More on Law School Laptop Policies

If you don't already know about the Tomorrow's Professor blog and newsletter, it's well worth the time to check out. It addresses issues commonly faced by professors of all disciplines, not just law, but there's a lot of relevance in there, especially on issues such as faculty politics and handling administrative quandary's from either side of the desk. Recently, the blog posted a summary of the current law school laptop debate. I thought it was interesting.

Along with the post on the laptop issue is another post on designing effective, innovative courses as an antidote to student boredom and apathy.

Podcast Series for New 2L's

The Suffolk Law School Legal Practice Skills department has put together the first of its podcast series, "Transitioning from One-L to Summer Legal Work." It features the advice about how students finishing their first year of law school can effectively take the skills they've learned during their first year and apply them in law practice. The advice on this topic comes from 19 legal writing professors from around the country. This is a site you'll definitely want to bookmark and share with your students as each new podcast series is produced.

Great Technology Resource for Civil Rights Profs

From the Chronicle's Wired Campus report:

Whether you want to supplement some great technology resources you already use or you want to ease into using technology, the two civil rights resources described below are a great way to engage Millennials in their study of civil rights. One of the great advantages to the Internet is the ability to show things easily that used to require proficiency in threading a reel-to-reel projector. Think of these digital libraries as the modern equivalent of the Cronkite "You Are There" TV series.

May 27, 2008
The Civil-Rights Era, Now on the Web

Voices and images from the civil-rights movement are now on the Web at the Civil Rights Digital Library, created by the University of Georgia.

The library features 30 hours of historical news footage showing such events as the
desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Ark., and Martin Luther King Jr. accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

The site also holds images of historical documents, diaries, and letters. The library joins other sites, such as Columbia University’s Amistad Digital Resource, in documenting the civil-rights era. —Josh Fischman

Millennials and Xers Throw Down

Most of my speaking, researching, and writing about generational differences is to advance the cause of understanding among the generations, particularly so that the legal education and law practice experiences can be more fulfilling for everyone.

That said, I still love a good generational slap fight. I urge everyone interested in generational differences to take a look at the whole Generation X-bashing piece at Radar Online. There's plenty to love about this (and for a particularly delicious guilty pleasure, treat yourself to the comments at the end, in which Xers lose their minds defending themselves). There's the obvious fun that everyone has not loving Generation X:

Their moment is over. Finally. They got more than they deserved, considering that Millennials outnumber them by nearly 50 million. There are more of us Millennials than there were Baby Boomers! We threaten to overshadow everything Generation X fought so hard for. Like Adam Sandler movies and extreme sports.

The problem isn't just with us, Gen Xers insist. It's our parents, the boomers. They coddled us. Told us we were special. Turned us all into entitled brats with overinflated senses of self-importance. Is this any more annoying than, say, a generation of depressive praise junkies desperate for anyone's approval? No one ever told Generation X they loved them! Cry us the muddy banks of the Wishkah.

What's really beautiful about the piece is the subtext about Millennial values. They don't want to be a knock-off version of some other great generation. They want to be a great generation in their own right. And they know they've got it in them.

This article demonstrates tremendous insight about how Millennials are perceived by other generations. I've not seen Xers or Boomers exhibit this kind of understanding of their place among the generations. And we all get a fresh crop of these folks in the fall! Yea!

Millennial Children of Bloggers

From About.com on Children Blogging:

According to WiredSafety.org, over 6 million underage children write blogs with or without their parents' knowledge. Blogging is particularly popular among children who see their parents blogging either professionally or personally.

Do you hear that . . .? That's the sound of my blood running cold.

XO2

Tech.Blorge reports that the One Laptop Per Child program (some call it a debacle) is coming back with Version 2.0, and this one will be $75:

Remember the $100 OLPC laptop that wasn’t? Well, now the second version
is allegedly going to cost $75. XO2 looks less like the XO than the Asus eeePC. It looks like an ebook reader and is projected to be available in 2010.

