Digital Directions

Welcome

Welcome to the new Digital Directions blog from the UKCLE.  Here you will find discussion related to e-learning for legal academics as well as the other related subjects.  You will also be able to comment and contribute to this blog, receive regular updates and subscribe to podcasts using the links on the right hand side column.

LILACnet - wiki and social networking site for LILAC 2010 Conference

A guest post from Ann Priestley, consultant for UKCLE, and general technical-whizz!

UKCLE has just launched LILACnet (http://lilac10.wetpaint.com/), a combined wiki and social network for LILAC10 (http://www.ukcle.ac.uk/newsevents/lilac/index.html), the forthcoming UKCLE conference at the end of January. We have added the 40 plus abstracts for the papers which will be presented at the conference and invited presenters to add their papers or any other materials as they wish. All the slides from the conference will be added to UKCLE's slidespace (http://www.slideshare.net/ukcleslidespace).

So far, much the same as for LILAC 2009. What is different this time is that LILACnet is geared towards comment and discussion. LILACnet members can create a profile page and communicate with other members, either one to one or by contributing to a discussion. They can look for members who perform the same role as themselves, who are involved in similar projects or who simply have common interests. Networking is frequently highlighted in feedback as one of the conference highlights, and we hope that law teachers will take to an online network with as much enthusiasm as they do to F2F networking at the
conference every January.

There is anecdotal evidence that law teachers are using the big social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn - or at least if I run my address book against these services a lot of names come up!, but how are they using them, and what role could UKCLE play? Niche services like Academia.edu perhaps offer more value to academics - see Michael's profile (http://gcal.academia.edu/MichaelBromby), but it seems to be more institution than discipline focused.

A recent post on the Nature Network (http://network.nature.com/people/franknorman/blog/2009/10/30/social-networks-are-they-useful-or-pointless) asked Social networks: are they useful or pointless? At the heart of the question is how they can become part of an academic's everyday routines - but the same questions were asked regarding email a few years ago, and who can do without emal now?

We hope that LILACnet will act as a small pilot and offer some more evidence on how law teachers could use social networks. LILACnet is geared to the conference life cycle, however anyone is welcome to join in, so please do sign up!

Ann Priestley

Free US caselaw... just google it!

Earlier this month I read a blog post at Out of the Jungle, an interesting US blog on legal education, about why Lexis and Westlaw should NOT be like Google.

"For the first time, I had a student write in my Advanced Legal Research class that they wished that Lexis and Westlaw could be more like Google. I had heard other librarians moan about this but had just not run across it til now. It really gave me pause to have it in hand. And it made me think, it challenged me. Why should this student not get her wish? If I sat down with this young woman and had a conversation, what would I say about why I disagreed? There must be more than just a knee-jerk revulsion against the transformation. What would be my reasoned argument to her?"

The blogger, Betsy McKenzie, suggested that Google 'flattens' information from the web and is not so good at discriminating sources (and reliability) of legal information and went on to discuss some of the critical thinking that students may not undertake if they rely too much upon Google search results.

This week, news from the BIALL blog tells me that Google have indeed launched themselves into the world of legal research with a range of US case law being made available.  My first thoughts were that we already have BAILII in the UK, and other Legal Information Institutes elsewhere with vast repositories of open-access documents - the Google Blog does acknowledge these pioneers in their launch statement.

There is already a lengthy list of other bloggers who have reported on this, I read some about the advanced search functions, and whether it will give Lexis a run for it's money (probably not, for now).

For those who are well able to use Lexis or Westlaw, this may come as no particular benefit but as Google seems to be increasingly the search engine of choice for students, there is merit in that the cases are available freely.  I have to agree with Betsy McKenzie in that Google have flatten that value of "cited by xxx" as there is no discimination in this (potentially) long list - but then is can encourage the critical thinking skills - and for this type of research, there's always the subscription services!

At the moment, it does mean that I can provide some quick and easy VLE links to US cases without the hassle of an additonal login.

