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Using TECHNOLOGYTo Teach Effectively: Confessions of a Bleeding Edge Professor (Pg 3)
In my Constitutional Law I and II classes, I have been using Barron, Dienes, McCormack, Redish, Constitutional Law: Principles and Policy, 5th ed., simply because it was the first, and so far only, constitutional law casebook available in an electronic edition. I acquired my own laptop for classroom use (a hint from my experience: be sure your laptop has a CDROM drive, since some materials are available only in that format and it is faster than diskette). I loaded both the "Office" suite (which includes FolioViews, a database management software) and the casebook onto the hard drive. (The hard drive also had Windows 95 and Word 7.0 on it, enabling me to move around other software programs easily and to compose notes in a wordprocessing program.)
I loaded the Barron, Dienes casebook into FolioViews to take advantage of that system's remarkable editorial features. These include various linking capabilities like jump links and pop-up notes; electronic "sticky-notes" that function in that medium like the 3M Corporation's "Post-It" notes on hardcopy; a powerful search function that uses Boolean connectors and that indexes every word in the database; and a bookmark.
To prepare for class each day, I read the electronic version as I would the book, highlighting in various colors to denote issues, holdings, or my inserted notes. I also usually compose an outline of some or all of the day's work in Word. In class, I project the /images of text pages and my notes onto a screen, which powerfully reinforces students' learning because it adds a visual dimension to the aural.
Student response to the innovation has been favorable, especially from more visuallyoriented individuals. The one negative comment that recurs is that students often get distracted trying to find the highlighted passage on the screen in their casebooks, a challenge that will be eased a little when the E-casebooks incorporate parallel hardcopy page citations. Aside from that, students appreciate the convenience of having appropriate text passages designated vividly
In the law school's new facility, Winifred MacNaughton Hall, electronic teaching capability will be built into some of the classrooms. A dropdown RGB projector will be built into a dropped ceiling, while a teaching cart, similar to those already in use in the Maxwell School's Eggers building will provide an on-board computer (with its own monitor beneath a glass surface); a high-tech overhead projector with 3-D and opaque capability; slide, film, and audio capability; and data connections, enabling the instructor to tap into Westlaw, Lexis, Nexis, and other on-line services while teaching.
The electronic classroom, a fantasy only a decade ago, is becoming a reality today at the College of Law, helping prepare our graduates for a world where computers have become indispensable in the office and the courtroom.
 
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