Teachers | How do you address and incorporate contemporary culture, including digital media and mash-ups, into your teaching? How do you account for your students’ 21st-century habits, like multitasking and online searching? Join the conversation.Overview | How are the dynamics of the Web affecting how we read, think and create? What is a “mash-up,” and what does this trend mean for our culture? In this lesson, students reflect on the cultural changes being forged by digital media and prepare and participate in a Socratic seminar on the issues. They then create their own mash-ups and reflect upon what is lost and gained through “recombinant” or appropriation art.
Materials | Computer with Internet access and projection equipment, copies of the image (see warm-up) and handouts
Warm-up | Display a copy of or project the image Monster Mash-Up and lead students through it. Elicit the names of the titles being spoofed, then discuss the following questions: Why is this cartoon funny? What cultural trend is Ward Sutton spoofing? What is a “mash-up”? (In a 2002 “On Language” column, the late William Safire explained it as “a mixture of styles in a kind of creatively corrupt collage.”)
