CALIopolis

We conducted a survey of law students who are in the classess of faculty who are participating in the Legal Education Podcasting Project and the summary results are reported here LEPPMidSemesterSurvey.pdf.[pdf]

There were 388 student responses from 18 different law schools with the University of Baltimore School of Law topping the list with 69 responses (Thanks Baltimore!).

Respondents were about 2/3 (62%) 1Ls and the rest 2L and above.

Note that not only has this project been an introduction to podcassting for the faculty, but that almost 80% of the students had never listened to a podcast.

Over 1/4 of the students have listened to five or more podcasts, though 1/3 have listened to none or only 1 podcast. This number looks better when compared to the number who plan to listen to the podcasts in preparation for final exams.

Over 2/3 of all respondents rated the podcasts as Excellent or Above Average which is a good sign that students appreciate the availability of this media for their studies.

The real gold in this survey is in the student comments. To keep student responses anonymous, I will summarize their responses in a seperate post.

danah boyd is one of the most insightful bloggers on the net and in a recent post she talks about "super publics".

"...In talking about "super publics," I want to get at the altered state of publics - what publics look like when they are infused with the features of digital architectures. What does it mean to speak across time and space to an unknown audience? What happens when you cannot predict who will witness your act because they are not visible now, even though they may be tomorrow? How do people learn to deal with a public larger and more diverse than the one they learned to make sense of as teenagers? How are teenagers affected by growing up in an environment where they can assume super publics? I want to talk about what it means to speak for all time and space, to audiences you cannot conceptualize...." - link to article

This quote made me think about how the Constitution was written for the super public across time and for that matter, how judges write their opinions knowing that they will be read and interpreted over long periods of time into the future.

I would bet that there someone has studied how case opinion writing has elements of writing with an eye towards the future - and how that makes it different from other kinds of writing.

The left-rigft blogoshphere makes a lot of hay out of juxtaposing a politicians words then and now because changing your mind is a bad thing, but when a judge writes an opinion - its like a time capsule or a message in a bottle that will wash up on thousands of future digital shores with who-knows-what impact.

This is what makes the Supreme Court so darn interesting. They write for the ages and they know it. Boldness is not a good trait IMHO.

Ms. boyd also says....

"... A reporter recently asked me why kids today have no shame. I told her it was her fault. Media is obsessed with revealing the backstage of people in the public eye - celebrities, politicians, etc. More recently, they've created a public eye to put people into - Survivor, Real World, etc. Open digital expression systems coupled with global networks took it one step farther by saying that anyone could operate as media and expose anyone else. What's juicy is what people want to hide and thus, the media (all media) goes after this like hawks. Add the post-9/11 attitude that if you hide something, you are clearly a terrorist. Should it surprise anyone that teenagers have responded by exposing everything with pride? What better way to react to a super public where everyone is working as paparazzi?..."

Wow.

This reminded me of that old saw about imagining that every one is in their underwear if you are nervous about giving a speech - except in our digital future (and teenage digital present) - everyone is sitting their in their underwear and everyone else is taking pictures. It's the democratization of Candid Camera or America's Funniest Videos - except it gets kind of tiresome after awhile.

Maybe that's the solution to future privacy - not that we will have any, but that we are lost in the crowd. Unfortunately, digital media doesn't keep us lost if someone is interested.

A few years back, I became lost to Google. In the late 1990's you could Google 'John Mayer' and you find me or some presentation I had given on the first page. Today, it's all about some singer who won a Grammy and who my niece says is really cool. Maybe my generic name is a blessing?