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The point was so obvious, it was almost embarrassing. Kids stared at their teachers for hundreds of hours a year, which might explain their expertise. Their survey answers, it turned out, were more reliable than any other known measure of teacher performance—­including classroom observations and student test-score growth. All of which raised an uncomfortable new question: Should teachers be paid, trained, or dismissed based in part on what children say about them?

For Children, a Lie on Facebook Has Consequences, Study Finds

The key to the experiment, explained Keith W. Ross, a computer science professor at N.Y.U. and one of the authors of the study, was to first find known current students at a particular high school. A child could be found, for instance, if she was 10 years old and said she was 13 to sign up for Facebook. Five years later, that same child would show up as 18 years old – an adult, in the eyes of Facebook — when in fact she was only 15. At that point, a stranger could also see a list of her friends.

The key to the experiment, explained Keith W. Ross, a computer science professor at N.Y.U. and one of the authors of the study, was to first find known current students at a particular high school. A child could be found, for instance, if she was 10 years old and said she was 13 to sign up for Facebook. Five years later, that same child would show up as 18 years old – an adult, in the eyes of Facebook — when in fact she was only 15. At that point, a stranger could also see a list of her friends.

If you ask students what are the most important qualities they like in teachers, one of the universally top-mentioned is fairness. Teachers and schools strive to be fair and build programs and polices based on this value.

Many reports, studies, and research articles published in recent years suggest that teacher quality matters a great deal in terms of student learning. This research synthesis explores the evidence for this relationship in an effort to help identify which teacher qualifications and characteristics should be prioritized in educating and hiring those teachers who are most likely to have a positive impact on student learning.

The NSPCC says smartphone apps are making it easier than ever before for people to be bullied and abused online.

There is an explosion of EdTech tools destined to gamify the classroom, most of which are web-based, while others come in the form of an app. Understandably, a teacher might wonder what is the best way to navigate through this sea of new, and subsequently, not thoroughly tested activities and tools. Throughout the school year I tried several game-based platforms with my students. Here are three game-based classroom solutions that helped me transform my fourth grade classroom into a dynamic learning environment. All three tools are completely free. Each platform is particularly strong in specific areas, therefore, depending on their needs, teachers can utilize one of the tools, or use a combination of two (or three), to maximize the impact on student learning.

The first, and probably the most popular game-based classroom platform is Socrative. A prominent member of the “audience response systems” family, Socrative is a powerful tool that offers many options to teachers. It is also one of the most diverse and adaptive of all platforms, as it offers three different highly customizable modes: the typical question-based game mode, a mode called “space race” which is a mode that aims to combine accuracy and speed, and a third mode called “Exit Ticket”, which can best be used at the end of a lesson as a means of taking the pulse of the classroom.

This all brings me to the Instructional Designer. It is important to understand that the raw material of knowledge is data. And we are drowning in it. And, significantly, it does not go away. Data that was not born digital is swiftly being digitized, and data that is born digital stays that way – forever. My goal in this article is to convince Instructional Designers to view data as a new natural resource, which means your job is to teach people how to adapt data and transform it into actionable intelligence. That is the key to the Fourth Industrial Revolution –sometimes called the Cyber-Physical Revolution– and the key is in the hands of the Instructional Designer community.