headings).…

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So is iTunes U good for you?

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| Universities

iTunes @ TCD logo, via TCD site.Last week, Trinity College Dublin became the first university in Ireland and one of the first in Europe to launch its own iTunes U site (press release | BBC | Irish Independent | Irish Times | Learning Tech | Lex Ferenda | Silicon Republic | Techno Culture | The Guardian). As Karlin argues, this is an excellent idea:

I think the availability of university content in this way has been one of the simply fantastic developments online — it’s giving university extension classes, and lifelong education opportunities, to anyone with a computer … I’ve watched the gradual increase in college content via iTunes with some delight and am off to go find some free ‘classes’ to attend incognito again.

But is it really such a good thing? Roger Clarke, guesting on the wonderful House of Commons blog writes:

The iTunes conditions appear to preclude the University from making material placed on iTunes U subject to an open content licence. It appears that the conditions apply not only to the version available through iTunes, but also to versions available through other channels … That would mean that anything that a university makes available through iTunes is locked-down and proprietised … Unless and until the iTunes U conditions are found to be different from what I fear (or they are changed), content-producers who want their materials to be openly available need to refuse permission for them to be made available through that channel.

…

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What do University Presidents do all day?

| 2 Comments
| Universities

DCU logo, via their website.I’ve often wondered what my ultimate boss, John Hegarty, Provost of Trinity College Dublin, does all day. Now we mortals at the bottom of the academic ladder might actually find out what university presidents do all day. Ferdinand von Prondzynski, President of Dublin City University (DCU), has started a blog in which he promises to spill the beans on precisely this question. This is definitely a first for Ireland, and is ahead of the curve internationally. This is how he explains the big adventure on which he is embarked:

It is sometimes asked what value university Presidents add to the life and success of their institutions. I may not be the best person to suggest an answer, but in these notes I shall try to set out a little what in fact I do, from day to day, and how this may affect my own institution.

As a much more inconsequential university blogger, allow me to welcome Ferdinand to the wonderful world of blogging. I look forward very much to his comments and insights.…

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Universities and Patents

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| Academic Freedom, Law, Universities

Heads, from TCD Research and Innovation Site.In Ireland, the law relating to patents is governed by the Patents Act, 1992 (here and here) as amended in 2006 (here and here). According to the Irish Patents Office, a patent

confers upon its holder, for a limited period, the right to exclude others from exploiting (making, using, selling, importing) the patented invention, except with the consent of the owner of the patent. A patent is a form of ‘industrial property’ [IP], which can be assigned, transferred, licensed or used by the owner.

The same site also clarifies that any person

may make an application for a patent; the right to a patent belongs to the inventor or the inventors’ successor in title. However, if an employee makes an invention in the course of his/her employment the right to the patent may belong to the employer.

Unsurprisingly, therefore, my employer (Trinity College Dublin) claims ownership

… of all IP created by College Staff in the course of their employment and/or in the fields of expertise in which they choose to work, and thus inventors are required to assign their rights to the College through Innovation Services. In return for this assignment, College contracts with the creators of the IP to share with them any financial benefits received, in accordance with College Regulations.

…

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