What classifies something as being a creation?  When are we allowed to take ownership of something we make?  Are true "creations" only composed from raw materials?  Or is it the idea and design decisions regardless of the source of materials which makes something a "new" creation? These are the thoughts which ran through my head after watching Kirby Ferguson's TED talk on "remixing." 

Typical forms of content creation include maintaining and updating web sites, blogging, article writing, photography, videography, online commentary, the maintenance of social media accounts, and editing and distribution of digital media. A Pew survey described content creation as the creation of "the material people contribute to the online world."[3]

In thinking about this question, I may be splitting hairs, but I believe that the word choice involved in identifying construction as opposed to creation is also of the utmost importance. Creation can be viewed simply as the act of producing, or causing to exist.  Construction is the building or assembling of an infrastructure. Construction is equal parts inspiration and perspiration. Construction calls on creativity as well as persistence, flexibility, and revision. Construction asks our students and teachers to focus on the power and patience employed during work process…and not just the final resultant work product.

Lessig (2005) claims that at a very general level all of culture can be understood in terms of remix, where someone creates a cultural product by mixing meaningful elements together (e.g., ideas from different people with ideas of one’s own), and then someone else comes along and remixes this cultural artefact with others to create yet another artefact.

Meanwhile, school was a place which inculcated a rudimentary ‘basics’. Literacy, in fact, was two of the ‘three R’s’: reading, writing and arithmetic. Children memorised spelling lists, and learnt the parts of speech and correct grammar. School was a universe of straightforwardly right and wrong answers, of authoritative texts and authoritarian teachers. The underlying lesson of the basics was about the social order and its sources of authority, a lesson which was appropriate for a society which expected its workers to be passively disciplined.

When observing students interactingwith text resulting from an Internetsearch, Sutherland-Smith (2002) report-ed that they “perceive Web text readingas different from print text reading” (p.664). Within Internet environments,many readers are easily frustrated whennot instantly gratified in their rapidsearch for immediate answers and mayadopt a “snatch and grab philoso-phy...not apparent in print text environ-ments” (p. 664). Similarly, Eagleton(2001) observed middle school studentswith little experience with Internet in-quiry often making “hasty, randomchoices with little thought and evalua-tion” (p. 3). These shallow, random, andoften passive interactions with text arein direct contrast to the active, strate-gic, and critical processes of construct-ing meaning now being proposed byinstructional leaders and supported by25 years of reading research (Allington,2001; Keene & Zimmermann, 1997;Robb, 2000).

Reciprocal teaching and Internet reciprocal teaching share core values. The gradual release of responsibility to students is central to both approaches. In Internet reciprocal teaching, there are three specific phases, discussed below. When the majority of students demonstrate proficiency with the skills taught in Phase 1, instruction moves into Phase 2, and finally into Phase 3. Group discussion and sharing of strategies are also integral to both approaches.

This process involves the following five phases: Students collaboratively (with the instructor) identify an area of interest and co-construct a driving question to guide inquiry. Students engage in online collaborative inquiry as they search and sift through online texts using digital tools to address their focus of inquiry. Students critically evaluate online information by considering the credibility (truthfulness) and validity (usefulness) of the information obtained. Students synthesize what they have learned during their online inquiry by actively curating and synthesizing information across multiple, multimodal sources. Student engage in online content construction by synthesizing what they have learned and selecting the best digital text or tool before sharing this answer.

Instead, the authors of this article, commenting on Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes (2009), suggest that continuous, not dichotomous, change in the technologies of literacy and learning defines the Internet.

Finally, each online tool regularly is updated; each time this happens new affordances appear, requiring addi-tional skills and strategies. It is clear that the nature of literacy regularly and continuously changes in online spaces.

Those are important steps, especially when teaching online for the first time, but in classrooms where tech integration has moved to the mastery level, the last two levels of the SAMR model—modification and redefinition—should also be in the mix. Students in classes where this kind of mastery is embedded find more novel and immersive uses for technology. They are creators and publishers of their own work across multiple forms of media, for example, or they are inviting professionals to provide feedback on their work products, or participating in digital forums with other peers around the world.

The SAMR model lays out four tiers of online learning, presented roughly in order of their sophistication and transformative power: substitution, augmentation, modification, and redefinition. When switching to an online format, teachers often focus on the first two levels, which involve replacing traditional materials with digital ones: converting lessons and worksheets into PDFs and posting them online, or recording lectures on video and making them available for asynchronous learning, for example. 

After walking through the different parts of a cell’s anatomy, break your students into small groups and have them collaborate on completing a Check for Understanding quiz via your LMS. Include an interactive question that provides a diagram of a cell with blank labels and requires students to drag and drop the proper labels in place from an answer key (in Schoology’s LMS it’s called a “Label Image” question). Give each group a device with recording capabilities. Have each member of the group choose an organelle to personify, and have them record each other explaining who they are (or which organelle they are) and why they are important for the cell. Finally, have them upload their videos to a media album so your students can watch each other’s videos on their own time and leave comments. Instead of researching a cell process (e.g., cell respiration, energy production, etc.) in one type of cell, have your students compare the process between animal and plant cells and make conclusions regarding the differences they find. Require each group to construct an artifact of their research by creating a one-page brief in Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, a flowchart comparison, or a video explanation. This can be turned in via an assignment in your LMS for credit. Armed with their knowledge of cell anatomy, function, and processes, have your students analyze the connections between different animals and plants in their natural habitats. Have each group infer what might happen when one animal or plant is placed in a habitat other than it's natural one. Each group should compile evidence to make their case (articles, videos, etc.) using Padlet, Evernote, or other similar tool. 

Often, teachers give students group tests, which, like the class worksheets, are designed to be harder than the individual assignments. Students quickly realize that they are able to solve problems as a group that they would not be able to solve as individuals.

Teachers in the substitution and augmentation phase can use technology to accomplish traditional tasks,  but the real learning gains result from engaging students in learning experiences that could not be accomplished without technology. At the Modification and Redefinition level, the task changes and extends the walls of the classroom.

The TPACK framework for teacher knowledge is described in detail, as a complex interaction among three bodies of knowledge: Content, pedagogy, and technology.

“connected learning.” It advocates for broadened access to learning that is socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic, or political opportunity. Connected learning is realized when a young person is able to pursue a personal interest or passion with the support of friends and caring adults, and is in turn able to link this learning and interest to academic achievement, career success or civic engagement.

Connected learning combines personal interests, supportive relationships, and opportunities. It is learning in an age of abundant access to information and social connection that embraces the diverse backgrounds and interests of all young people.

“[O]ur world changed in April 1993 when the Mosaic 1.0 browser was released to the general public. We need new forms of education. We need to reform our learning institutions, concepts, and modes of assessment for our age. Now, anyone with access to the World Wide Web can go far beyond the passive consumer model to contribute content on the Web. We can customize and remix, alone or in collaboration with others, located anywhere on the Web. That Do-It-Yourself potential for connected, participatory, improvisational learning requires new skills, what many are calling new “literacies”.”

Yet, as early adopters, history’s first generation of “always connected” individuals do not have the knowledge and skills to critically explore, build, and connect online. Simply stated, students are often not provided with opportunities in school to practice the web literacies necessary to read, write, and participate on the web.

Think of the use of social media during the Arab Spring. People used social media in a way that went far beyond knowing how to click and deep into civic uses and navigating ways to communicate with others under the radar of a communication-hindering government. It was a way of both encouraging one another to remain critical and supporting one another through adversity in creative ways.