The new design is not an attempt to cash in on the ebook revolution that has been sparked by the Amazon Kindle, but rather to create something much more complex and simple at the same time.

Negroponte stated that this new form factor would create a multi-user, multi-purpose device. The new XO will be a dual touch screen device that can be used as a laptop (one side becomes a keyboard), an ebook reader, and an electronic board.

This new type of device can be used in the classroom by several children at the same time, hence the electronic board feature. The XO2 provides more options in the classroom since it is multifunctional without requiring multiple parts. Teachers can load hundreds of books on the new XO2, have children surf the web and type papers, as well, as use the device as a group activity.

Since it is essentially a foldable ebook reader with two touch screens, it is much lighter than the original XO and is expected to be more energy efficient as well.

It is currently unclear if the new ebook/laptop will be operating with a Windows or Linux OS. Either way, the system should sell better than the first XO. If the cost remains $75, OLPC may have created a winner on several fronts. Since most ebook readers cost between $150 and $500, the two for one program that OLPC ran with the original XO could easily sell out.

Selling 1 million of these new XO2s would happen in very little time. This
great and noble idea has spawned a laptop/ebook reader that will be cheaper and
more versatile than any other laptop or ebook reader currently found.

My husband bought one of the XO laptops for our daughters (nearly 5 and 7 1/2) through the "buy one, give one" program. It's so much slower than our home desktops and laptops, though, that the girls don't have a lot of patience with using it for the Internet. It's hard to imagine that the XO is a viable laptop option for school children with any familiarity at all with screaming fast desktops and laptops. However, it's probably a decent starter laptop for a child with no previous computer familiarity. The one thing my girls do love about it is the built-in video camera function. They did figure out very quickly on their own that the computer had a video camera and that they could operate it.

The XO2 looks a lot more like something that would capture the imagination of students with some computer familiarity, especially if its faster than the XO and functions as an ebook as planned. I have a Kindle, and my kids are dying to get their hands on it.

With the goal of the XO/XO2 being to get a laptop in the hands of every child on the planet, one has to wonder whether teachers in the developing world will eventually come to see the computers as an unwelcome distraction and try to ban them? Will law professors still be trying to ban them in 15 years?

Fishers of Compliments

Wired Campus reports something that's sweet and gratifying, but I'm not sure how much of a niche it fills:

May 23, 2008
Great, My Professor

Partly because he was fed up with childish comments on Web sites where students rate their professors, a business-school professor at Temple University has created an online forum for students who want to sound off. So as not to mislead students, the site’s title suggests its intent: “Thank You Professor.”

“There are so many vehicles for students to express their opinion,” says the site’s creator, Samuel D. Hodge Jr., chairman of the business school’s legal-studies department. “But there’s nothing really at the school where the professor can get a letter directly from the student.”

When the site went live on May 1, Mr. Hodge says, he expected about a dozen comments in the first week. Instead, more than 200 flooded in. He converts each note into a letter to the faculty member being praised, then makes sure the business school’s dean gets a copy.

Mr. Hodge moderates the comments, but so far there haven’t been any negative posts on the site, he says. For example, the four “thank you notes” left on the site so far for Rob B. Drennan Jr., an associate professor of risk, insurance, and health-care management, have been uniformly laudatory (three were signed, and one was anonymous). “I truly enjoyed his class,” wrote one student, Tom Coia. “Difficult and challenging, but isn’t hat what we want from school?” Contrast that to an anonymous comment concerning Mr. Drennan that a student left last spring on RateMyProfessors.com: “BOOOOO!!!!!”

Mr. Hodge, incidentally, has appeared on an MTV Web site of faculty members who “strike back” against comments on RateMyProfessors.com. He says Ohio State University is the onlyother institution he knows of that gives students a way to thank their professors on the Web.

Temple may extend the site to the whole university, he says: “It’s such positive reinforcement.” —JJ Hermes

Have students really been aimlessly engaged in a frustrating search for an anonymous outlet for their good feelings about their professors? If so, wouldn't that feedback be more effective as a counterbalance to negative feedback on RMP rather than as solitary brown-nositude on "Thank You Professor"? And, more importantly, could a female professor ever get away with fishing for compliments like this?

