The permeable web: community, value and ethics in legal education
Draft paper. Do not quote without permission of author. The discussion of an innovative simulation is really a discussion about what legal education can be. As will be plain by now, the shift in pedagogical focus creates a new learning space, similar to that opened up by art objects, and by dramatic and musical performance. In a simulation environment such as SIMPLE, there is no beyond text because there is no entirely bounded docuverse called text. Text and all other forms of representation overlap, palimpsest-like, in our consciousness of the world. In much the same way, play itself in MUVEs and online communities is permeable, interweaves with non-play. Professionalism in legal communities is similarly porous with the personal values and attitudes of learners and professionals. What we need to do is to create the opportunities, the clearings in our overcrowded, often incoherent curricula, for the values of play, and the play of virtues to be encouraged, valued and enacted.