Enhancing Legal Education in Scotland Event - part two

 Kevin Kerrigan from Northumbria University and myself ran an afternoon session at the UKCLE event in Edinburgh on Developing the Undergraduate Law Student Experience (see blog post: Enhancing Legal Education in Scotland Event for the morning session).  Kevin spoke about how Northumbria, Westminster and others have sought to combine their undergrad substantive law programmes with the one year vocational skills course and the two year practise-based traineeship.  Bringing aspects together from each of the previously separate entities there can be a more logical progression from, for example, criminal law to procedure to advocacy; or land law to conveyancing.  Students are still afforded the opportunity to exit with a traditional liberal-arts style LLB and must do so unless they secure the traineeship-syle placements necessary for the remainder of the 5 year programme at a particular stage.

This reminded me of the problem-based learning approach adopted by York University (see previous blog post: What McMaster did for medical training, can York do for legal education?) last year, and of course, the recent development of the clinical LLB at Strathclyde more recently discussed in the post below.

My own presentation looked at some of the less radical means of enhancing the undergraduate experience that may not require a complete refocus of the programme, or financial / time consuming clinics – both of which can be highly commended, but require enormous effort.

I illustrated my talk with three examples: work-related learning, which includes clinics, simulations, and problem-based learning.  Some of which may be time or resource intensive, but on occasion can be a short 2 day simulation package.  Secondly, the internationalisation of staff, students and the programme; and thirdly, examples of tools and technologies that universities should perhaps be adopting to equip our students with skills for the 21^st century.

The slides from this, and from other presenters on the day, will most likely appear on the UKCLE website’s Scotland Pages in due course, but for now - mine is below.

Developing the undergraduate student experience

View more presentations from UK Centre for Legal Education.

Pro Bono Week, Strathclyde's Law Clinic and Legal Education

Yesterday saw the launch of the extended law clinic at Strathclyde University.  Since its inception in 2003, the clinic has expanded to include not only the initial advice sessions in Glasgow, but also an outreach project in Greenock, to the West of Glasgow.  Earlier this year, their work as a law clinic was recognised by the LawWorks and Attorney General’s Student Pro Bono Awards 2009, shortlisted for three of the four awards and taking home the award for the Best Contribution by an Individual Law School – this being the first time that the awards have been open to students in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

A Prisons Project has also been designed and run by the Clinic’s student volunteers to offer guidance and information to prisoners on their employment rights, specifically in relation to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974.  This will be offered to five prisons in and around the Glasgow area.

Supported financially, by both university sources and externally by law firms, the Law Clinic relies more so on the dedicated time of students, supervising staff and both solicitors and counsel who provide their advice pro bono.  The evening was supported by the Lord Advocate, Elish Angiolini, head of the Crown Office which directs all public prosecutions in Scotland.  Not only a Strathclyde alumna, but also a strong proponent of pro bono work, the Lord Advocate had earlier this week promoted the National Pro Bono week in Scotland.  Lord Phillips, the LibDem peer, spoke highly of the Law Clinic and other law schools (estimated at approx 100 in England and Wales) who offer students the opportunity to work with clients, but also reminded the audience that whilst pro bono can and does work well, there is still an over burdened legal aid system that cannot cope with the increases in legislation.  Providing pro bono services can, said Lord Phillips, remind the profession of what they profess... making comparisons to the medical profession with the overarching Hippocratic Oath, there exists no counterpart for the legal profession.

One future development, highlighted by the Law Clinic’s director Prof Donald Nicolson, is the establishment of a clinical LLB at Strathclyde from 2010.  This will enable students to reflect on their clinical cases and gain credit for their performance in both training and live case management.

This example of change to the delivery of undergraduate legal education reminded me of the discussions at the UKCLE event in Edinburgh, of which the afternoon sessions are still un-blogged!  See the next post...!

Enhancing Legal Education in Scotland Event

This was the first UKCLE event in Scotland (that wasn’t attached to another event) for some time, and possibly the first event to involve representatives from all levels of legal education.  The event was held in Edinburgh and was well attended by over 50 delegates – mainly from academic institutions (representing both the LLB and postgraduate diploma stage) but the legal profession was also widely represented by the Law Society of Scotland, HR directors and managers, heads of training and partners from law firms.

