In response to Praxis 2.0: Escaping the edu-travelogue”, my biggest reaction is to how she broke down the limited freedom of students. “School doesn’t encourage breaking the law” sounds like something illicit is happening, but instead the message I got was that the author defends the freedom of creativity that students should be allowed. The way I see it, we’re censored because if allowed unlimited freedom to create whatever we want to, there would be no way to control what is published, made and the reactions of people. As it is, every individual will react to a certain work differently from a peer, but being allowed free reign over the work may affect some negatively. As aware as I am of the fact that I’m rambling, I think I’m trying to really cope with what Melanie McBride is trying to say. The quote: “The choice and selection and use of particular content is as integral to remix as the act of editing and changing the meaning of those materials,” really got me thinking. When thinking about the video essay, I wanted to either use the beginning scene from White Chicks, or the dance scene and combine it with the dance scene from Step Up 2. However, the first movie mentioned is quite controversial for its racial remarks, so I asked if I was allowed to use such movie, to which Jim Groom responded: “Remember you have an audience.” I don’t think I’ll ever forget the word because never have I been granted such freedom to stop and think twice about my work. It made me realize that I wasn’t being censored but that I personally wanted to stick to society’s norm and not pick something that can offend someone in class.
As for the questions that she has for teachers, I think it’s helpful to take into consideration her pointers to create a more diverse and cultured class. By doing so, we would also be understanding other people’s points of view and accepting them without closing off our minds to their ideas. Overall, I think it was a hard to read article that contained a lot of great pointers.

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My response to Dr. Mashup; or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix is to think that no, remixes and mashup are not an assault to originality. I think that allowing the user to take songs and combine them as they go is just part of being creative. I also think that APIs facilitate creativity by becoming a resource.