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Jon Harman and Scott Slorach: learning in the new digital age, lessons from @CollegeofLaw
An e-book is not an electronic form of a book.
I first encountered the iTutorial when I was a LLM student by distance learning by the College of Law. They are professionally presented, but I suppose that is neither here nor there. I like television news generally. The reason they work is that it’s possible to replay parts you don’t understand, and the ‘quizzes’ are very helpful to check progress.
That Jon Harman, Director of Learning at the College of Law, is interested in gaming is of no surprise. Jon is remarkably astute at environment sensing, which is the hallmark of all exceptional innovators. And “gaming”, and the approaches exemplified through the TED demonstrates, is what innovation is actually about. The success of any innovation is ultimately determined by its ease of use, how easily it can be explained, and how much people enjoying the innovation. It’s ideally meant to be an ‘easier’ way of doing thing, and the ultimate nirvana in education is for students to feel as if they’re learning for themselves in a relatively effortless manner.
This is where I feel gaming should perhaps come in, and Jon and Scott may in fact be ahead of their time. My own training was at Cambridge in neuroscience, and for a brief period in academic neurology, before I took a brief necessary detour in legal and business legal education. I am therefore concerned about how the brain works in practice. We have 1000 billion neurones, many of which make connections to one another, some functional, some not. The brain, in a way that a supercomputer might hope to be, probably has exploded in size in evolution due to the way in which combines information through ‘oscillations’ of neural activity. It’s long been of interest to Prof Horace Barlow at Cambridge, now retired but indeed Prof Colin Blakemore’s supervisor (Prof Blakemore has now head of the physiology department at Oxford for a long time), why the human brain often does functions which are subserved much ‘lower down’ in the animal kingdom, such as the fly’s eye.
The clue to this, I believe, comes from the design of the brain. The brain has rather specialised areas involved in planning, working memory, different types of factual memory, all the five senses (including especially vision), and of course movement. But sitting under the brain is of course the brainstem, and this has a fundamental role in motivation and arousal. And somewhere in the brain, probably near the front, is the part most connected with emotion (though it’s probably fair to say that the emotional state is spread quite widely throughout the entire body).
Learning is not just about learning a series of facts (or cases). Your state of mind, and indeed your mood or alertness, can both have significant effects on ‘how much you take in’, how much you are able to think on the spot, how much you are able to filter appropriate and inappropriate information, and how appropriate your solutions are. I think it is utterly reasonable for Jon and Scott to take this approach to how students can benefit from a learning process, and to think about how their learning materials can bring out the best in their students. That they have effectively come from the starting point of how the human brain actually works is of course a big honour to my own particular origin of my own learning, which are the fields of neuroscience and neurology.
@legalaware's experience of the #twegals #legaltweetup 2011 organised by @azrights
Important retraction: In the article below, Legal Bizzle should like to point out that the height stated is incorrect. It is – in fact – 6’7″. I deeply apologise for any offence caused therein.
TwegalsTweetUp may become a regular event for lawyers both in London and elsewhere. Anyone interested in law who tweets was welcome. The invite stated that, “if you are a Twegal, a Tweagle or haven’t got round to tweeting yet but would like to, you should join the conversation please come along.”
I must say that I had a really wonderful time.
It was a really nice group of people – that’s why I have tweeted this morning:
Sorry not to have seen @LegalBizzle there. Tbe place was awash with rumours about the Bizzle including how Bizzle was in fact ‘massive’ at 6′ 5”. It is in a fact thought that Bizzle’s boiler has only just been fixed and that Bizzle has had a heavy time in the law of commercial contracts.
Also, @CharonQC whose reputation in the world of legal Twitter is, quite rightly, enormous, couldn’t make it. However, I had a very encouraging conversation with those in the know about how Charonqc has contributed a great deal to legal education. On that note, I’d strongly recommend a follow to @colmmu (Jon Harman) a specialist in education at the College of Law. http://twitter.com/#!/colmmu
I should like to add that I had memorable, fascinating conversations with the College of Law media contingent and Netlaw media about the role of the media in education; very inspiring, innovative approaches.