The first keynote from Alastair Robertson (HEA, Academy Scotland) covered a range of issues including the changing nature of the student learning experience, new ways of relating to businesses and the profession and forthcoming challenges: in particular how the four nations of the UK will contribute to devolved policy and the likely divergence that may lead to tensions.  Relating to news earlier this week that England & Wales have a new framework for HE - will there be pressure to adopt similar or distinctly different policy in Scotland?  Alastair also spoke of graduate attributes and what it means to be a graduate of a particular HEI or in a particular discipline such as law.

Prof Margaret Ross (University of Aberdeen) spoke about the diversity of the legal education student body and the study of law for its own sake.  Pointing to Edinburgh University’s centenary of women in legal education, Margaret spoke of the first two women to gain a postgraduate LLB in 1909 who both had legal profession links in their family, but who did not, and could not, enter into the profession.  The law society, at the time, decided to wait until the end of the Great War to see if they would have enough male members returning from the battle fields before considering whether to admit women – rather much a response to market forces than the emancipation of female lawyers!

Nevertheless, Margaret also indicated how some things have not changed – William Twining’s book Blackstone’s Tower relates a story where law students were directed to bring in a broadsheet newspaper and identify the items that had legal issues until the entirety of the paper had been considered – modern law students may well use electronic publications rather than the paper-copy but the learning experience remains the same.  Less positive is the lack of change in terms of funding for legal education.  Margaret made comparisons with medical practitioners, honorary NHS contracts and the general view that law is a professional subject that can be taught on a lower budget due to the absence of scientific labs etc.

Still to come, guest blog post from the Law Society of Scotland, and a review of the afternoon sessions!

The value of social media

This month's Big Question from Tony Carrer's Learning Circuits Blog is an interesting one, not just for learning professionals who are trying to enage colleagues, but also for academics who are trying to engage their students!

"How do I communicate the value of social media as a learning tool to my organization?"

"My coworkers are Baby Boomers and Traditionals. When I mention blogs or any social networking they "poo-poo" me and say our workers should not use those tools because it will make them inefficient and not do their jobs. When I have presented the idea of how we can use discussion threads on our environment to discuss topics and make comments outside the classroom, many of my co-workers said it can't be done. They either haven't opened their mind to the idea or really care. In essence, if it is not classroom, they are really not interested in it.

My question is how do I get my coworkers to even consider the capabilities of these tools when it really does not interest them."

In relation to higher education, and legal education in particular, I think that the uptake of social media by the profession can also be used as a driver to encouage staff to (re)consider using such tools in the classroom setting.

It may well be that the profession is also experiencing this 'Big Question' and that senior partners are poo-pooing tools that may be considered as an inefficient use of time, but recently the use of social media by both large and small firms has really taken off.

Writing for the Binary Law blog, Nick Holmes picks up on other commentators in thrall of the BigLaw firms, in particular whether the legal press pays a disproportionate amount of attention to large law firms - with their panoply of marketing directors, PR advisors, website and social media mavens.  His response to Jordan Furlong, a Canadian blogger at slaw.ca, was:

"I do think you’re not seeing the wood for the trees here. Social media do already provide the means for solos and smaller firms to leave a bigger footprint and “amplify their voice and multiply their narratives within the profession as a whole”. As you well know, they are doing it through public blogging and the public SNEs; and the pooling and focussing is done via public group activity on group blogs and special interest groups on the SNEs.

That does not provide a complete solution and third party collaboration and aggregation channels are evolving, but I don’t really see that they need “their own media channel” – will it not be an agglomeration of media channels?

The first step for solos and small firms is to engage with social media and they have only themselves to blame if they don’t.

You suggest that their footprints need to be left “in the places where journalists search for ideas and leads”. Turn that around: how about journalists need to engage better with social media and source their stories from a wider range of media channels? Surely it’s a very lazy hack who relies on the mainstream legal media for their ideas; surely they need to be reading blogs, following Twitter et al? Now I know you do this, so the next question to ask (of an employed journalist) is – It’s all very well for me to source some of my ideas and stories from solos and small firms, but will that sell the rag/will it attract the advertising bucks, will it please my paymaster? I suspect the answer to those questions is No."

