How to Push an Elephant Through a Straw: Using Wireless Technology in a Web-enhanced Skills Program

Abstract

The title of this article derives from the expression used by programmers and developers to explain problems of limited network bandwidth connection speeds. The ever-increasing demand by growing numbers of web users for bandwidth-intensive media is outstripping the Internet's capacity to deliver information. In this case, the 'Elephant' is the massive online information system, including text, graphics, audio, and video, and the 'Straw' is the low bandwidth through which only a fixed volume can move. Generally, compression of data is the way to push that elephant through the straw. Included among those users competing for bandwidth are law schools. In the last decade, technology has begun to occupy a more pivotal role in American legal education. As law firms increase their use of technology in response to client demand, they must hire associates who graduate from law school prepared for high-technology law practice. The resulting pressure on law schools to incorporate technology into class materials and instruction has arisen contemporaneously with pressure to increase the teaching of lawyering skills. A tension arises, however, between the obligation of legal educators to expose students to emerging technologies and the additional burdens thereby imposed upon law schools to add lawyering skills to the the existing curriculum without displacing needed doctrinal and analytical instruction. The authors are faculty members and administrators at Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Shepard Broad Law Center, which was named "Most Wired Law School" by National Jurist in 1998 and 2001. The centrepiece of legal education at NSU is a high technology Lawyering Skills and Values Program that employs wireless classrooms and web-enhanced education. Delivering a lawyering skills course through technology is not unlike pushing an elephant through a straw. The challenge is to accomplish pedagogical goals without compressing either the curriculum or the social processes of teaching and learning. This article describes and evaluates the authors' practical experiences planning, implementing, and teaching a Lawyering Skills course to first-year students in a wireless classroom environment.

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