This issue is really special. Not only will it give you some great articles to read, but we are testing a new format.
This issue will give those of you who were unable to be in San Antonio for the annual conference a flavor of what happened. In addition, there are great articles on varied topics.
We have almost total coverage of the conference educational programs, some lovely photos of your colleagues and friends from around the country, and some very interesting articles on very important topics.
You could say that our new look is reflective of the fact that we are looking at ourselves and our future differently. Many of us are currently involved in curriculum development and building online courses, in addition to trying to fulfill all the basic needs of our constituents at as low a cost as possible.
The best part of the new look is that built into every article is the opportunity to reply with your opinion on the article or suggestions for addition resources on a particular topic. Do not hesitate to share your expertise and experiences with the rest of us. That is what our organization is all about.
Thank you all in advance for your comments about the content and structure of this issue. We look forward to hearing from you.
The National Association of State Judicial Educators (NASJE) is alive and well and membership is increasing!
We’ve just completed a very successful conference in San Antonio, Texas, thanks to the extraordinary work on the education program by co-chairs Elizabeth Evans (Arizona), Lisa Galdos (California), and their team of incredibly dedicated committee members. I want to thank the Texas Team who were our local hosts, for their audiovisual support, beautiful banners, tote bags, setting up a wonderful meal on the Riverwalk, and our secretariat, Linda Perkins (National Center for State Courts), who made sure the registration table was ready to go and all the pieces were in place. A job well done!
I want to thank Christy Tull (Ohio) for her leadership this past year as NASJE’s President. She kept the Board on task and secured a State Justice Institute (SJI) grant to implement the curriculum development project for judicial branch educators. She also engaged one of the most respected NASJE members, Karen Thorson (retired), to help us with this project. Without Christy’s dedication to this project, it wouldn’t have happened.
I want to say thank you and a fond farewell to Claudia Fernandes (California) who served as the Past-President on the NASJE Board and continued to provide guidance and needed history to us and to two other members of the Board who are moving on: Anne Jordan (Indiana), Midwestern Regional Director, and Debra Koehler (Maryland), Northeastern Regional Director. Both were dedicated Board members and provided great leadership to the Board. We will miss you all.
Though the Board’s membership is in transition, it is also exciting to see so many come forward to take on “the role of a lifetime;” and there are still a few of us on the Board for continuity. Welcome to Joseph Sawyer (Nevada), President-Elect, Marty Sullivan (Arkansas), Vice-President, Merry Hofford (Washington D.C.), Treasurer, Martha Martin (Florida), Secretary, Michael Roosevelt (California), Western Region Director, Susan Morley (Florida), Southeastern Regional Director, Lee Ann Barnhardt (North Dakota), Midwestern Regional Director, and Stephen Feiler (Pennsylvania), Northeastern Regional Director.
Don’t forget, the NASJE Board is here for you! The Board is dedicated to making sure that judicial branch educators across the country and around the world have a resource that meets their ever-changing needs!
I look forward to working with you throughout the year.
Mark your calendars now to join us in beautiful San Francisco for the 2011 NASJE Western Region Conference. The education program will build on one of the purposes of NASJE, “Furthering the professional education, growth and experience of state judicial educators”, by providing additional information and tools to enhance our knowledge, skills and abilities. The conference planning committee is off to a roaring start in coordinating the educational sessions and logistics. If you have any topic or faculty suggestions, please contact Russ Mathieson. The conference can only be as beneficial as our membership makes it.
Also, I would like to thank Dr. Diane Cowdrey, Director, Education Division, for hosting this conference. Use of their resources will reduce the cost of attending. Additionally, the conference will be held concurrent with an ICM training, which would perhaps allow us to take advantage of national faculty, as well as reduced hotel rates.
Again, I encourage you to set March 2-3, 2011, aside to take advantage of this tremendous educational and networking opportunity. We understand budgets are extremely limited and some of you may have to fund your attendance yourself. We will make every effort to keep the cost to attend at a minimum. I hope to see you there!
DATE & TIME: October 22, 2010 10:00 am-11:30 am (Pacific Time) TOPIC: Emerging Technologies and the Future of Law: Application to Judicial Education
During the National Association of State Judicial Educator Conference in San Antonio, Texas, attendees participated in a plenary session: Emerging Technologies and the Future of Law. This session provided an overview of a series of technological revolutions, including genomics, nanotechnology, neuroscience, virtual reality, surveillance technologies, and enhancement technologies. Over the next decade, these revolutions will fundamentally change our lives as well as the practice of law. Moreover, that session described pending technological revolutions, and provided examples of cases where these technologies are already entering the courtroom.
This webinar revisited and extended that discussion to how judicial educators might effectively incorporate the topic of emerging technologies into education programs for judges, attorneys, and court staff.