In a previous post, Holmes also points to a critique of Susskind's book, The End of Lawyers? reviewed by Gillian Bull, which further contributes to the notion of BigLaw:

“Susskind’s book in the main deals with life on Planet Mammon: life on Planet Rumpole (or even Planet Pooter) doesn’t figure much.” Thus, in her view, the book is not relevant to most lawyers and the public at large. Not only that, but City lawyers either won’t need to read it if they’re already on the game, or won’t want to read it if they’re not; and their ICT managers will “need more than the collection of anecdotes and predictions that this book comprises. To make their case for spending money they need lots of hard data, of which there are none here.”

But then, this book does focus on the large law firms and perhaps another book, or another author, could /should look further at small firms and the sole practitioner.

So, returning to the 'Big Question', then yes, both large and small firms are using social media and there may well be an expectation that future employees (our students) should be able to engage, contribute to, or even lead with this type of engagement.

The HEA in general, UKCLE in relation to legal education and individual HEIs all encouarge staff to undertake pilot projects and the sharing of examples which is probably our sector's solution to this Big Question, and has been for some time.  However, this does rely on the innovative lecturer to adopt or adapt the case studies for specific purposes on his or her course.

I was particularly drawn to an existing response to the Big Question that included the following presentation - a PR jobs-worth trying to ban the telephone in favour of social media!

New technology - the threat to our information

View more presentations from normanlamont.

ALT-C 2009 - A Virtual Perspective

As I was unable to go, I asked a couple of colleagues who went to the Association of Learning Technology Conference (ALT-C) to let me know of anything interesting, so here’s a guest blog post!

 

ALT-C isn’t subject specific, so many new and emerging classroom technologies can often be found… not all take off, but some do.  The following post is by Kathy Trinder and Linda Creanor, so my thanks to them!

 

--------------------------------------------------

 

A very busy few days this year. Many old contacts reconnected, many fellow education tech twitter-ers met in person, and many interesting and in depth conversations took place in pubs, over pints & pies, at the end of the day.

 

This year I initially put on my researcher hat and attended one session on "The agenda of research culture". I won't comment on these here, but links are available for the abstracts:

 

Activity Theory: what does it offer e-learning research?

 

A Research Agenda for Emerging Technologies in Education:

 

Gathering evidence of the design, use, reuse and redesign of Open Educational Content:

 

SCoPE Online Community to Support Individuals Interested in Educational Research and Practice: A Snapshot of Evolution:

 

 

For the rest of the conference, other than the keynotes by Wesch and Bean (see links to the videos

and other blog posts here and here, and always lots to read about ALT-C at: http://elearningstuff.wordpress.com/category/altc2009/), I have to admit I pretty much just followed the Virtual Worlds theme, of which I was part with my presentation on how Glasgow Caledonian University has been using SL in teaching Artifical Intelligence (AI) in computing.

 

2 years ago at ALT-C few people were using 3D virtual worlds in teaching, and the main conference themes revolved around Web 2.0 tools and how we could possibly use these. However that was the year that I detected a buzz and many whispers about this thing called Second Life. Like many I'd signed up for an SL account the previous year, when it first hit the headlines, but had not done a lot in there. It was highly intriguing to hear that year what had been happening, what all the really early adopters in H.E. had been doing.

 

This year there is a noticeable difference, with several sessions on Virtual Worlds, mirroring the general trend in UK HE of most universities now having some presence in SL or other 3D virtual worlds.

 

We are now beginning to see some real solid teaching scenarios appearing, beyond the pilot project stage, however pilots are still seen as important as we are still exploring what we can do with these worlds, and we cannot yet know their limits as they are still very much in development (though some are calling for an end to pilots and a start to some real teaching. But to me they are technology killers. This is an emerging technology and will be for many years to come. We are not there yet!). There is still much discussion about the technical issues, and institutional barriers this year at the conference. I think most places now are aware of issues and whilst we haven't solved them all we have discovered the more obvious ones are and sharing work rounds.

