“Remixing, re-appropriation and riffing off other people’s work just seems to be part of what we do as human beings. Instead of that being hidden, as to some extent it was previously, this has been foregrounded as a positive thing in the web era” (Belshaw, 2015 pg 54).
The positive impact of this can be seen in this excerpt from George Couros‘ book, The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent and Lead a Culture of Creativity.
How do we reconcile the idea of taking the ideas of others and making them our own which can clearly be of great benefit to others with copyright laws that govern the analogue world?
Lawrence Lessig (2005) argues that culture as a whole can be construed as remix. Whenever we comment on, say, a film or a book and discuss it with others, we take the original author’s creativity and remix it in our own lives, using it to extend our own ideas or to produce an evaluation. Lessig explains that “every single act of reading and choosing and criticizing and praising culture is in this sense remix, and it is through this general practice that cultures get made” (n.p.). Remix has not simply emerged with digitization. It has always been a part of any society’s cultural development (Knobel & Lankshear, 2008, pg 22).
Lessig, in his Ted Talk, Laws that Stifle Creativity speaks to this well:
As we incorporate a variety of ways to demonstrate learning using technology, I frequently, get asked,
Is it ok if my students… ?
Some questions I have been asking myself include:
- What are the legal ramifications of using work that is not your own? What are the copyright laws governing remixing in education?
- What is the responsibility of educators when it comes to modelling and teaching ethical ways to remix?
- What are some resources and tools teachers can use worry-free in their classes?
- What is the Creative Commons and how can I control how my own work is shared?
To attempt to answer these questions, Tiffany Lee and I modeled remixing by remixing the helpful resources found below to create an interactive seminar.
The grey slides are ours, the others come from the following presentations with Creative Commons permissions:
Gail Desler’s Google Doc: Can I Use That? A Guide to Creative Commons
Rodd Lucier’s presentation: Creative Commons: What every educator needs to know
Jessica Coates Creative Commons in the Classroom
Donna Fry’s blog post: Are teachers taught about Creative Commons?
Here is the Google Slide with notes.
Feel free to remix it!
References:
Knobel, M., & Lankshear, C. (2008). Digital literacies: Concepts, policies and practices. New York: Peter Lang.
Belshaw, Doug (2015) The Essential Elements of Digital Literacies. http://dougbelshaw.com/ebooks/digilit/
