Two readings were presented to us this week: Praxis 2.0: Escaping the edu-travelogue and Dr. Mashup; or, Why Educators Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Remix.

Melanie McBride’s post addresses the limitations of education in a confined and controlled environment with rules and regulations. It brings up the question of just how creative can a person be without being allowed to do what they want and explore technology to the fullest extent? Overall, I found Melanie’s post slightly confusing while reading it- but in the end I was able to take the overarching argument of broadening the limitations of education to allow a more deep and defined knowledge.

I really liked this post, especially the Gever Tulley TED video. As I already commented on Marcey’s post, I feel like the sheltering and copyrighting has gone to far. If we try to protect everyone and don’t allow sharing of creative works or information- then how are we to learn as a society?

Brian Lamb’s post was by far much easier to read seeing as how I don’t really have a background in education or anything like the things Melanie was referring to in her post. Brian focuses on the emergence of remixes/mashups in everything from an artistic standpoint and an information standpoint. The main idea behind his post is the question of whether or not remixing is less creative than the original work and the inauthenticity behind it.

Personally I believe that there is nothing original anymore- we’re all just reworking old information that’s been passing around for centuries into seemingly “new” ideas. With billions of people on this planet it is impossible to come up with an original thought anymore and copyrighting of things is unfair because you can’t say that one idea was yours and yours only. I agree with Brian that more content needs to be open for use, especially in education, and that Creative Commons is an amazing thing. I feel that creativity is more what you’re able to come up with out of everyone else’s work, rather than something new and unique. Hell, most music nowadays comes from older music that’s just been rehashed and screenwriters reuse the same generic plots that have been used for years. As Patrick pointed out in his post, “[To] me ‘originality’ is just a way of seeing something that was already there in a different light to make it seem original, which is all that Mashingup and Remixing do, they take already complete work and change them to shine in a new light.”

I haven’t had any previous experience with remixies or mashups so I’m pretty excited for this segment of the course. These readings have made me even more excited to start working with the idea and to see how “original” I can get with the same old stuff everyone else has made.