Thursday, November 29, 2012

On-Line Teaching and Its Infinite Possibilities

In this month's MIT Technology Review.  The report has several articles worth reading.  Instapundit links to one of them, "The New Internet Teaching Stars."

Among the most time-consuming - and worst compensated - tasks in my estate planning practice is teaching the clients about the decisions they need to make and what they have to know to make them.  I have often thought that the internet - particularly on-line videos in the nature of You-Tube productions - provides an answer.  I would like to take 6 months off and work on that project.  Next year.  Provided I survive the "Fiscal Cliff looming!!" phenomenon this year.

As one thinks about it, isn't learning how we use the Internet most of the time?  As a tool for learning?  Yes, we use it for transactions too, increasingly so, and entertainment and as our post-office.  None of that diminishes the growing importance of the internet for education, for micro-education at its most informal ("Let's Google that") to formal, macro-education (free on-line courses at MIT), and every level in-between.

A tweener is my partner Juan's Florida Probate and Trust Litigation Blog. Trust and Estate lawyers from all over Florida increasingly rely on it to keep up to date.  Lay people read it all the time and call us.  I cannot go to a gathering of lawyers without someone bringing up "Juan's blog."  We will probably soon change the name of the firm to "Juan's Blog, P.A."  And that will be OK.

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