Mixing the Remix

The very idea of remix sounds like taking a good idea and making it better or taking someone else's idea and making it your own. This thought just kept circling in my mind the entire I was reading this chapter, which led to this quote as my chapter quote..."Whenever we comment on a film or a book and discuss it with others we are taking the original author's creativity and remixing it in our own life, using it extend our own ideas or to produce a criticism." (Chapter 15, Page 312) What a deep and profound statement when you compare it to the rest of the chapter and what others are saying about borrowing or stealing intellectual property... this quote would propose the ideology that unless you are having an original thought then you are borrowing or stealing someone else's intellectual property... ridiculous right??? Yet under further scrutiny and processing of information, that is to say, comprehension we are indeed by the very nature of it remixing on a constant and continuous basis. The fact that I am writing an original blog post about this topic of this specific chapter, fifteen, is remixing the author's remixed ideas of other authors, yet is in No way the first time that has been done nor the last... fact is this chapter will be remixed and remixed as many times as it read because as Lankshear and Knobel point out at the end of each chapter by assigning credit to the other authors in the "End Notes" they is writing their thoughts about other's work as it relates to their's... original part "mix" understanding  of other's work, "remix." While leaving room for still more others (readers) to formulate their understandings... mixing the remix???

Chapter Sixteen understanding research literacy from the DIY perspective, but as soon as I read the word, Newfoundland, I was immediately transported back to that bitter cold island nation where I spent a year while serving in the US Navy. It was easy for me to understand the idea that the participants would have grouped themselves in that homogeneous grouping based on where they were from... though a not so larger island its regions were very different and in some cases so remote they were only accessible by float plane or boat. Then I thought how most people are like that too, while in some cases we will venture out to meet new people when we are tasked with learning and working together we prefer to work with people we know or have worked with before. There is this certain feeling or familiarity that people like to have when yoked with others... team building... this holds true when we are engaged in building that deeper understanding that Lankshear and Knobel cite Gee talking about... I know that when I am trying to understand a new concept or searching for that deeper understanding I seek out individuals that I trust... and that trust come from past interactions... and by way of integrating information from chapter 15... when remixing thoughts that might become your new understanding it needs to come from a trusted source. Gee and Rogers seem to align very close on this idea ... "...it is necessary to move beyond "learning about" and, instead, to focus more on "learning to be"... deep learning requires that learners be "willing and able to take on a new identity in the world..." (Chapter Sixteen, Page 335) I think both would agree that this task requires courage, trust, and desire for deeper understanding... that employs authentic literacy.

Lankshear, Colin, and Michele Knobel. Literacies: Social, cultural and historical perspectives. Peter Lang, 2011.