The advancement of legal training and legal research with a mobile!
Technology has made teaching and learning more powerful. As we get more creative and innovative, more we see the use of mobile phones in helping us in educational purposes as technology has made our lives easier, faster, and better.
The use of mobile phones has become an integral part of our life. From waking up in the morning to the moments before we sleep, the usage of mobile phones has become a ritual. Its use for educational purposes as well can be seen. In this digital age to reach the students, we need to reach them on their terms and platforms that are a part of their lives.
Mobile phones have been termed as “time wasters” and “distractions” concerning education. But have mobile phones actually helped with education? Several applications have proven to be useful and defunct the myth of the pure procrastination that mobile phones are used for.
There are mobile apps such as Duolingo which has helped law students learn different languages.
Instead of going through long, dense texts, there is now an interactive digital form of media that can be easily accessed and consumed. The material can be found on YouTube. We can even have pre-recorded lectures. If the teacher records the law lectures and sends them to the students, then this would allow students to catch up on missed legal lectures or even use it as a revision tool. As human do have a short attention span and not everything important can be caught during the lecture, getting a recording of the same can be of vast use. Mobile phones can help bridge the gap between active learning and college preparedness in law schools.
One of the most important uses of a smartphone is social networking. Around 70% of students feel their education should be as simple as following social media feeds. Facebook is an app which can actually help in this aspect. Wait for what? How? Why? Facebook? Really? Yes, I follow several important pages that help keep me up to date. If Facebook then what about Instagram or Twitter? Those can be used as well. They help us keep a blend of current affairs, memes, jobs, interesting law-based reads, and dog videos. LinkedIn is a professional social media site that helps people connect and find opportunities. I have personally extensively used this app to find several opportunities and connect with like-minded individuals. Readability and Kindle are apps that helps download reading material which can be accessed offline as well. Useful for situations when we don’t always have an internet connection.
Collaborative classrooms such as edX and Coursera have allowed law students to help in mastering quality legal content in the form of law courses from the top universities of the world all on their mobile devices.
These apps keeps you up to date on the global affairs. It has a 60 words summary for each topic with it being updated with several new pieces every day!
CamScanner helps me collect and read from books and other people’s notes which I cannot use for a long period of time. It helps make any photo of text legible.
Google calendar helps organize my life. It directly imports my timetable and list of events and provides me with alerts.
Alarmy is a very useful app for a person who has trouble waking up in the morning. This app literally gets up you up from your bed to snooze the alarm. For this app you need to get up and snap a photo for it to snooze.
A research study conducted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal revealed that 92% of students found mobile phones easier to access legal content. Students believe that mobile phones help them prepare easily, find anything they want and at any time, whether it be for general information or for a specific course. The use of mobile phones not only helps us with our education but also with our careers. So, what are you waiting for? Go open Facebook, or any other app, and devour professional development and legal content, with a slight number of memes as well!
