Second Life in Legal Education
Some time ago we noted that Charlie Nesson at Harvard Law was planning to use Second Life for a course he and his daughter were teaching. Now I learn that at Seattle University School of Law Elizabeth Townsend Gard used it in her first year Property Course. The description of the course and how it incorporated Second Life can be found on Terra Nova; and you can watch the video descriptions of the student projects on the blog set up for that purpose. Judging from what I saw, and speaking as a one-time property teacher, I think we have a way to go before Second Life contributes more to learning than to the wow factor.
Rather more interesting is a Wikispace that is devoted to Second Life in education and provides a detailed list of Educational Uses of Second Life, useful resources for educators, and pointers to Second Life online resources. I didn’t know, for instance, that Second Life has built-in tools that can be used to construct tutorials. Mind you, there’s a great deal I don’t know about Second Life. For instance, I didn’t know that there’s apparently a building there (is there a there there?) styled the Second Life Bar Association — apparently empty most of the time.
Regarding the SLBA, I started the organization last year and we got rolling with regular meetings about a month ago. It’s an informal professional organization, helping legal professionals, scholars, and other interested people navigate the SL legal landscape. There’s a website at http://www.slba.info (pretty bare bones, but it links to forums which are quite active).
The SLBA has close to 160 members, about 120 of whom have logged in within the last 30 days. The office isn’t staffed full time, but I’m there at least daily (as the avatar ‘Benjamin Noble’) and we’re working on a solution that will let visitors page any member who is online (and who is willing to be contacted) from the desk. That all said, we’re outgrowing the office, so we’ll likely move to a bigger parcel in the next few months.
Though I don’t usually call attention to my own stuff in comments, I think that my blog will be relevant to your readers as I often highlight legal education in virtual worlds. The site is http://www.virtuallyblind.com — legal education is just a subset of the site. Generally, VB focuses on what I’m calling “virtual law” (legal issues that impact virtual worlds).