John pointed the CALI staff to this presentation done by Sam Ruby for IBM’s New Paradigms for Using Computers. In a nut shell the presentation points out the ‘always connected’ nature of today’s teenagers. Of course these teens are becoming today’s law students. There was not a lot new for me in the presentation but it did bring into focus the some of the challenges we face in bringing technology to legal academia.
As time marches on incoming law students are more comfortable with different communication channels having been raised in a world of plentiful bandwidth, cheap cellphones, and ready Internet access. Unlike some previous technological innovations (word processing, email) the sorts of things that today’s new law students are accustomed to using are available right in the classroom. That is the real challenge to legal academia and law professors everywhere: how to deal with the pervasiveness of the net in the world of today’s law students. For us the challenge is to position CALI as a resource for both teachers and students in an environment where the net is always on and the students are always logged in.
We need to be able to provide teachers with resources to harness the possibilities of the pervasive net, to turn it from a distraction in the classroom to a useful teaching tool. Certainly one way to keep students from surfing the web is to engage them and their computers, focusing them on the task at hand: learning the law. At the same time we need resources for students that draw them into the new world of collegiality and professionalism that is the practice of law. Tools that foster the social networking and collaborative skills they will need to succeed in the practice of law.
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