PLI was pleased to exhibit at the Association of American Law Schools (AALS) Annual Meeting.  This year’s meeting was in Washington, DC, where attendees and exhibitors alike enjoyed weather that was downright balmy compared to the blizzard that raged during the conference last year.  Many thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth! We really enjoyed meeting everyone and hearing about your experiences with PLI and PLI Discover PLUS.

We raffled a Brookstone Pocket Projector and I’m pleased to announce that Professor Norman Garland of Southwestern Law School was the lucky winner.  Congratulations, Professor Garland!  We hope you find the mobile projector a welcome addition to your teaching tool bag.

Read on to learn more about Professor Garland, his thoughts on PLI and on the AALS Annual Meeting, and how he plans on using the pocket projector he won in the raffle:

Describe your role at Southwestern Law School.  What do you teach?

I am a professor.  I teach evidence, constitutional criminal procedure and sometimes trial advocacy and advanced criminal procedure (bail to jail).  I am an avid user of technology in the classroom and out.  One of my latest activities is to teach evidence as a blended (or hybrid) course, meaning partially on-line and based on flipping the classroom.  I have done that 4 times and now am in the process of developing a similar class for constitutional criminal procedure.

What are your plans for the pocket projector?

All of our classrooms are equipped with the latest technological equipment, but I look forward to using the projector for travel, at meetings and conferences, and perhaps in tighter rooms in the law school.  Other than that, personal use might include projecting films and such when travelling, especially in hotel rooms.

What did you think of this year’s AALS meeting?  Please share one takeaway from the conference.

As usual, I did enjoy the AALS meeting this year.  I love DC.  I lived in DC for four years back in the day (1964-68).  I have been attending AALS meetings since 1968 (having missed only a year or two here and there).  This is the first time I have won anything from any of the booths, so that is a major highlight.  Also, I was sitting in the hallway waiting for a friend after a session and Justice Scalia walked by.  I did not recognize him quickly enough to greet him before he ambled by and, by then, his security team surrounded him so I would have not been able to approach him anyway.  Unfortunately, I did not attend the session he was participating in, but I heard he was quite entertaining as usual.