It's been a few months since I've posted to Slaw (tsk, tsk) so I thought I'd try and redeem myself and share two legal research wikis that I've created using PBWiki, for two courses I'm teaching this term. The first one is CML1101: Principles of Legal Research. It's for all first-year students in the Common Law English program at uOttawa. I'm teaching the bulk of the sections (8) while my colleague teaches the rest (4) as well as the equivalent course for all first-year students in Common Law French. Another colleague is instructing all first-year Droit civil students in legal research. Yup, we're busy.

The other course is one that I'm co-teaching en français pour la première fois, DCL5501: Méthodologie de la recherche juridique which is for graduate students. The wiki for this course is not as robust as the first one (yet). However, I did manage to add one link after reading Simon's post on Obiter2. It's truly a fantastic resource!

Over the next few weeks' I'll be adding content to both of these public wikis, destined of course for our students, but I hope some of the information and resources might be of use to other legal research instructors (why reinvent the wheel?!). Of special note is a legal citation tutorial I created over the summer using Adobe Captivate. It was my first attempt at an online tutorial so I'm sure some improvements could be made.

C'est tout pour le moment, Slawyers! Bonne rentrée!

Almost two years ago, Simon C. posted this entry about the many distractions created in the Information Age. Two years later, we're probably just as distracted but now we need to worry about whether the Internet is messing with our intelligence. In the July/August issue of Atlantic Monthly, Nicholas Carr asks: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?."

I'm glad I'm not the only know who's noticed that longer texts are much tougher to absorb and that "power skimming" is what I regularly do. However, I'm still very much amused by the fact that I once bought a book on how to speed read and never got through the whole book! There's your chuckle of the day at my expense :)

So the University of Ottawa recently became a member of the New Media Consortium, "an international 501(c)3 not-for-profit consortium of over 260 learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies" based in Austin, Texas.

You'll find some amazing content on their website which I have yet to fully explore. However, I might start off reading their 2008 Horizon Report [pdf], "that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education".

With membership to this consortium, you can opt to join the Technical and Pedagogical Discussion List. I've only been on the list for a day or so and I've already read some really fascinating and rich discussion threads. It's a private list so perhaps I'm not at liberty to divulge all that's been going on but let's just say that the topic of experimentation with Facebook and MySpace in academia was brought up. One article that someone pointed to describes BJ Fogg's "Psychology of Facebook" course. Très intéressant…

I was searching for a free Visio-like product today and luckily came across this great website that lists open source software alternatives to commercial products:

The site allows you to browse through various software categories and compare pros and cons of both commercial products and open source software.

The editor of this site, Anders Ingeman Rasmussen, boldly states in a sort of fortune cookie way: If you want success, open source is the way to go.

Who knew the answer was so simple…

Thought I'd pass along this excellent resource that was featured in a message posted to the NCALL listserv today by Neal Ferguson of Borden Ladner Gervais LLP in Ottawa. It's a PowerPoint by Catherine Best of Best Canadian Guide to Legal Research fame that was used at a presentation to the Vancouver Association of Law Libraries last month. It's available here.

The CanLII interface is also reviewed.

This will certainly be useful for legal research sessions when people start asking why they should use one resource over the other….

While Scrabulous is still dealing with various legal and copyright issues and two game companies are rumoured to be creating legitimate online versions of the game, one can easily forget about the joys of playing this board game for real. Yes, with real live people, pen and scorepad (and calculator for us mathematically-challenged), an agreed upon dictionary, and a few hours to kill, you too can spell your way to fun! But why not take it one step further and participate in Frontier College's Scrabble Night in Canada:

The SCRABBLE® Friends and Family Challenge is a SCRABBLE® event that raises money for literacy. During the month of March, SCRABBLE® enthusiasts across Canada invite friends and family to their homes, challenge each other to a friendly game of SCRABBLE® and ask them to make a donation to Frontier College, Canada’s literacy organization.

Happy Scrabbling, one and all!