Faculty:
Gary E. Marchant, PhD JD
Lincoln Professor of Emerging Technologies, Law & Ethics
Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law
Executive Director, Center for Law, Science & Innovation
Professor, School of Life Sciences
Arizona State University
Co-sponsored by the NASJE Website & Technology Committee
The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that the Constitution does not permit trial of an individual who lacks “mental competency.”1 The Court defines mental competency as someone who has “a rational as well as factual understanding of the proceedings against him” and “sufficient present ability to consult with his lawyer with a reasonable degree of rational understanding.”2 Otherwise stated, a person “whose mental condition is such that he lacks the capacity to understand the nature and object of the proceedings against him, to consult with counsel, and to assist in preparing his defense may not be subjected to a trial.”3
A startling 31 percent of women and 14.5 percent of men enter jail in the United States with a serious mental illness4; it is therefore not surprising that an estimated 60,000 competency evaluations are performed each year.5,6 The competency process generally entails a number of steps, beginning with the issue of the defendant’s mental competency raised at an initial screening or by the court, defense counsel or others; a competency evaluation by a psychologist or psychiatrist, which generally occurs in jail unless the person is initially diagnosed as psychotic or is a potential threat to him- or herself or others; treatment, which may include forced medications to restore competency in certain circumstances;7 inpatient or outpatient competency restoration; a hearing and finding by the court that the defendant is or is not restored or restorable; and trial or a plea if the defendant is restored—or, depending upon the charges and other factors, civil commitment proceedings if he or she cannot be restored to mental competency.
Each of these steps in the competency process involves coordination with the court, counsel, law enforcement, jailers, evaluating psychologists or psychiatrists, mental health facility or hospital, treating psychologists or psychiatrists, inpatient or outpatient competency restoration services, social workers and others. When the steps are not adequately linked and performed—when the system is not functioning properly—horror stories abound such as defendants languishing in jail for months while waiting to be evaluated; defendants jailed for months while waiting to be transferred to a mental health facility for observation, evaluation, and treatment; or defendants “decompensating”—suffering the exacerbation of the mental disorder—while awaiting trial or further proceedings—defendants who will need to be “re-cycled” through the competency restoration process. A poorly functioning competency process will also further strain county and state budgets—especially given the increasing number of arrestees who appear to lack competency.
The Bureau of Justice Assistance component of the Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice recently awarded the National Judicial College a grant to devise a best practices model for handling mental competency issues in criminal justice systems. The NJC is working with experts from across the country to devise a best practices model. Once the model is complete, which we anticipate to be later this year, the model will be published on a website (www.mentalcompetency.org) along with a plethora of supporting information and resources. Next year, the NJC will present a series of webinars on how to utilize or implement the best practices model. The NJC is also available to provide training and technical assistance to states, jurisdictions, or courts interested in the model or various aspects.
If you or judges, administrators, or others in your state are interested in receiving information about the best practices model for handling mental competency, including receiving e-mail when the model is published and webinars are scheduled to take place, please contact Daphne Burns at burns@judges.org or 916.676.9876. We would be delighted to add you to the e-mail list for updates as the project unfolds.
1Dusky v. U.S., 362 U.S. 402 (1960) (per curiam); Drope v. Missouri, 420 U.S. 162 (1975).
4 ConsensusProject.org, Council of State Governments, Justice Center Releases Estimates on the Prevalence of Adults with Serious Mental Illnesses in Jails, http://consensusproject.org/downloads/prevalence.brief.pdf (last visited Sept. 1, 2010).
5 Patricia A. Zapf and Ronald Roesch, Guide to Best Practices for Forensic Mental Health Assessments: Competency to Stand Trial (forthcoming).
6According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 767,620 inmates were in the custody of county and city jail authorities as of mid-year 2009.See, Press Release, Bureau of Justice Statistics (June 3, 2010), http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/press/jim09stpr.cfm (last visited Sept. 1, 2010).
There may be no form of communication that is more misrepresented than education. For many individuals, education is symbolized by a one-way street: teacher to students. The teacher holds the information, the students need it. The teacher gives the students the information and the students absorb it.
And as long as people have held that misconception, educators have been trying to break it.
Education, in all its forms, is one of the most interactive processes that happen between individuals. The key is the absorption of information by the student(s). Teachers can offer as much information as they desire, but learning only occurs when the student understands and retains it. For this to happen, a student needs interactivity with the teacher. This interactivity does a couple of key things: it allows the student to complete mental connections he or she did not have through questions and it allows the individual student to process the information in the way that best retains it for him or her through discussion and activities.
In 2006, I was brought on by the Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) to begin development of a distance learning program for the Kentucky Court of Justice. My initial research into the process of distance learning proved to be rather daunting. As far as processes went, distance learning was limited not by technology or money, but by imagination. For every company and system I studied and observed, they each had their own unique method of distance learning. Each method had its own costs, set-ups, and means of communication.
In my evaluation for the AOC, I realized that the most effective means of distance learning for our audience, namely the COJ employees and elected officials, was one that would utilize our current system of communication: the AOC server network. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be until recent times when technology developed faster and more advanced means of internet communication would work within our limited bandwidth. But there was also another factor at work that would push our need for distance learning forward.