The Danger of Professors as Facebook Friends

The Chronicle of Higher Ed's Wired Campus reports that a professor learned through Facebook that students were surfing the web in class.

May 22, 2008
Professor Considers Laptop Ban After Reading About Distracted Student

Students may want to think twice before inviting their professors to befriend them on Facebook. Siva Vaidhyanathan, an associate professor of media studies and law at the University of Virginia, reveals on his blog this week that when he perused the Facebook page of one of his students — who had invited him to become her “friend” — he came upon a message she posted that described the activities of a distracted student in his class.

Mr. Vaidhyanathan said he commented on her post, by writing on her Facebook
page that he was amused. “The student in question was not amused, and he
apologized,” Mr. Vaidhyanathan writes on his blog.

The incident has led Mr. Vaidhyanathan to ponder whether he should ban laptops from his classes. The University of Chicago Law School, for one, recently removed
Internet access in most of its classrooms because of concerns about students surfing the Web during class.—Andrea L. Foster

Even if students invite you to be their Facebook Friend, you probably don't actually want to read their Facebook pages unless you're prepared to ignore pretty much everything but confessions of dangerous, academically dishonest, or illegal activity. If you can't resist the temptation to leave unsolicited comments, maybe you're not ready to be Facebook Friends with your students. Although the Internet has its own etiquette, some real world social rules still apply.

Millennials in Law: Managing Expectations

Two recent pieces present the chicken/egg conundrum of dealing with Millennials and Boomers in the same institution: Who should adapt to whom?

Richard Bottner, a 22-year-old management consultant (I know, I know . . .) urges employers to meet the high expectations of Millennials:

Bottner, who founded Intern Bridge of Acton, Mass., which studies student
expectations and experiences, will present data from 12,000 college
students.

The study asked what young people expected from internships, supervisors
and orientation sessions. A “Millennial” himself (born after 1981) it wasn't too
long ago that Bottner served in internships while attending Babson College in
Wellesley, Mass.

“I had a really bad internship and a really good internship,” Bottner said,
adding the Millennial generation “in general has much higher
expectations.”

Companies that offer rewarding internships will have an easier time
retaining them as workers, Bottner said.

Here's the response of Dan Hull over at What About Clients? to similar advice:

From a marketing e-mail I received today:

Are you frustrated by young workers who feel entitled to success, need
constant praise, want everything to be 'their way' ...? [YES.] Are you
struggling to attract and retain a generation of workers whose commitment seems
more temporary than permanent? [NO, WE DON'T WANT THEM HERE.]

This is Generation Y, a workforce of as many as 70 million, and the first
wave is just now taking their place in an increasingly multigenerational
workplace. [THAT'S NICE.]

In this 1-day seminar, we'll show you how to motivate and manage Generation Y. You'll learn what makes them tick, how to retain them, and make them productive and energized. [WHAT A WASTE OF TIME.]

It's your problem, Gen-X and Gen-Y. Not ours. Work, figure it out, ask questions, and we'll help you--but it's your job to adjust to "us" and the often hard adventure of learning to solve problems for your employer and its clients.

Whether I'm preparing to speak to a group of faculty, a group of experienced lawyers, or a group of students, I can count on being asked one question: "Why should we be the ones to adapt? Shouldn't *they* have to adapt to *us*?" Yep. Absolutely.

Each generation is the darling of their time's greatest adult-vexing contribution. For Boomers, it's rock 'n' roll and the culture surrounding it. For Millennials, it's the Internet and its culture. If these two ground-breaking generations find a way to work together, it'll be a sight to see. If each insists on digging in, though . . . well, it'll still be a sight to see; it just won't be a very pleasant sight.

[Thanks to Prof. Meredith Miller for the heads up on Dan Hull's post.]

Does NY City Principal Have Bar Passage Answer?

