Kirby Ferguson (2011)
Throughout my master of education program here at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, I have been exposed to a plethora new concepts that I have become quite engaged in. Remix culture is one of these areas; unfortunately, I have been unable to spend as much directed time focusing on remix as I would like.
In education, at the school board level, there is much discussion about teaching students about plagiarism and academic dishonesty. One area that is specifically targeted is the written work. We, teachers, teach students that if they use another author’s work, it must be paraphrased or written in the student’s own words, or quoted. But, for a student who is learning this concept for the first time, it can be complex to comprehend. Here is a brief story to help me iron out this thought. I was marking one student’s paper and I was reading sentences that he clearly did not write. When I found the website that he had taken his information from, I had found that he used some of his own words, mixed with a reordering of the paragraph that was online. It was a mash-up or remix of the source’s ideas. To end the story, we had a quick chat to discuss that even if the student placed someone’s paragraph in his own order, he was still responsible to write in his own words. This, here, is a simple example of remix culture that I have not even considered.
Writing, however, is not the only area of remix. Popular culture provides many affordances where people, including adolescents, can express themselves through remixes. Social media allows for people to publish ‘their’ work with a wider audience, the world. If we look at YouTube, Instagram, Vimeo, Tumblr, Vine, and Facebook to name a few, people can share their remixes of various elements of popular culture at any time.
I have dabbled with this myself. Although my work is armature quality, the students who I work with enjoy it. I have created math songs that use the instrumental track from Justin Bieber’s Boyfriend and One Direction’s, One Thing. Both songs were just released as singles at the time I created my videos. Getting students to create their own remixes can be part of the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
I like how Guertin (2012), in her article, discussed Eduardo Navas’ three different forms of remix: extended remix, selective remix, and reflective remix. I also like how she explored YouTube’s seven basic genres of videos of which remix is one category, but I think remix can find its way into some of the other genres or at least, the element that everything is a remix or everything is based off of something that has already been developed.
I enjoy having students create remixes, whether it be dramatizations of short stories, photo editing and photo manipulation, or video creation. Actually, the seven genres of YouTube that Guertin (2012) discusses is a great way for students to share their understanding of curriculum at a deeper level. What I have questions about is how do I respond to those who say remix is plagiarizing or copying something that is copyrighted. What is my argument? Are there laws that support me as an educator?
References
Carolyn Guertin, “From Karaoke Culture to Vernacular Video,” Digital Prohibition:
Piracy and Authorship in New Media Art. Pp. 119-140
Everything is a Remix. (2015). Everything is a remix. Retrieved from http://everythingisaremix.info