A technological trifecta: using videos, playlists, and Facebook in law school classes to reach today's students.

• Author: Anthon, Dionne

This essay examines how law school education can be modernized through the use of technology. First, the essay acknowledges that the current use of technology in most law school classes lacks appeal to students today. It briefly explores the use of PowerPoints, podcasts, and clickers and suggests that students have grown bored with this technological trio because of overuse and familiarity. Second, the essay proposes that today's students will be better served in class if professors would use the technology that students more typically use. It advocates for the addition of pop culture videos, music playlists, and Facebook groups to law school classes. Finally, the essay proposes a methodology for incorporating the technological trifecta into law school classes and the advantages of doing so.

1. INTRODUCTION II. POP CULTURE VIDEOS III. MUSIC PLAYLISTS IV. FACEBOOK GROUPS V. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION

   As professors, we know the importance of using technology to enhance our teaching techniques to reach all of our students. We experiment with PowerPoint demonstrations for our visual learners, podcasts for our audio learners, and clickers for our tactile learners. We also appreciate the importance of keeping things lively in legal writing classes because of the nature of the material. Some students complain that legal writing is boring, and, in reality, it can be. Although we might be intrigued by Bluebook rule 5.1 and ALWD rule 47, and we might also care deeply about the nuanced distinctions between CREAC, IRAC, and TREAT, (1) some of our students may be less enthused, especially if they have been sitting in class for over an hour and are working on a second or third draft of an assignment. To keep them engaged and on track with much of their work, we require them to do a variety of classroom activities that involve thinking, working, and sharing, while we employ the technological trio of PowerPoints, podcasts, and clickers to enhance our lessons.

   We suspect, however, that this trio is not keeping legal writing lessons as fresh as some professors might believe. Consider the first time you employed clickers in the classroom. (2) Can you remember the buzz of excitement it caused or the pride you felt at the gasps made by surprised students when the poll results were displayed? We are betting that clickers have not triggered that type of reaction in quite a while. How about those PowerPoints or podcasts? Have they produced any excited utterances lately? Probably not. The familiarity brought about through the routine pedagogical use of PowerPoints, podcasts, and clickers causes students to become less excited and, thus, often less interested in the material we are covering.

   In addition, most of our students are either Millennials (3) or part of the iGeneration, (4) two generations that use technology extensively--not only in academic but also in social and individualized ways. Both of these generations are accustomed to (1) researching and writing their school work on computers, (2) customizing their individual choices into music and television playlists, and (3) connecting and socializing with others through a variety of social media tools. Technology is not used only academically; rather, it is engraved into every aspect of our students' lives.

   The common goal of fully engaging our students inspired us to race against technological aging and familiarity and look for ways to go beyond the use of PowerPoints, podcasts, and clickers in our classrooms. Our race finished with the addition of a technological trifecta comprised of pop culture videos, music playlists, and Facebook groups. We added all three to our legal writing classes to incorporate more fully the academic, social, and individualized aspects of our students' technology use and to keep our material fresh and appealing.

2. POP CULTURE VIDEOS

   Popular culture videos bring the law to life for students and serve as strong reference points when covering material. For example, our students' first writing assignment analyzes New York's Right of Privacy statute. (5) The law prohibits the use of a person's name or likeness in advertising without the person's consent. To bring the statute to life for students, we share several examples of individuals with claims brought under the statute, ranging from President Obama (6) to the Naked Cowboy. (7) Our favorite examples feature a Super Bowl commercial and rap video connected by a pop culture star.

   First, to encourage students to think about what the right of privacy statute is designed to protect, we show an E*Trade Super Bowl commercial that sparked a right of privacy lawsuit. (8) The E*Trade commercial shows a funny conversation between a baby and his girlfriend about why the two did not meet the previous night. The girlfriend accuses her boyfriend of having been with "Lindsay," a "milkaholic." When we discuss the commercial in class, most students are surprised to learn that the commercial sparked a lawsuit. At least one student inevitably recalls that Lindsay Lohan sued E*Trade for $100 million. (9) Most students, however, are still surprised because they did not connect the reference to "Lindsay" in the commercial with Lindsay Lohan. We then direct the discussion more generally to what qualifies as a person's name or likeness under the statute, which is the issue students must address for their first writing assignment, in the context of a different set of facts.

   As students work on their assignment, they outline the privacy statute to familiarize themselves with its requirements. After reviewing these outlines in class, we provide students with a copy of the complaint from the Lohan v. E*Trade lawsuit. (10) Students first chuckle at our source for the complaint, celebrity gossip source TMZ; yet, as they read through it, they discover that the elements of the statute from their outlines are the basis for the allegations of the privacy claim in the complaint. This pop culture example not only is entertaining, which keeps students engaged, but also shows students why attorneys must understand a statute's requirements.

   Our second pop culture example tests our students' understanding of the statute. We play the music video for rapper Pitbull's "Give Me Everything" in class so students hear the lyric "I got it locked up like Lindsay Lohan." (11) We then explain that Ms. Lohan sued (again) under the New York statute because of the lyric. (12) Now that students have outlined the statute, they are in a better position to debate whether the lyric violated Lohan's privacy rights. While we could use hypotheticals to develop our students' statutory analysis skills, we find that the pop culture videos create a tangible context for learning that is fun and memorable.

3. MUSIC PLAYLISTS

   The addition of a music playlist to the legal writing course stemmed from a technological mishap when the Pitbull video popped back up and started playing at the end of a Thursday night class at 10:00 p.m. Realizing how much the students perked up at hearing the song again...