Blogs As Law School Pedalogical Teaching Tools

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an interesting April 29, 2008 entitled A Class Blog Studies Fair Use which is about a blog run by Case Western Law School Professor Peter Friedman. The Blog is entitled What is Fair Use and as far as I could tell, students post information in response to topics that may be discussed in class. As the article states:

The blog, created by associate professor Peter B. Friedman, supplements a legal analysis and writing class. Each semester the students are given a legal problem that’s used in their writing assignments. Mr. Friedman said this is the first time he’s used a blog to extend class discussion, and the second time he’s chosen a fair-use issue for the course theme (the previous fair-use problem covered Google’s library digitization project).

“Of all the things I’ve tried, the blog has been the most successful in promoting discussion,” Mr. Friedman told the Chronicle. “It’s certainly especially suited to fair-use discussions, since we can post videos.”

What a wonderful use of technology. The trick is finding a way to incorporate blogs into class.

Mitchell H. Rubinstein