 

But it could be seen from the presentations given that many different disciplines are now exploring 3D Virtual Worlds. Some concentrated on the technology - 'bots, haptic feedback, tool kits, and integrating mobile & cross world devices; whilst others explored the cognitive - e.g. simulations, drill & practice, etc. About half the presentations though looked more at the affective or soft skills, (particularly in the arts & social sciences), and are more concerned with issues such as identity, gender, networking, and the very social aspects of such worlds.  There was discussion around whether or not the the SL expericne can feel like a 'real' experience ('Yes', but it depends on the student, the scenario, the design and the willingness of all participants to allow it to feel real.) Another question asked was does such a visual medium always benefit or can it kill imagination and creativity ("Which one is *your* Hurcule Poiroit or your Mr D'arcy?").

 

Another strong strand that emerged is that of staff and teachers and how we 'train' staff about these worlds. Do they need to become immersed in order to understand the environment and be able to use it effectively for teaching?

 

Games based learning emerged, I feel, as 'the next big thing'. With the introduction of 3D virtual worlds, who many see as being game-like, this is perhaps a natural progression. Again there is much historical work in this field, but it is being re-visitied because it seems that many of the processes of game play can potentially be used in virtual worlds to help structure learning and teaching.

 

These are all trends that can also be seen emerging across Europe as well as in the UK (I recently attended ICWL VW Workshop http://www.iicm.tugraz.at/ViWo/ViWo2009Workshop).

 

For the abstracts of the sessions I attended in SL, please see the links here:

 

Second life processes - 3 short paper(s)

300 Bioscience and forensic science students get a Second Life®

Rose Heaney, Stephanie Henderson-Begg, Olivia Corcoran

 

317 A fusion of mobile technology and Second Life in a learning environment to support the transition from school to university

Jane Magill, E Magill, B Canavan, A Devlin, M Pomerantz, J Trinder:

 

 

308 Dreams into [virtual] reality

Kate Boardman:

 

 

Visual redesign - 3 short paper(s)

155 Designing Engaging Visualisations to Support History Learning

Nic Earle, Shelley Hales

 

 

163 A Case of High Engagement: Applying immersive online gaming to History research skills.

Alex Moseley

 

313 Moving in 3D: The X, Y, Z of learning through doing in immersive, virtual environments

Helen Farley, Caroline Steel

 

 

Second life technologies - 3 short paper(s)

75 Designing game-based learning activities in Second Life

Maria Toro-Troconis, Martyn Partridge

 

 

206 If we dream it, will they come? The self-efficacy of students new to Second Life Learning

David Moffat, Kathryn Trinder

 

 

251 Virtual Reality: designing learning environments in Second Life

Fay Cross

 

 

Guest post by: Kathy Trinder and Linda Creanor, Caledonian Academy, Glasgow Caledonian University

 

 

Is the language of English law in need of fundamental reform?

Today, The Times reports on a debate chaired by Lord Justice Jacob on the motion The Language of English law is in Need of Fundamental Reform.  Organised by the English Project, the debate marked the anniversary of the Statute of Pleading in 1362 (647 years not being particularly significant, so I imagine the Statute was passed during this October week) which decried the use of French in English legal cases.

The suggestion that legal language with its "elaborate circumlocutions and Latin tags" should follow the fateful path of les mots français and be abolished in favour of plain English received a bit of a knockback:

For the reformers it was an open and shut case. As Gerlis put it, the traditional conventions — from the use of expressions such as “My learned friend” to Latin expressions such as lis mota and praecipe — were out of place when communication, through texting, was moving towards shorter words and expressions. Traditional legal language did not serve the public who were entitled to understand the rules and regulations that governed their lives, he said.

This was underlined by Clive Ludlow, a prison officer at Belmarsh, who spoke from the floor on behalf of Safe Ground, the education charity. He said that a survey of prisoners indicated that many were baffled by the legal arguments that determined their futures.

Atkins recounted her own recent and confusing experience with a lawyer. “It’s very important that I, as a client, understand what you, as my legal adviser, are saying.”

In response Gordon and Ley conceded that many complicated forms of expressions could be dropped. But the problem, they said, was not with English legal language but with the lawyers who used it — and who lapsed too readily into well-worn phrases.

Gordon said this was not the fault of the language. Its strength and vigour lay in a history of solid Anglo-Saxon words, with the occasional Latin and French term to provide consistency and concision. As Jonathan Croucher, of Taylor Wessing, pointed out: “The law is often not straightforward.” It was inevitable that some complexity would creep in.

