According to the article, Praxis 2.0: Escaping the edu-travelogue, it seems that both instructors and students suffer from the “law” that limits the resources that we need to teach/learn. Relating the article to the activities we do in this class, I personally didn’t experience a problem (yet) where resources are strictly restricted that I was encouraged to “break the law,” since Creative Commons are often used in most cases, but I would find it very inconvenient if I have to go through a complicated process to get the resources I need.

On the other hand, though, I think there are more restrictions available when creating remix/mashup. “It is common to assume that remakes or reworkings are inherently lesser forms of creation than something that is “original” and that free reuse somehow degrades the value of the source.” Based on the reading, it is hard to draw a line between plagiarizing and remaking but it is often rare to find a creative work that is not influenced by the elements of a great work that has already been used in the past. It is true that original works sometimes have a greater value than remakes in terms of uniqueness but it doesn’t necessarily mean that the original works are always better. As it gets harder to distinguish between a plagiarism and a reuse of a work, especially in music, I personally think a remix/mashup could go either way: “assault on originality” or a “new art” depending on the form of a work.

All I knew about remix and mashup was that it’s a combination of a new and old art to produce a unique work. I believe the assignment that I did recently is an example of a remix in which I had to edit a page to create a “new” page using firebug. After reading the articles, it became hard to imagine a world without a remix. Somehow, I always thought a remix/mashup is used only for entertainment and didn’t realize how a remix/mashup can be turned into a convenient/useful tool for some people. In a question of “Do you think remix/mashup can be authentically taught?”, though, I would encourage students to come up with their own ideas and create a work that represents the style of each individual, rather than simply teach them how to reuse the elements of original works.