ePost #5: The Magic of Remix Culture

Remix culture possesses a creative, innovative, boundary-pushing energy that makes it an ideal vehicle for engaging students in relevant, “interest based learning” (Lessig 80). It’s a compelling model for the same reasons that teachers deliver content and structure activities that are student-based: according to Lessig, “when kids get to do work that they feel passionate about, kids (and, for that matter, adults) learn more and learn more effectively” (80).

I appreciate how Lessig complicated the issue of remix culture by addressing concerns about piracy. As teachers, it’s important that we hold ourselves to a high moral standard, not to mention that we are accountable to the school boards. Before introducing or incorporating remix culture, we have to reflect on this: if I agree with Lessig and don’t think sampling is a form of theft, but corporations and governments do, what are my limitations in the classroom? What line do I need to toe?

Regardless of some of the legal underpinnings, remix culture has some terrific applications for synthesizing student learning and encouraging independent work with high quality content and creativity combined with high engagement potential.

Remix culture can help bring content into the 21st century in my second teaching subject, Religious Studies. Religious studies might, at first glance, seem like something incompatible with something as cutting edge as remix culture. But it’s precisely because religion is often considered stale and irrelevant that doing “unorthodox” things like remixing can be even more engaging and rewarding.

For example, students will learn in Jewish history about the destruction of the two Holy Temples in Jerusalem during the classical period. One of the psalms were written about those events (“Al Naharot Bavel”), and many songs have been written using the original Hebrew text. But a very famous version from the 70s is what people often think of when we speak of the “Rivers of Babylon.” Imagine what kind of creative, interpretive working could emerge from remixing these two versions, Hebrew and contemporary, side by side? What kind of interesting parallels could be made between the Jewish and African diaspora experiences?

Hebrew Version (one of many):

Boney M version:

It isn’t only artists like Danger Mouse that can reuse, rethink and recast old favorites and give them new meaning. Remix culture represents an wide open door for students to make meaning from “texts” in their own ways.