Students have grown up in what is known as a “remix culture” where “ripping” and remixing, particularly in music, has been acceptable. The notion, as well, that everything on the internet is available for free, with the reblog function on Tumblr, RT on Twitter, and Share on facebook, etc, ubiquitous. The purpose of this module is two-fold, to get the students to understand fair use of media on their sites, but also to think about how they themselves classify their own work on their sites.

We want students to understand the work that goes into creating various media on the web, as well as to start thinking about their own production as work that has value, but also that they are a part of a larger community looking to learn from each other and share with each other. In addition, we want to students to be able to remix and comment on work under Fair Use, but when sharing other people’s work online you need to credit the author, artist, developer, etc. One social media site, Tumblr, has removed the feature to edit other users’ captions or comments entirely when reblogging (reposting) content.