Remote Controlled Teaching

This story about teachers using "clickers" in university and law school class rooms is fascinating:

For these and other professors across the nation, the newest aid in the classroom is a small wireless keypad, linked to a computer. Students answer questions not by raising their hands but by punching buttons, with the results appearing on a screen in the front of the room.

Although some skeptics dismiss the devices as novelties more suited to a TV game show than a lecture hall, educators who use them say their classrooms come alive as never before. Shy students have no choice but to participate, the instructors say, and the know-it-alls lose their monopoly on the classroom dialogue.

Professor Wilde has her students answer multiple-choice questions to gauge whether she is getting her point across and adjusts her lectures accordingly. "I can instantly see that three-quarters of the class doesn't get it," she said.
. . .

The devices look and work much as a television remote does, sending infrared signals to a receiver at the front of the classroom. The receiver is connected to a computer, which tabulates and analyzes the responses. The data can be displayed by an overhead projector, incorporated into a spreadsheet or posted on a class Web site. Responses are anonymous among the students, but not to the teachers, who can identify students by the serial numbers of their clickers.

Doesn't that sound awesome? I'm not sure how these clickers would integrate with discussion; it seems a teacher would have to be well-prepared and very flexible to encourage regular, productive give-and-take of classroom discussion in addition to having time and opportunity to make the clickers useful. But that's just it; if teachers are forced to think a bit more about how they present information, and if students are constantly forced to engage, I bet learning improves. Maybe it's just the tech-fan in me, but I would have loved to try to make use of these things in the English classes I used to teach, and I would have loved to use them as a student in the past year of law school. [link via JD2B, which also links to an abstract of a forthcoming journal article on the subject of using clickers in law classrooms]

Posted 06:24 AM | Comments (2) | law school life generally

Background Checking 1L Summer

Although it's been pretty much all finals all the time around here for a while, I do realize life will go on after Thursday at 5 p.m. when finals are over. In fact, I start work as a public defender intern on the 17th. I haven't had time to give it a great deal of thought, but I'm definitely looking forward to it. On an application for summer funding, my future supervisor described my summer job as follows:

The student will assist his supervising attorney by conducting factual investigations. He will interview witnesses, collect significant client records of treatment, photograph crime scenes and prepare trial exhibits. He will also conduct legal research. He will prepare legal memoranda and pleadings. He will assist his supervisor in court at trials and hearings.

Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Filling out paperwork in preparation for the job (mostly for background checks so I can spend my summer in jail), I get this twice:

You are advised that all information given this questionnaire will be investigated and any inaccurate, untruthful, or misleading answers may be cause for rejection.

Yikes. I guess this is when I appreciate the fact that I was always one step ahead of the cops during my youthful crime sprees. Kidding! But I also have to authorize "the release of the following data or records:" employment, including military; bank, savings, loans & investments; credit; education; medical & military medical; selective service (such an unfortunate name when reduced to an acronym, no?); veteran's administration; police & judiciary; arrests/convictions (criminal & traffic); prior polygraph information; birth and citizenship.

I wonder how long it will be before forms like this also require disclosure of any websites, blogs, or discussion fora to which you are a regular contributor. Maybe never, but I do wonder what I'm going be able to say here on ai about whatever it is I'm doing this summer. Speaking of which, this post inaugurates a new ai category: "1L Summer." I hope to populate it with hilarious and breathtakingly compelling anecdotes and observations (or just random notes about my summer experience), if that's possible. Since starting ai I haven't needed to be too concerned about what my employer might have to say about what I write here; I've been unemployed for a year now, and before that I worked for a public university and I didn't worry too much what it thought. Something tells me working at a public defender's office will raise all sorts of fun "can I say that on tv?" questions. We'll see.

Posted 05:58 AM | Comments (1) | 1L summer