Technology in Search of a Pedagogical Justification
Back in January, in a post about Cyberlaw I mentioned that my civil procedure exam last semester featured an extended hypothetical question based on a thinly disguised spoof of the interactive virtual world SecondLife. Shortly thereafter, a student pointed me to one of the strangest sites I've seen on the web, a series of screen shots of Judge Richard Posner giving a talk in SecondLife. But the strangest use of SecondLife by a legal professional has to be the following video from last year of Harvard Law Prof Charles Nesson, his avatar, and his daughter's avatar, showing just how cool (stoned? ) they are.
I can't tell from the video whether Nesson's journey to SecondLife was successful, but ventures like his and Posner's do suggest to me that we have reached the point where the technology outpaces our ability to use it productively. About 10 years ago, as an experiment in my constitutional law class, I included Powerpoint presentations in each of my lectures. I quickly discovered that the blackboard worked better. I suspect we'll come to the same conclusion about things like SecondLife soon enough.
(Of course, a blog is a COMPLETELY different story. That's an incredibly smart use of technology.)
I can't tell from the video whether Nesson's journey to SecondLife was successful, but ventures like his and Posner's do suggest to me that we have reached the point where the technology outpaces our ability to use it productively. About 10 years ago, as an experiment in my constitutional law class, I included Powerpoint presentations in each of my lectures. I quickly discovered that the blackboard worked better. I suspect we'll come to the same conclusion about things like SecondLife soon enough.
(Of course, a blog is a COMPLETELY different story. That's an incredibly smart use of technology.)
posted by Michael C. Dorf @ 12:10 AM
1 Comments:
At 7:53 AM,
Luis Villa said…
Charlie's class (a semester-long journey) has a blog, of course.
My sense is that Charlie's goal (indeed all of Berkman's goal) is less purely pedagogical and more exploratory- does this make sense? will it work? what will it work best for? This is not stuff that Harvard is historically very good at, so you have to give them some credit.
My sense, having participated in a conference at Berkman which was 'simulcast' into secondlife, was that it added little-to-nothing for those who attended in person, but for those who were not able to attend, it was a big plus- they were able to 'socialize' (albeit virtually) with fellow virtual conference-goers in a way they would not have been able to with just a webcast or a chat room.
If you want an area where second life is really, really, really ill-suited, try mass presidential politics. Link not safe for anyone bothered by the term "shittingdicknipples."
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