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Sir Remix-a-Lot

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A mentor of mine told me there is nothing new under the sun. This is something I’ve lived by throughout my career since that point. Ideas are often created, recreated, or remixed from something that already existed. Our innovations, advances, creations, and knowledge are derivative of something else or somethings else. In fact, learning begins with modeling and copying behaviors and then quickly evolves into the creation of derivative works. We continue to remix knowledge, content, experience, and learning into a mashup. Our lives as a mashup…wrap your head around that.

DS106′s assignments this week centered around remixing media and content into something derivative or completely new.

We’re often so critical about copying work from others and quick to label it as such without really considering what happened, how that new work came into existence and why that remixer did what they did.

Kirby Ferguson at Everything is a Remix (http://www.everythingisaremix.info [Link Removed]), explains that modern remixing is reminiscent of folk art not that kitch stuff you see on Antiques Roadshow…

…but a more contemporary and digital folk art. A digital folk art that is so easily remixed and shared that more and more people are becoming remix masters. People can more easily make something new and fresh from something else.

The Internet has accelerated remixing with a cornucopia of products, ideas, creations, and the like at the finger tips of anyone interested and willing to remix that content into something new. However, the Internet has also accelerated legacy beliefs in protecting intellectual property and preventing derivative works and remixes.

Copyright laws, that once and still, protect original works from direct copies aimed at taking from that original work. However, copyright laws have bastardized over time and now merely criminalize the creation of new ideas based on existing ideas with ridiculous extensions of time, unclear language, and feed the litigious nature of some in our society.

Copyright laws and the resulting lawsuits and legal battles have grown to the absurd and merely create a class system of those that create and those that are bound to consume. A class system, that in my opinion, is resulting in more confrontations, more underground, and the growth of knowledge in spite of the oppressive copyright laws. Thank goodness for Creative Commons. Some of us have not forgotten that sharing is learning.

While it is common to think about remixing in terms of media and Internet we remix in numerous ways throughout our daily lives. We remix our past experiences to fit a new challenge, develop new processes, whip up leftovers into a new meal, etc. Just this week I managed to remix three instructional design processes to fit a major project, a few Chemistry lessons into a new video, and a handful of stories for my daughter. Just call me Sir Remix-a-lot.

In terms of learning in higher education, we sometimes get trapped in the pitfalls of rote memorization and copying notes from lectures. We want to see some higher order thinking skills but don’t give our students an opportunity to get there; instead hoping they get their on their own. When we create opportunities for our students to remix we are asking our students to synthesize, present, analyze, compare, contrast, and create. All of that sounds better to me.

 

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