*** Welcome to piglix ***

Mashup (education)


Mashups are a combination of two or more data sources that have been integrated into one source. They typically consist of graphics, texts, audio clips, and video that have been sourced from various media such as blogs, , YouTube, Google Maps, etc., into a new product. Remix is a related term, referring to how data sources have been combined to produce a constellation of elements that were not originally intended by the creators. Mashups rely on open and discoverable resources, open and transparent licensing, and open and remixable formats.

In the educational context, mashups are being used as an instructional tool by the teacher and/or as a product created by the student who are responsible for manipulating the data themselves. For example, http://rru.worldbank.org/businessplanet/, is a mashup website that was created by the World Bank to provide learners with data about country GDP, GDP growth, taxes, and other related information about countries around the globe. Students can use this platform to investigate real-world questions and generate their own arguments as a form of inquiry-based learning. Also, this places students into the role of the participant in the internet as they engage in discovering, remixing, and sharing content. As a result, mashups provide pedagogical opportunities, among them, as a tool within the constructivist approach to learning and also a way of teaching digital literacy, science, social studies, video production, and web development. Mashups rely on open and discoverable resources, open and transparent licensing, and open and remixable formats.

A common issue surrounding the widespread use of mashups in education is the lack of open and discoverable resources because of non-transparent licensing issues (Snelson). Educators must be wary of issues of plagiarism and copyright infringement in their student-created mashups and in those they present to their students. Issues of the legal reuse of media should be explicitly addressed by instructors. Problems with data accuracy, content appropriateness and stability play into the credibility of mashups' use in the educational context. As mashups are a dynamic resource (and user-generated), they can be unpredictable in their uses. In addition, "most publicly available data used in mashups today (e.g., Flickr or YouTube) are not designed for educational purposes."


...
Wikipedia

...