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This wiki is created as a resource to teachers wanting to add remix and mash-up assignments to their classrooms. Why? Currently, our students treat the digital media as their personal palate. Ownership means little - sound, image and video are just bits they use for self-expression. Today's youth like putting their thoughts out there digitally, and practice this outside of school with Myspace designs, music remixes and video mash-ups. They publish their work to Youtube constantly. If we can harness this passion for digital creation in the schoolroom, it can help our students learn more deeply while helping them develop critical communication skills for life in the 21st century.

As educators, our question is, “Do we ignore their uses of media to make their own creations, do we punish these efforts, or do we try to harness and guide this trend?” Media leaders [|Michael Wesch] and [|Lawrence Lessig] are posing questions as to whether creativity is being crushed by our current copyright laws. We don't need to wait until the copyright laws change, but we can introduce remixes and mash-ups in our classrooms **today --** **legally** -- using copy-shared works. Lawrence Lessig had agreed to Skype into our conversation but sadly had to cancel due to emergency commitments.

We teach the evils of plagiarism and how to cite works but beyond this, the lines are murky. From the inception of the [|2004 Grey Album] (a remix of the [|Beatles White album] and [|JayZ's Black album]) to the thousands of Youtube mash-ups created by the masses every day, societal trends indicate that we, as educators, need to look at this topic again and incorporate works using the Creative Commons license structure. We feel there is room to allow students to construct knowledge using digital media for a variety of curricular subjects.

Please feel free to add any resources you may have so we can all learn and grow in our understanding of how our students will communicate in the 21st century. Presentation available on Google Docs http://tinyurl.com/d4afgz

Attribution License Alison Saylor, Dan Watkins, Janni Black, Alison Saylor asaylor@jeffco.k12.co.us Computers and video Everitt Middle School Dan Watkins djwatkin@jeffco.k12.co.us Digital Video and school technology coordinator Janni Black jblack@jeffco.k12.co.us Computer Science Arvada High School