As the debate progressed, the case for precision cut the ground from beneath the feet of the radicals. The “rushed” Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 highlighted the dangers that arose when seemingly clear words such as “pitbull terrier” were used. The public might think that they knew what the words meant, but that would not be enough in a court where exactitude and certainty were required, said Ley. Correctly used legal language would guard against these ambiguities.

Speaking from the floor, Professor Susan Nash, the Dean of the City Law School, City University, raised the issue of whether universities should share the blame for obscure legal communication.

She said that the need for “appropriate language suited to the listener” was heavily emphasised at law schools, such as her own, but the complexity of law inevitably meant that some technical language would have to be used — although only when essential.

The question hanging over the debate was whether the French today were doing any better than in the 14th century. Pascal Chadenet, of Salans, the Paris law firm, said that while French contracts were usually shorter than their English equivalents, French legal discourse was at least as confusing and often more complex. “When you read a decision of the French court you often don’t understand the question, let alone the answer,” he said.

Leon Pickering and Saad Butt, both law students, summarised the arguments, followed by Lord Justice Jacob, who, in his guidance to the audience, said: “In the courts one only saw the pathology of the law, not the physiology.” The point went home. The vote revealed that the audience had changed its mind and soundly rejected the motion.

The French did away with Latin themselves, according to the Ordinance of Villers Cotterêts in 1539, which made Parisian French the sole legal language, although not necessarily the sole language of the country (cf. lingua franca?!).  Stipulating:

"Nous voullons et ordonnons qu’ilz soient faictz et escrits si clerement qu’il n’y ait ne puisse avoir aucune ambiguïté ou incertitude, ni lieu à en demander interpretacion"

[We wish and command that [judicial acts] be made and written so clearly that there be neither ambiguity or uncertainty nor possibility of ambiguity or uncertainty, nor cause to ask interpretation thereof].  Humm, did this really work?!

Interestingly, more of my forensic anthropology students have studied 'Higher Latin' at school than my LLB students - nevertheless, my impromptu and ad hoc translations of actus reus and mens rea into the 'naught act' and the 'naughty thought' are sufficent to get the point across!  I haven't yet come up with a witty translation for res ipsa loquitur (although Hobhouse LJ states this is no more than a convenient Latin phrase) or res gestae, but answers on a comment/postcard please!

Blawg Review: On blogs and 'accidental' legal education (teach your children well...)

This week, Blawg Review #232 is hosted by Susan Cartier Liebel at Solo Practice University on World Teachers' Day. Held annually on October 5th since 1994, World Teachers' Day commemorates teachers’ organisations worldwide. Its aim is to mobilise support for teachers and to ensure that the needs of future generations will continue to be met by teachers.

For those who don't know, Blawg Review is carnival blog that is hosted by guest bloggers using their own blog site to provide content of a (usually specialist) theme.  It usually has a technology / IPR / alternative slant and, in the main, hosted by US bloggers.  There have been UK and Irish hosts in the past, most notably BabyBarrista (TimesOnline), CharonQC (Mike Semple Piggot), Cearta (Eoin O'Dell) and Lex Ferenda (Daithi MacSigthi).

This, it would appear, is the first blawg review to focus on legal education specifically, yet does so in a way that illustrates the 'Accidental Educator':

"Who is the accidental educator? In this case, the lawyer, regardless the myriad motivations for doing so, who shares his or her expertise that benefits many through the ever-expanding world of the internet. The tweeter who tweets one article that helps another find invaluable life-saving information and who continues to do so often and in random fashion. The lawyer who condemns in the court of public opinion a rule of law which is just plain wrong. But for this forum it might go unnoticed by the majority, unheard and unexplained. The opinionated who challenges you to rethink your position. The provocateur who baits others to engage in a much needed public debate. They are all educators if they make you think. They are all educators if they challenge your ideas, your biases, your beliefs. If they create and promote the conversation, they educate. You don’t have to agree, but you listen."

Susan then reviews and celebrates some of the blawgosphere's educators - again, mainly US but this does introduce the reader to further niches: bicycle law?

