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Over the past decade, higher education has invested millions of dollars in classroom technology. The addition of document cameras, DVD players, Internet access, and projectors (to name a few) has added new functionality to the classroom. It is now possible to bring much more diverse materials to the classroom, to present them in a variety of ways, and to devise new classroom activities for students. As a result, the concept of the classroom has expanded to include this set of new functions.

Remix is the reworking or adaptation of an existing work. The remix may be subtle, or it may completely redefine how the work comes across. It may add elements from other works, but generally efforts are focused on creating an alternate version of the original. A mashup, on the other hand, involves the combination of two or more works that may be very different from one another. In this article, I will apply these terms both to content remixes and mashups, which originated as a music form but now could describe the mixing of any number of digital media sources, and to data mashups, which combine the data and functionalities of two or more Web applications.

Electronic transmission has already inspired a new concept of multiple-authorship responsibility in which the specific concepts of the composer, the performer, and, indeed, the consumer overlap. . . . In fact, implicit in electronic culture is an acceptance of the idea of multilevel participation in the creative process.2

It is common to assume that remakes or reworkings are inherently lesser forms of creation than something that is "original" and that free reuse somehow degrades the value of the source. Modern copyright law and the intense social stigma associated with a term such as plagiarism speak to such assumptions.

A keyword search for the word “tech%” and “computer” in the Modern Language Association (MLA) job list1 returns over 43 relevant ads out of 236 job postings (as of November 20, 2007): “familiarity with teaching-related technologies” (tenure track in Spanish, Missouri); “experience with technology in the classroom” (tenure track in French, Michigan); “ability to use technology effectively in teaching and learning” (tenure track in Japanese, South Carolina). The wording varies slightly from one ad to the next, but the message is the same: job candidates are well advised to have an answer ready when asked how they use technology in the classroom.

The history of educational technology in higher education provides ample support for the claim that technology should never outstrip pedagogy.

many Web 2.0 applications are powerful socialization and communication tools. As such, they have an incredible educational potential for foreign language instruction.

Still, Smoker was worried that the video would be taken out of context, and he called it a "rude awakening." He contacted the student, who has since graduated, to ask that it be taken down.

So the clip is "a little upsetting," Smoker said, "because I do teach mostly seniors, and they know what the policy is. To do a sneaky video like this was out of line."

Buried within the 1,200 well-intentioned, time- and money-wasting pages are a couple of provisions related to copyright infringement on campus networks.

The second provision targeting traffic on college and university networks requires all campuses to certify that they (a) have “developed plans to effectively combat the unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material, including through the use of a variety of technology-based deterrents” and (b) “will, to the extent practicable, offer alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property.”4

“Infringement of copyrighted works on university networks is a serious issue. However, a Federal policy that promotes or requires filtering will indirectly add to the costs of education and university research, introduce new security and privacy issues, degrade existing rights under copyright, and have little or no lasting impact on infringement of copyrighted works.”6