One of my all-time favorite Twitter encounters

If you're a teacher and you're not on Twitter, here's a good reason why you should be. Because you'd miss out on nuggets of wisdom and humor like this:

Storify archives curation -- July #nctechat and #titletalk

The past two Sundays I participated in some amazing professional Twitter chats. I wanted to post the tweets I saved from those chats as a way for others to see what worthwhile professional learning can happen in 140 characters or less.

The topic for last night's #titletalk was beginning school year routines.

My faith has been restored

Last week on Twitter, there was a big kerfuffle because Borough Press, a UK imprint of HarperCollins, commandeered the hashtag that Donalyn Miller created six years ago for teachers to share the books they read over the summer. It's called the #bookaday challenge, and it is what it says: read a book a day during the summer and share it on Twitter. It has been an incredibly useful form of professional learning for teachers, as they can see what others are reading and talking about as a way to know what to bring back and talk about in their classrooms in the fall.

Borough Press didn't bother to research whether the hashtag was already in use, or if they did, they didn't seem to care, and chose to use #bookaday for their own marketing, creating a schedule of book-related tasks for Twitter users to complete such as:

Book I own more than one copy of
Book with a blue cover
Book that doesn't belong to me
Book I forgot I owned

Compared to Donalyn's version of #bookaday, these tasks were all very trivial and muddied the feed of what teachers and librarians were trying to use for the benefit of their profession and their students.

At first, Borough Press would not waver, going so far as to say that because they were using the hashtag, it was trending. Their "apology" had a very #sorrynotsorry tone to it, and so I felt compelled write a poem a la William Carlos Williams, via Gail Carson Levine:

This whole situation felt like yet another example of a big corporation silencing the voices of teachers. But because so many teachers and librarians caused enough of a stir, and Donalyn also brought up the fact that #bookaday is referenced in her copyrighted work, Borough Press finally backed off and created a new hashtag, #bookadayUK.

The result of this unfortunate situation has restored my faith that teachers' voices do matter, can be heard, and can make a difference across the din of corporations muddying the educational waters. We're so used to hearing teachers' voices silenced or sullied that even a small victory like this is still a victory. We might be "small," but we are mighty.

Formative Assessment That TRULY Informs Instruction

Sunday night, NCTE hosted a wonderful Twitter chat on formative assessment, led by Franki Sibberson and Antero Garcia, who were two members of the task force responsible for writing the position statement Formative Assessment That Truly Informs Instruction. You see, testing companies as of late seem to have sullied the term formative assessment and turned it into something much different than its original intent, which is to give teachers immediate feedback in order to adjust their teaching to help students make meaningful progress. That is where NCTE's new position statement comes in. There is a desperate need for schools to really consider how and what they are assessing their students. Therefore, this new position statement should be shared widely. It is a perfect vehicle for discussion, which was proved in spades, and 140 character bursts on Twitter this past weekend.

Here is a slideshow of some of my favorite tweets from the chat:

It is my hope that if you're a teacher, administrator, or educational policy-maker, you will not only take the time to read NCTE's position statement on formative assessment, but also share and discuss it among colleagues. Unlike the Common Core State Standards, this document gave teachers a seat at the table and contains a thorough annotated bibliography. Transparency, fairness, and professionalism in education -- what a concept!