Without question, the judicial branch of government for the state of Kentucky has been one of the most underfunded. And as we all know, our nation has been under a budget crisis unlike any seen in many decades. This crisis has dealt one of the hardest blows to the Kentucky court system with the cutting of programs and jobs. But in the midst of this, the AOC pushed harder than ever to embrace developing technologies that would offset other costs and help save jobs. One key area this was focused on was that of continuing judicial education.
As recent as June, 2010, the Judicial Branch Education division of the AOC was responsible for organizing and executing live conferences at different locations throughout the state for the elected officials. But due to recent cutbacks, these conferences were suspended by our administrators with a focus on bringing distance learning tools to the forefront.
The cost to develop a basic distance learning system using new technologies on the state court’s existing network is as follows:
GoToWebinar: $500 annually
Camtasia Video Studio: $299
Lectora X eLearning Software: $1,790
Grand Total: $2589.
In the midst of staggering deficits and employee layoffs, this nominal price ensures continuity in education programming for elected officials and court staff. The technologies being employed by Judicial Branch Education are discussed in brief below.
In choosing the software that would be the most effective for developing our distance learning network, we had to look at the limitations of our network (as it stands) and our audience. The primary limitation of our current network is the inability to live stream video to several computers due to bandwidth limitations. Because of this, we chose software that employed various other techniques of interactivity.
The basis for our live webinars is the system GoToWebinar. Due to a limited budget and the complex schedules of our elected officials, we currently subscribe to the 100-attendee-maximum account. GoToWebinar has a vast array of communication tools that focus on the interactivity between speaker and audience. A speaker (or moderator if a speaker chooses to have one) has full control over the presentation and audience responses. When an audience member indicates he or she has a question, the person can activate the “raise hand” option or type their question directly to the speaker. The speaker/moderator can then answer the question or un-mute the specific audience member’s audio so the individual can ask the question live and have a discussion with the speaker. This manner of control is absolutely necessary when dealing with large audiences and virtually replicates the atmosphere of a face-to-face conference seminar.
GoToWebinar proved its value beyond question when the Kentucky legislature passed sweeping reforms in domestic violence law during the 2010 assembly. Education presentations had to be made quickly and be available statewide before the bill went into effect in a matter of weeks. Through GoToWebinar virtual live presentations were given in a timely manner that would have been impossible to accomplish with face-to-face meetings. Judges who attended the webinars praised GoToWebinar as one of the most dynamic teaching tools they have had the pleasure of working with.
But what about all the elected officials who couldn’t clear their schedules in time to attend this webinar that was necessary to the function of their courts and offices? That is where another piece of software was employed by education staff: Camtasia.
Camtasia is, simply put, software designed to record video of a computer screen with audio from a microphone. This elegant, simple recording system allowed us to record the webinars as they were taught live. These recordings—in a high quality, low file size Flash animation—were then placed on the AOC’s intranet via SharePoint. By doing this, the elected officials who could not attend the webinar could view the recorded webinar and get the information they needed.
Beyond the scope of recording webinars, Camtasia has also been a boon to our distance learning programs with its editing functions. Original training videos have been produced by various managers of the AOC in order to train and educate their statewide staff members. This saves the time and expense of trainers having to travel across the Commonwealth for live trainings that can stretch out over several months to complete. Camtasia also contains interactive tools. One example is the ability to create quizzes during the video. A viewer watching the video will answer questions relating to what they have just watched before moving on with the rest of the training. This interactivity promotes the retention of the material and is another reason Camtasia has found a home on the AOC distance learning program.
The newest software addition to the distance learning network is also one of the most promising. Lectora X is a completely interactive learning tool. A teacher uses Lectora to design a lesson similar to a power point. Unlike power point, Lectora can use a myriad of tools to make a lesson much more dynamic and interactive for the viewer. The lesson can contain numerous advanced learning tools such as video, audio, quizzes, activities, animations, and charts. Viewers proceed through the lesson at their own pace, which adds to the retention of the information. While Lectora is currently in the testing stages, we foresee many lessons to be generated through this intriguing teaching software.
As the AOC distance learning network continues to grow and develop, we look forward to bringing more and more webinars, training videos and interactive teaching lessons to the elected officials and Court of Justice employees. Even in its infancy, we have already seen the effect distance learning has had on helping improve the quality of justice that is available for our fellow Kentuckians.
Daniel Frazier has worked with the Administrative Office of the Courts in Kentucky since 2006 as Production Coordinator for the Division of Judicial Branch Education. He has a background in film and video production and was owner of Foster Layne Video, LLC in Louisville, KY. Mr. Frazier has produced many original videos for the AOC including “General and Sexual Harassment in the Workplace,” which was featured on Kentucky Educational Television. Mr. Frazier is a graduate of Northern Kentucky University and is currently developing videos for web-based broadcast.
Dear Readers:
The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that the Constitution 