First few days of school are like a boot to the head. It turns out fear really does work as a pedagogical device. And honestly, I feel like I’m learning quite a bit- which is scary in and of itself.
First day, waiting for it all to start.
My distinguished prof, Michael Sovern. Yes, he has a wikipedia entry. And a bronze bust.
From Prof. Sovern, we learned about a choo-choo train. (Just kidding. We haven’t learned yet, just taken a quiz. The learning apparently comes after the quiz in law school. :)
What do people do with their laptops in class? When I was an undergrad (’98-’02) there still were very few laptops in classes, but based on that photo 4 out of 5 law students use one. Is it mostly for note-taking or is it for web cross-referencing? I took notes in Tomboy during the recent SIGGRAPH conference, but I felt like I would have preferred a spiral notebook and a pen.
Drudge Report, Facebook, IM… and yeah, notetaking- I think MS Word is the most common note-taking tool, though I’ve seen some uses of OneNote. I find that (1) the non-searchability of paper (2) the slowness of my handwriting and (3) the ugliness of my handwriting make the computer a better tool. I’d say about 75-80% of the class uses a computer and not paper.
If Tomboy allowed me to create templates, and slightly better formatting (mainly outlines) I’d think about using it. Right now I’m using Abi, and shutting off network when I walk into the classroom.