There may not be a better question to ask than "how do I get to know my students, their interests and their situations?" There is certainly a large body of research pointing to success in classrooms that honor students' diverse cultural backgrounds. Lucia recommends that teachers "validate a student's identity and home culture as worthy of expression, as interesting, and as specialized knowledge that others want to know."
This demonstration was rich and raised a lot of interesting points and questions. Thanks Lucia for reminding us of the importance of honoring all students' backgrounds, talents, and experiences.
Last stop - Creative Commons. As we continue to discuss the reality of making in this multimodal world, it becomes clear that we have to be thoughtful about the types of media we use and remediate. Discussions about plagiarism have been a staple of the English Language Arts classroom for decades, but many of us find ourselves at a loss when it comes to addressing new media and how to appropriately incorporate it into our and our students' work. Creative Commons offers students, teachers, and users the opportunity to find, use, and remediate open-source media. It was valuable to have a conversation among colleagues about how we use open-source media (and how sometimes we don't!)