Camille Maydonik

Defining Mash-up

A mash-up may refer to video, music, web application hybrid, or digital creations:

A mash-up involves the reuse, or remixing, of works of art, of content, and/or of data for purposes that usually were not intended or even imagined by the original creators. It is a derivative work consisting of two or more pieces of (generally digital) media conjoined together, such as a video clip with a different soundtrack applied for humorous effect, or a digital map overlaid with user-supplied data. Mash-ups can be created using different web services or software tools that combine two or more tools to create a whole new service. The term is also used to describe user generated remixes of content from different sources. Mash-ups combine elements from many potential sources, and in the process, open up both creative and legal frontiers that educators and students need to increasingly negotiate.

The creative potential of mash-ups is astounding. Educators must understand the reality of copyright and privacy issues, which may have an impact on what they can create, or have students create. That being said, there is an increasingly enormous amount of material freely available to creators of mash-ups. One such resource is the Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration. The Creative Commons provides free, easy-to-use legal tools that give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. By searching the Creative Commons, people can find licensed works that can be shared, remixed or reused without penalty. In the domain of Education, there is the Open Educational Resources Commons.

Great examples of mash-ups exist at Open Source Cinema, where you create your own videos online, remix media that you have on your computer, as well as remix other people’s media from places like YouTube and Flickr. You can also connect with others by sending personal messages, commenting on remixes, or even joining projects that others have created.