The College of Law and Netlaw websites are linked to within this sentence. Much of the work of NetLaw media will help graduates including those of BPP in law. Their website provides that,
“Netlaw Media specialises in producing highly informative law related programs specifically tailored to deliver cutting edge presentations by renowned UK, European and Internationally acclaimed speakers and industry professionals. Our events integrate a formulated blend of strategies, case studies and interactive discussions and workshops to enable legal professionals to gain a leading edge in a constantly evolving and demanding marketplace.“
The event had some really high quality people there. Emily Goodhand is clearly very passionate about the law generally, but fielded apparently some interesting inquiries about the principles of copyright during the course of the evening. Ajeet Minhas was really buzzing about his business activities, and clearly has the energy of a young entrepreneur. Brian Inkster (and his legal practice) intrigues me because Brian has moved from being a faithful junior to setting up his own very successful professional legal services firm in Scotland. He has an interest especially in how specialist law firms are using Twitter (and the social media) to their business advantage. I further enjoyed talking with Emily aka @lawbore who was nothing like a bore, but very easy and helpful to talk with. Emily has created a very successful blog for law students, and one which I have referred to in fact in the course of my legal studies at a different law school (BPP Law School); it’s always interesting for me to appreciate what I get about the act of going to a legal library such as our one in Waterloo at BPP which is superb, additional to surfing the internet for contemporaneous legal services. The bottom line is, in fact, you can’t do everything online, and, at the very least, what legal research you decide to do online has to be effective!
Paul Gilbert, aka the @LBCWiseCounsel, was extremely easy to talk with, and a perfect communicator as his name might suggest! Daniel Hoadley, a law reporter for the Weekly Law Reports, Times Law Reports and Road Traffic Reports amongst others, caught my attention as someone clearly very sharp, but very modest; not much surprise he is a Barrister by training. I took it easy on the comfy sofa watching people have a good time – consequently, there were a few people I didn’t meet like @cyberpixie, but whose ‘reports’ were very positive. It was a thrill for me to meet in person David Allen Green, whose thoughtful contributions on Twitter I have been watching for a long time. David is a genuinely interesting person, who tires endlessly to further general legal awareness. I know many law students at undergraduate level, who learn from his informative, educational and entertaining blog, Jack of Kent. As it happens, I reckon I share David’s political ideology which is not so clear-cut, but the tagline of his blog as being ‘liberal and critical’ is possibly fair. People who know me on Twitter will know roughly where my interests lie, and it’s thus no accident I enjoy David’s writings in the New Statesman, whether writing on the practicality of enforcement of superinjunctions in the social media or the commodification of higher education.
The evening was organised by Shireen Smith, of Azrights http://www.ip-brands.com. Recently, Shireen produced a very thought provoking article on etiquette on Twitter, which needless to say some senior tweeters agreed with, but others didn’t. It’s a wonderful article though, whether you agree with it or not, and I recommend it. If you don’t happen to agree with it, it’s obviously interesting to have good reasons why, and some people have well-reasoned ideas. And, last but not leaat, Gavin Ward with whom I had developed my thoughts during my LLM research thesis on cloud computing, was a sheer joy to meet in person. Gavin and I share much common ground in terms of law interests in technology, and it is for this reason I would like to publish with him my research findings on the legal advice given to SME directors, from a sample I surveyed who are like me Associates of the Institute of Directors, and the precise rationale for this in national and international law. His blog has developed, rightly, with time much interest internationally; whilst it has exploded because of the launch of the iCloud, until relatively recently it had been a niche field which people were aware of but hadn’t quite grasped. His first rate blog is here.
My twitter handle is @legalaware ; please follow me on Twitter!
