<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
To Whom IT may Concern:<\/p>\n
Ken Stalter is a remarkable man, truly individual, truly pursuing his own sense of the good. He has distinguished himself in his work with me and has completely won my respect.<\/p>\n
Ken is passionate about ideas. He loves to think about the meanings behind
\neveryday actions. He thinks about ways one ought to live, how to use intellect to live life. He loves law, and has been finding his passion realized in the work and social environment of law school. He is a learner, open to new ways of thinking. He finds excitement in translating new idea into real change.<\/p>\n
Here is part of Ken’s post-mortem on my Winter Evidence Class, 2007. I had divided classtime into two segments, an initial two-week segment intense study of the rules of evidence that was examined and graded, and a following one-week segment in cyber advocacy that was pass\/fail, and in which I introduced my students to virtual reality.<\/p>\n
I’d like to start out by saying that for me, the bifurcated approach I had been on Second Life only briefly before this class. After The reason I became so excited about Second Life and the mock trial was I would really like to see this idea go further and I’m putting out Yet I also agree with you, Professor, when you say that the Second Life In many ways, the class felt more similar to classes I took in pursuit For example, the other day, somewhat in the middle of the discussion of [snip]<\/p>\n The more I read about Second Life, the more I appreciate the variety of Again the Second Life experience can be best described in Hamlet’s
\nHi, Professor Nesson. What follows are a few of the thoughts that have
\nbeen inspired in me over the past few weeks.<\/p>\n
\nstruck precisely the right balance. I’m not sure it would work well in
\na fall\/spring semester length course, but I it felt really good for a
\nthree week term. I like grades in general and like the
\ncompetitiveness, so I felt like that need was fulfilled by the first
\ntwo weeks of class. Then I got to enjoy a dessert of sorts in the
\nSecond Life trial experience. It felt like a space to be a little more
\nbold and creative.<\/p>\n
\nreading about it in the news in October, I got an account and logged on
\nfor about 20 minutes. I didn’t touch it again until this January.
\nAfter I found out we would be using it for the class, I decided to get
\nmore acquainted with it. I traveled to the Berkman area and started
\nexploring. [This refers to Berkman Island in Second Life where the
\n Berkman Center has created a virtual Austin Hall and surrounding campus.]
\nOne thing led to another and since then, I’ve spent many
\nhours in the game learning its mechanics, meeting people, developing my
\navatar and building objects.<\/p>\n
\nthe fact that it was the tearing down of a division that is usually
\npretty rigid in my life. Law is my career and my educational endeavor,
\nplaying video games is one of my pastimes, one which I typically use as
\nan escape from other parts of my life. Yet suddenly this division
\nmelted away and I found the opportunity to use a video game to engage
\nwith the law. Thus the experience was one that combined two of my
\ninterests and was completely novel. I really enjoyed it.<\/p>\n
\nfeelers in the Second Life world to see what the potential for in-world
\ndispute resolution is. This is something I’m going to continue playing
\nwith even now that the class has come to an end.<\/p>\n
\nmock trial is–ultimately–trivial. Before the class began and in the
\nearly meetings, I was skeptical of your approach. I was concerned that
\nyou would be someone who was inordinately excited about new media as
\neducational tools and had perhaps lost your grounding. It turns out
\nthat that was not the case. I came away with the impression that while
\nyou appreciate the novelty and the potential of these devices, your
\nprimary concern, or one of your primary concerns, is helping us to
\ndevelop as good lawyers and as good people. And that is, in the end,
\nwhat matters.<\/p>\n
\nof my undergraduate degree in theater than it did to other law school
\nclasses. Many courses here are reflective in the sense that they
\nengage how we position our agendas with respect to a legal doctrine.
\nThey ask, should we oppose\/promote this? How should we do so? And so
\non. This evidence course seemed take that reflective quality to
\nanother level and seemed to ask, what is the role of our emotions in
\nhow we position ourselves? What is the role of identity? What is the
\nrelationship between our internal struggles and our external ones? That
\nwas very refreshing.<\/p>\n
\nOdysseus’ killing of the suitors, you called our attention to the idea
\nof recursive loops. For whatever reason, the discussion turned away
\nfrom it, but I made a connection that I’ve been thinking a lot about
\nsince. I realized that hatred is a recursive loop. If you hate
\nsomeone who’s hurt you, your pain increases because the feeling of
\nhatred is an unpleasant one. Then the rage flares up even more in
\nresponse to the increased pain, fueling further hatred. It feeds upon
\nitself. This is a fresh idea to me and I imagine I’ll continue
\nthinking about it for some time. I’m not sure I can yet speak to it’s
\nfull importance.<\/p>\n
\nuses people are putting the game to and the way the experiences they
\nhave in Second Life can influence their first lives. I’ve read about
\nthe experiences of white users playing as black avatars, protests
\nagainst French nationalist movements, doctors using Second Life to
\nrecreate the experience of living with schizophrenia and much more.
\nI’m beginning to suspect we may need to back off from our evaluation of
\nwhat we did there as trivial. It might be a seed planted that will
\ngrow into a forest. Who knows what the potential of online law will be
\nas we dig deeper into this thing called the twenty-first century?<\/p>\n
\nwords. Like the players Hamlet uses to route his usurping uncle,
\nplaying Second Life is “to hold, as it twere, the mirror up to nature.”<\/p>\n