Context and the culture of remix...
One reason I've been quiet in this space was my sojourn last week to Logan, Utah for the Instructional Technology Institute -- hosted by David Wiley and his merry band of co-conspirators. A lot of the discussions centred on themes that paralleled some of the points being made in the course of this blogathon... For instance, Patricia got the ball rolling on the classic dilemmas of granularity and context -- ie, should we (and can we) make content "context-free", and what is the appropriate level of "granularity" for an individual learning resource... much interesting dialogue has ensued.
There was a theme that ran through a number of the sessions at last week's conference that I believe are pertinent to the topic. The opening keynote, Lawrence Lessig stressed in the course of his talk that the culture of the internet is in many ways the "culture of remix" -- which didn't begin with the web but which has since been inextricably intertwined with it.
It was a theme that got picked up by a number of speakers, including David Wiley, Stephen Downes, and, well, me too (ahem). If we look at how resource sharing happens outside the world of education -- be it with weblog communities, wiki communities, digital photography, digital audio, whatever... it doesn't happen by people sharing discrete "blocks" of content in defined boxes, and then reassembling them by automated systems... Remixers "sample" the bits they want, and reassemble the context as they see fit.
What does this mean on a practical level? My opinion is that we need to remember that digital media works best when we remember that it is a liquid medium, not a concrete one. If we are able to "sample" the bits of content we want, and ignore the rest, then questions of establishing "granularity" and "context" might solve themselves -- they would simply become the choices made by whoever is "remixing" the content for their own immediate purpose. (Isn't it the teacher's job to establish context? Isn't that what educators do?)
For instance, if I can copy the text from a document I want, and paste it where I need it, it doesn't matter to me how long the original document is, or whatever else it's about.
Of course, it's not so easy to do that if the document is saved as a PDF, or if the author does not permit modifications of her work. So the culture of remix has two huge barriers before it can work in higher education -- a) educators need to loosen up and recognize that all online work is in perpetual process; and b) open content is fine, but for it to fly we need open formats too (html, XML - open, PDF - closed; MP3 open - RealPlayer and Windows Media - closed). Maybe the culture of remix will never fly for those reasons, but if it doesn't then education will always be something of an online ghetto, and we will always be consumers and not contributors to our online experience.
Sorry to come so late to the party -- there's some great discussion here.
There was a theme that ran through a number of the sessions at last week's conference that I believe are pertinent to the topic. The opening keynote, Lawrence Lessig stressed in the course of his talk that the culture of the internet is in many ways the "culture of remix" -- which didn't begin with the web but which has since been inextricably intertwined with it.
It was a theme that got picked up by a number of speakers, including David Wiley, Stephen Downes, and, well, me too (ahem). If we look at how resource sharing happens outside the world of education -- be it with weblog communities, wiki communities, digital photography, digital audio, whatever... it doesn't happen by people sharing discrete "blocks" of content in defined boxes, and then reassembling them by automated systems... Remixers "sample" the bits they want, and reassemble the context as they see fit.
What does this mean on a practical level? My opinion is that we need to remember that digital media works best when we remember that it is a liquid medium, not a concrete one. If we are able to "sample" the bits of content we want, and ignore the rest, then questions of establishing "granularity" and "context" might solve themselves -- they would simply become the choices made by whoever is "remixing" the content for their own immediate purpose. (Isn't it the teacher's job to establish context? Isn't that what educators do?)
For instance, if I can copy the text from a document I want, and paste it where I need it, it doesn't matter to me how long the original document is, or whatever else it's about.
Of course, it's not so easy to do that if the document is saved as a PDF, or if the author does not permit modifications of her work. So the culture of remix has two huge barriers before it can work in higher education -- a) educators need to loosen up and recognize that all online work is in perpetual process; and b) open content is fine, but for it to fly we need open formats too (html, XML - open, PDF - closed; MP3 open - RealPlayer and Windows Media - closed). Maybe the culture of remix will never fly for those reasons, but if it doesn't then education will always be something of an online ghetto, and we will always be consumers and not contributors to our online experience.
Sorry to come so late to the party -- there's some great discussion here.
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