Last week, Colin Miller updated a list of US ‘legal educator’ blogs, following on from Daniel Solove‘s earlier census reports which were restrictedly solely to law professors.  It can be found on the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN) and downloaded here.

Whilst interesting to flick through, the organisation of this list is mainly by law school or blog title.  Some titles reflect the name of the blogger, such as Lessig Blog, or Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, others are plain subject titles such as the Mass Tort Litigation Blog, some might even be a collective effort from one particular institution: The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog.  Others, however, are less indicative of their content: Law Prof on the Loose!  What it does not do, is organise by field, subject or specialism – which might be of more use to those looking for a particular type of blog to read.

Miller does offer some stats on the (roughly) 60/40 male-to-female ratio for these bloggers, and that Harvard Law School leads the field with 23 bloggers on their faculty.  This does, as he observes, offer some “indication of where law schools stand in the blogosphere”, and it will be interesting to see if these observations change over time.  Interestingly, Harvard does not lead the table of ‘number of blogs on which educators at those schools post’.

In the light of Susan's comments on accidental educators, the authors of the blogs in the above list are clearly opining in one way or another, yet few comment on their approach to teaching.  Paul Maharg observed in his blog Zeugma that only one such blog focused on legal education as their primary theme: the Best Practices blog, maintained by Prof Mary Lynch and here are links to some of her recent posts:

So, what can we say about these legal bloggers?  Yes, they are giving an educational experience to the reader, but it is more than likely that the reader will be a fellow academic, a practicing lawyer,or other professional.  Less likely is that law students will read or engage with these blogs, other than perhaps blogs written by their own teaching staff. It might be interesting to consider whether bloggers are better at blogging an opinion or viewpoint than transmitting the same point whilst teaching a class.

Network Learning Hotseat Seminars

The Networked Learning Community will be holding their Seventh International Conference on Networked Learning in Aalborg, Denmark 3rd & 4th May 2010.  In the run-up to the conference, there are several online hotseats using discussion boards to facilitate a week-long debate by some of the leading thinkers in the field.   The first session is due to commence on 28th September 2009, with Caroline Haythornthwaite, a specialist in e-learning  from the University of Illinois.  The schedule is as follows:

• Caroline Haythornthwaite: Learning in Social Networks and Networked Learning – starting September 28th, 2009
• George Siemens and Steve Downes: Impact on Learning of Networked Technologies - starting October 26th, 2009
• Charalambos Vrasidas: Networked Learning and International Development - starting December 7th, 2009
• Grainne Conole: Theories and Methodologies for Research in Networked Learning - starting January 18th, 2010
• Gabriel Salomon and Rupert Wegerif: Globalisation and Interculturality in Networked Learning - starting February 15th, 2010
  And finally during March and April (dates to be announced) there will be hot seats hosted by the conference key note speakers:
• Yrjo Engstrom and Etienne Wenger.

The hot seats are free to attend. All you need to do is sign up at the conference community website and join the online hot seat debates. Social networking sites are becoming increasingly popular for academic conferences.  Last Year, LILAC09 took its first steps using a wiki as I discussed last year in this blog plost, whereas ALT-C used CrowdVine and LT2008 ran a Ning site to promote online social interactions.
In this particular instance, the Network are using the Jomsocial plugin for a Joomla community site to organise pre-conference events and  online discussion.  Typically, conferences have used such sites to facilitate rather than direct discussions, which can lead to very low, or very high uptake depending on the persons registered, their interests and motivation.  The use of 'hotseats' this year gives a bit of scaffolding to organise the discussions.  The conference guidelines for running a hotseat suggest that:

• The chair will present an introduction to the main topic of the seminar and its broader context and relevance to the networked learning conference.
• The chair of the seminar will bring together 2 or more discussants (co-presenters) who will lead a certain perspective on the seminar theme based on their own work/ research.
• The chair will moderate and organise the online seminar discussions.
• The chair is also responsible to bring the various discussion threads together and summarise the findings in relation to the theme of this seminar.

 So, hopefully the online events will not only facilitate and promote discussion, but also generate interest for the actual conference itself for those who can or cannot attend.