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For the last century, the quality of large-scale assessment in the United States has been undermined by narrow educational theory and hindered by limitations in technology. As a result, poor assessment practices have encouraged low-level instructional practices that disparately affect students from the most disadvantaged communities and schools. In this historical and theoretical review, we examine the misalignment between educational theory and large-scale assessment practices that rely upon technology, using writing assessment as a case in point. Drawing upon sociocultural theory and critical software studies as conceptual frameworks, we find that today's software-powered technologies, although capable of taking progressive educational ideals to scale, have not been used for these purposes. Our proposed solution is to shift from using technologies to assess predetermined samples of evidence of learning to using technologies to facilitate complex and negotiated models of assessment. This solution would require policy shifts that honor the needs of various stakeholders in the assessment process. We offer a power-sharing concept called negotiated control that engages policymakers, educators, researchers, and community members in the assessment process.

This article examines the role of social media metadata in conducting studies of professional development in social media spaces. It traces the brief history of research surrounding social media spaces, noting the lack of research that drills into social media metadata in research on professional development. Framed through a software studies perspective, this article provides a deeper examination of the historical nuances of metadata and explores two distinct methods to procuring social media metadata for research on social media enhanced professional development: using pre-built tools and calling an API (application programming interface) directly. The article raises important ethical considerations around using social media metadata, and touches briefly upon ideological questions associated with the ways companies collect, store, share, and monetize users' metadata. To overcome these limitations and biases, the authors propose a mixed methods approach through examining back end metadata, employing front-end surfacing techniques of the social media applications, and engaging in traditional qualitative methods of interviews and focus groups for the richest research.

As American students struggle with basic mathematical skills, the importance of math fact fluency has gained the attention of educators and researchers. Generalization of math fact fluency is also important for the transfer of skills to other settings and formats, assisting students in the completion of more varied and complicated math tasks. This column explores technology in the classroom and use of mobile applications (i.e., apps) to train students in fluency and generalization of math facts. Key features of apps that teachers should consider for classroom use are described and ways in which apps can provide students with a variety of stimulus and response conditions to promote fluency and generalization of math facts are highlighted.

The use of online learning and other software-powered technologies is on the rise in the United States, encouraged financially and politically by governmental and commercial entities. Specifically, online courses are gaining ground in K-12 public schools, schools which often purchase from third-party providers. After a decade in the New York City Department of Education as an English teacher and schools official responsible for a large-scale online learning programme, the author asks the question: How does the use of software-powered technologies like online learning affect the teaching of literature? In pursuit of this question, the author draws on concept from the field of software studies while adapting qualitative methods from multimodal studies to examine precisely how the nature of software (and the ideologies of those who create and sell it) are subtly influencing the teaching of literature.

A secondary English teacher tells how he and his students confronted the question, How do we reclaim the joy of reading? After admitting that they didn't read very much for his assignments, the students were invited to help figure out where the joy of reading goes as students grow older. As the teacher and students discussed their experiences as readers, they studied essays edited by Anne Fadiman in her book, "Rereadings." In these essays, writers reflected on their pasts and current lives as readers by rereading a book from years ago. The essays are part literary criticism, part memoir, and part author biography--and they offer much insight about students and their literary lives. The author recreates dialogue from classroom discussions, unpacks examples of student work, provides practical insights for other educators, and offers a theoretical framework within which one might consider Rereading essays in one's own classroom.

Drawing connections between Chaucer, Eminem, and social issues, New York City high school teacher Tom Liam Lynch helped students become familiar with "The Canterbury Tales." Students wrote poems of rhymed couplets about today's social and political issues, created illuminated manuscripts, and recorded a rap CD. A book and album were published for wider distribution.