I've always said that if you want to know where the cutting edge in education is, head over to your local grade school. That's certainly true of emphasis on learning styles and introduction of teaching technology. But I wonder if it might also be true of bar passage at law schools.

There's a great story in the NY Times about a high school principal, George Leonard, who has succeeded in creating a system in which previously-unsuccessful students could succeed.

Mr. Leonard is a man of many solutions, many of them innovative, many of them, apparently, also effective. In New York City, only about 50 percent of students manage to graduate in four years. At Bedford Academy, 63 percent of the students qualify for free lunch, a majority are being raised by a single mother and another significant number are being raised by someone other than a parent. Yet close to 95 percent of students graduate, and virtually every one of those goes on to college.

That's exactly the turnaround some of us want in our bar passage rates. And many students at law schools of access struggle to surmount many of the same lifelong hurdles that Mr. Leonard's students struggle with. So how did he turn it around? In part, he uses the same strategies that many schools with low bar passage rates use: requiring that at-risk students participate in more education that focuses on the test itself. But he also approaches things from the teaching side, something that law schools are often loathe to do.

As all-powerful and bureaucratic as the Department of Education appears to so many parents, it allows room for carefully chosen educators to call their own shots, particularly in Empowerment Schools like Bedford Academy, where principals have an unusual amount of control over budget matters.

For Mr. Leonard, that autonomy means insisting that all entering students spend their Saturday mornings in preparatory classes the summer before they enroll.

“We tell them they can’t enroll in the fall unless they come over the summer,” said Mr. Leonard. “It’s not true, but we lie anyway.”

Autonomy also means an automatic weeklong suspension for any student who “disrespects a female,” said Mr. Leonard. [Wouldn't it be glorious if law school discipline policies that claim "no tolerance" of racism and misogyny actually worked this way?] It means requiring struggling students, in the weeks before the Regents exams, to attend studying sessions on Saturday from 9 in the morning until 9 at night. It means the most senior, experienced teachers, including Mr. Leonard, teach not the school’s academic jewels, but the most struggling students.

AND it means the school’s teachers administer almost no homework. “We found it was a waste of time for the teachers and the students,” said Mr. Leonard. Instead, they emphasize after-school tutoring where the teachers can keep a better eye on whether the student is actually grasping the material.

Quality control is all — quality of the teaching, that is, not the students. The exacting Mr. Leonard has let half his teaching staff go every year. His mandatory teaching technique involves constant testing, not to keep the students on their toes, but to let teachers know whether they’re getting through.

“Quiz them to death,” Mr. Leonard was advising a group of prospective principals in his office this week. “You need ways to monitor their progress that don’t depend on what they’ll just tell you. A kid can go to school all day and not remember a thing he’s learned except what he had for lunch.”

Millennial Texting is Sophisticated

From the Wired Campus blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education comes a report that Millennials' use of language in text messaging is actually a sophisticated hybrid form of communication, using both text message slang and formal grammar.

OMG, Teens' Online Chatting Is Linguistically Sophisticated

Despite the worries of their parents (and professors), teenagers’ use of language online is surprisingly sophisticated.

That’s the conclusion of two researchers from the University of Toronto, who looked at spoken and IM communications of 72 people ages 15 to 20. Instant messaging represented, they said, “an expansive new linguistic renaissance.”

The research will appear in a future issue of American Speech, and was reported first by New Scientist.

Sali A. Tagliamonte, a professor of linguistics, and Derek Denis, her student, found that instant messages mix up colloquial with formal language, creating a complex hybrid.

What’s more, teenagers are more likely to say “He was like, ‘What’s up?’” than to IM it. Online, their parents may be relieved to know, they tend to type “He said, ‘What’s up?’”—Lila Guterman

Recent studies estimate that Millennials spend as much as 6 hours a day communicating with peers in writing through text messaging, IM'ing and e-mailing. I can't help but think that this builds neural pathways in their brains that will make easier the transition to the types of formal writing they need to do in law school. Obviously, they should be taught that incorporating IM slang into their law school writing is inappropriate for something that will be turned in, but surely this new ability to communicate quickly with an abbreviated language makes at least note-taking easier

TMI (Too Much Information) in Law School?

