Food for Thought

I often find posts in the Law School Innovation blog as motivation for jumpstarting things at Albany Law School.  Today is no exception.

 The topic is “Who and what and how should we teach?”  It refers to several articles and blogs that criticize legal education citing  ”emphasis on books rather than people” as being one of the biggest problems.

And it worked!  Several faculty members seem interested in starting to blog and one even  started one.

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Entry into the Blogosphere Postponed

Our Albany Law Faculty Blog has been created.  Don’t go there yet…no one is blogging. Every professor has been invited to post by confirming their wordpress account.  Several have done that (most have not) and still no posts…

I will not give up hope. 

Click here for my message.

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What is Second Life?

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by a total of 2,813,588 people from around the globe.

Educationally:

Students and Educators can work together in Second Life from anywhere in the world as part of a globally networked virtual classroom environment. Using Second Life as a supplement to traditional classroom environments also provides new opportunities for enriching an existing curriculum. Many universities and educational institutions are already using Second Life.

The Campus:Second Life program will give professors the use of 1 acre of land in Second Life completely free for the duration of your class. This allows them to try out Second Life with their class for the first time at no cost!

 This article in The Phoenix gives more information on Second Life.

Law School:

Students at Harvard Law School use Second Life.  In fact, they use Second Life for a course entitled CyberOne (the students meet on Berman Island). You can also take the course, watch video lectures, sign up for virtual office hours and participate in discussions and the like through the Law school in Second Life

This is an exercept from the course blog:

“Last night we had our first official class in Second Life. The 40 students enrolled in our class came to Berkman Island in two groups, half at 9pm and half at 10pm. When they arrived on the island they gathered in the outdoor meeting space in front of Austin Hall. We further split them into two groups and Gene took one group into Austin Hall and I took the other over to our Library. .. At our library you can view the videos of each of the lectures as well as all of our assignments! After making sure that we all knew how to sit down and stand up, we started a simple introductory activity….”

Are we ready for Second Life at Albany Law?  Should we buy an island?

First I’d like to explore it. I chose Evelyn Shabazz as my avatar’s name.  My own computer does not have an update to date graphics card and the firewall here is blocking the program on my office computer.

For now, I’ll stick to blogging.

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The New Bloom

This is the Bloom’s Taxonomy that I learned in college years ago:

  
  click to enlarge             

 Is it still valid for today’s students?

Not according to a recent post in U Tech Tips blog. In 2001, Anderson and Krathwohl adapted Bloom’s model to fit the needs of today’s students.

click to enlarge

In this new taxomony, knowledge has been converted to remember and is still the lowest. In addition, the highest level of development is now create rather than evaluate.

What does this mean for law school professors? And more importantly, how does technology fit in the new Bloom taxonomy?

According to Paul Ferber at Vermont Law School, Bloom’s taxonomy should be used to establish objectives for law school courses and to create assessment tools that reflect the types and levels of learning established in these objectives.

As I  visit classes, I know this to be true at Albany Law School.  Professors do not want students to memorize and but to be able to “think” and “apply” what they have heard in class and read in their textbooks.

However, if for today’s students, “create” is a higher order thinking skill above “evaluate”,  then students must be given opportunities to “create” in addition to “evaluate.”

The circle below gives examples of how students can “evaluate” and ”create”:

Here’s another illustration:

Evaluating: can the student justify a stand or decision?	appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluate
Creating: can the student create new product or point of view?	assemble, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, write.

It is obvious that in law school, opportunities for students to ”evaluate” and “create” exist

and technology fits in!!

 Creating PowerPoint slideshows and role play videos, sharing in TWEN discussions, participating in blogs and wikis all allow students to defend, judge, support, evaluate, design, develop and write about law-related topics.

 

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The Power of PowerPoint

As second semester is just around the corner, I sent out a call to professors asking them if they would like to learn PowerPoint to use in their classes.  At the same time, I sent them a link to a blog post entitled: Rethinking PowerPoint in the Law School Classroom.  The purpose was not to deter them from using PowerPoint but to think about how and why they will use it.

One professor emailed me back saying: “Ater the article on PowerPoint, I’m not sure I want to use it!”

So with my good intentions gone awry, I looked back at the results of a survey that I did with some of the student here in the Fall   Here are some of the things they had to say about how PowerPoint enhanced their learning:

“ It has definitely proven to be an asset to the course.” 

“The main points are already laid out in an intelligible form on the slides.  In my other classes, I am typing constantly in order to take notes and then sort everything out later in the form of outlines.  With the slides, I only need to take supplemental notes.  The class involves a lot of subjective interpretation so I can spend that “freed up” time actually thinking about the cases and issues discussed in class, rather than worrying about writing everything down and sorting it out.“

 ”It has greatly enhanced my learning.  It is much easier to follow his lecture and effectively take notes when he utilizes PowerPoint.”

“The slides are clear and assist understanding of complexities of law.” 

 ”I think it would be helpful if the professor did use PowerPoint slides. When the professor draws diagrams on the board, it is usually very helpful.”

“It’s helpful and it’s nice to see the material on the big screen.“

When I looked at the comments to this Blog to see why this blog caused this law school professor to change her mind about powerpoint, I felt renewed.  Here are some positive excerpts:

“While discussing a case about whether a commercial could be an offer, the professor showed the commercial via PowerPoint. It was very effective” (Jeremey Masten)

“… I’ve used hyperlinks in my Powerpoint slides to create non-linear presentations. Basically, I put hyperlinks in the slides so I can jump around and show the slides outof order. ..I’m usually happy with the results, and I’ve had many students say they prefer these sorts of things to traditional, bullet-point oriented slides.” (Jonathan Adler)

“Putting up a single question for students to answer is very powerful. And if students don’t like being “wrong” when the next slide has a different set of “answers” — why put in a slide of answers at all? I can easily imagine a class being organized around a series of questions, which also subtly conveys an emphasis on inquiry and creativity.I wouldn’t underestimate the psychological power of PowerPoint as a visual aid, even if it’s “supposed” to be used as an outliner.” (Gene Koo)

There IS Power to PowerPoint and I hope to continue to encourage professors to learn it!

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New Year’s Resolution

 

Just when I decided that my New Year’s resolution was to blog more often (it’s been quite awhile since I last blogged), I read a post entitled: Are law professor blogs like so five minutes ago? in which Doug Berman wonders whether blogging will continue in law schools if professors are not rewarded for this scholarly activity.

Then I read this comment: “Interestingly I was speaking about this with some past students recently and they felt that law blogging created a community between professors and students, where more informal and non-judgmental discussion could be engaged in (incl. criticising a professor’s conclusion on something)” and I think that I will continue to encourage professors here to start blogs.

I, myself, learn more from reading others’ blogs than by blogging myself.  I hope this will happen here for law students as they contribute to blogs, write their own blogs, and read other blogs.

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