Tech in Law School and Beyond-Part 3

Two other popular methods of online writing, blogs and wikis, are also becoming more commonplace within law schools as learning aids. Wikipedia, the most commonly-known form of a wiki, has gained notoriety for inaccurate citations and content due to its open collaborative editing set-up. However, according to Beth Simone Noveck, the collaborative content writing and editing process of creating a wiki for information sharing is useful in an academic setting like law school classrooms. She argues, "Through the public exchange of reason, we learn to air our differences in peaceful, rational ways that force us to think as members of a community, rather than only as individuals. Wikis are ideally suited to the deliberative and collaborative development of knowledge (7)." Noveck also suggests that individual classes in law schools could set up their own wikis for important concepts and terminology. That way, law students learn to not only read wikis critically and check facts but to also utilize new knowledge through collaborative article writing (7).

Along with wikis, blogs have also become prominent as new opportunities for legal scholarship. Law professors have created blogs on their academic areas of focus, such as tax law, government and politics, intellectual property, etc. Many law professors actually use blogs as supplemental material for courses they're teaching and use student comments and feedback for in-class discussion topics. Blogs are also useful for collaborative projects between law professors and students; along with helping their professors with special topic blogs, law students are also encouraged to begin their own blogs for independent legal research projects. Additionally, blogs allow law professors from different schools to collaborate on long-distance research and create interdisciplinary project opportunities with scholars from outside fields (Berman 1052). Thus, despite the overall negative perception of online sources and writing tools in the academic realm, blogs and wikis are developing into helpful learning devices for both law students and professors.

Sources:
Berman, Douglas A. "Bloggership: How Blogs Are Transforming Legal Scholarship: Scholarship In Action: The Power, Possibilities, And Pitfalls for Law Professor Blogs." Washington University Law Review 84 (2006): 1043-1060. LexisNexis Academic. Web. 17 Nov 2009.

Noveck, Beth Simone. "Wikipedia and the Future of Legal Education." Journal of Legal Education. 57.1 (2007): 3-8. Print.