There's another interesting piece on whether professors should participate in social networking. It's at Inside Higher Ed. This is the heart of the matter (and the piece):

For me, the issue over blogging, social networking and ‘Second Life’ has less to do with how you represent yourself in cyberspace, and more about how you regard your relationship with your students both within and outside the classroom. More often than not, the elephant in the classroom is the general malaise academics have with self-disclosure … be it face-to-face, or on Facebook.

There are benefits and drawbacks that accompany the fine act of balancing privacy and self-disclosure in the classroom. On the positive side, some of the most memorable and effective teachers have been those that make the connection between the personal and the political through self-disclose and sharing stories as a means to communicate with students. Critical pedagogues, feminist scholars, and progressive educators alike have rightfully argued that the time for a new paradigm of learning is long overdue. The new millennium may be the right time to reexamine our philosophical hesitancies to cross the digital line and engage in pedagogical experimentation online. For instance, online social networking and 3D simulations between faculty and students may help colleges and universities foster a stronger sense of community in the class, regardless of the physical limitations imposed by class size, or the interpersonal limitations contingent upon traditional markers of experience and identity through race, class, gender, etc.

On the negative side, as professors, we are often in the power position of soliciting self-disclosure and information from our students while we remain reserved about reciprocating. The imbalance comes in the varied forms in which students are graded and evaluated on assignments that draw upon their experiences and identities, such as journals, papers, speeches, presentations, and regular class discussions. Much like the “American Idol” singing critic Simon Cowell, the professor is placed in the power seat to judge the merits of such disclosures.

This power imbalance begs the question, how can faculty reveal more about themselves without compromising professional roles and responsibilities? Without giving up claims to authority and knowledge, are there ways that faculty can use new interfaces to reach out and encourage student interest and interpersonal dialog within and outside the class? While professors need to do more than adjust their ‘Facebook’ profiles and ‘Second Life’ avatars to make pedagogical inroads, embracing new technological means of expressing oneself and communicating online may be a
means to fostering creative and imaginative identities and social discourses that reflect a more diverse set of values, characteristics, principles, and goals.

As the adage goes, learning should not take place in an academic vacuum; rather it should be shared with the outside world. Online social networks, blogs, and 3D simulations may be a useful way to accomplish this task.

Moreover, the issue over how much to disclose to students comes at a time when
individuals are increasingly choosing to acknowledge their situated selves more
directly and overtly in their roles, work, and occupations. Academics and
professionals in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, journalism, and the
sciences have identified the need for more self-reflection and self-disclosure
on the part of the individual as researcher, interviewer and/or ethnographer.
Avatars, user-profiles, and online social networking may be a natural extension
of such ontological shifts.

I agree that the social networking thing has a lot to do with power. In fact, I think that many of the issues with technology in education have to do with the power privilege that professors enjoy and how much of that they're willing to give up to create better relationships with students and be more effective teachers.

The laptop issue is completely about power. Although this is likely not true 100% of the time, most of the people I've heard give pedagogical reasons for banning laptops sound pretty hollow. These are not professors who are generally known for their great concern about trends in pedagogy. Suddenly, now they're digging up educational theory and empirical studies to support something they want to do in the classroom? Girl, please.

Happy Millennial Mother's Day!

As the mother of two Millennials (girls, ages 4 1/2 and 7), I can tell you that it's good work if you can get it.

Although I've heard the stories of "helicopter parents" -- usually some tale of inappropriate parental involvement told with disdain -- the reality can be very touching. For example, I was privileged to be at Seton Hall around Valentine's Day for Prof. Paula Franzese's "Loving the Law" celebration with her Property students. On that day, students, professors, and guests celebrated their love affair with the law and their love for those who love the law.

Students invited honored guests from their lives, often parents. I watched as parents flanked their law student children proudly. The law students gave touching homages to the parents who had inspired and supported them in their pursuit of a legal career. Parents spoke proudly of their law student children who had shone joy into every corner of their lives. Parents also spoke, often a bit teary-eyed, about how grateful they were that their children were being nurtured into the profession. It was an outpouring of genuine love and connection that I just don't think would have gone quite the same way with my Xer peers and our parents.

I tried to imagine that same celebration 15 years ago, and the whole thing went quickly downhill in my mind as me and my friends sat tensely between our parents, who didn't send us to law school to be nurtured like flowers but to be tempered like steel. (I could just hear my dad saying, "What the hell????" as my friends and I cast desperate glances at each other as we prayed to be sucked into the floor.) Say what you want about "helicopter parents," but that parenting style has accomplished quite a bit. My Millennial students are, for the most part, motivated, hard-working, soft-hearted, respectful, and justice-seeking. It's what I'd want from a lawyer; it's what I want for my daughters.

So congratulations Millennial Moms! You've done good.

New Orleans Day 3 (4/22)

You might wonder why the gap between describing Day 2 and Day 3 in New Orleans. The truth is that I am of two minds about New Orleans schools. We were taken on a tour of New Orleans schools in Day 3 to help us figure out how to write a brochure (well, to help the students write a brochure; my job was strictly formatting) that helps displaced New Orleanians get their kids back in school. I was left with a pretty optimistic picture of New Orleans schools, despite rumblings here and there that things weren't going well everywhere. When I got back, a New York Times story about New Orleans schools made the picture considerably murkier. And frankly, 38 years of southern racism indoctrination make it hard for my Indignation Meter to register some injustices as high as it ought to. I come from a deeply racist time, place, and people. I appreciated going to New Orleans with native Northeasterns, who instinctively spot racism and injustice that it's taken me two decades of intentional education to be able to spot.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. So rather than try to describe what I saw, I've linked the pictures with some explanatory captions.

Here's what may not come through in the pictures and what's most relevant to this blog. The students (all Millennials in this group) were both fun and professional to work with. A lot of good lawyering went on during this day and Day 4. They were thinking about the client (Common Ground) and the client's clients (people who needed information about the school system). They asked good, insightful questions, and they didn't shy away from asking difficult, pointed questions -- but they did it respectfully and professionally. I saw nary a Millennial try to hog the spotlight or show off. It was purely a team effort. What was really impressive was how they could be daffy 20-somethings in the car (see first few photos) and switch immediately into professional mode when it was time to work. Enjoy the pictures!

P.S. We're about 50 shy of that 101 Classroom Uses for a Cellphone, so keep 'em comin'!

101 Classroom Uses for a Cellphone

Steve Demby gets us started with ten that he thought of off the top of his head, but I'm determined that we can come up with 92 more. There are both students and professors who read this blog, so what can you think of (that's constructive and serves some educational purpose) that you can do with a cellphone in a classroom?

Here are Steve Demby's 10:

1) Check the spelling/definition of a word
2) Research a topic
3) Look up reference images
4) Pull up maps (even with satellite imagery)
5) Document a science lab with built in digital camera/video
6) Fact check on the fly
7) Mail questions to the teacher that they might be embarrassed to ask
8) Classroom response system
9) Take quizzes
10) Record and/or listen to podcasts

So post away! If you're reading this post, add a comment with at least one (yet unnamed) way to use cell phones in the classroom. Let's assume that the phone has standard phone capabilities as well as text-messaging, pictures, mp3 sound, video, and Internet. If your idea requires some kind of add-on beyond that (like a stand-alone keyboard) be sure to note that. If you're reading this post on a blog other than Millennial Law Prof, be sure to click over to MLP to leave your idea.

Hit it!

Xers & Balance

As if you needed further proof that Xers are more concerned with balance than their Boomer parents or older sibs, check out the Valorem Law Group.

These are definitely the pragmatic mid-lifers that Howe and Strauss describe.