Every year, a handful of teachers around the country get into trouble when insensitive Halloween costumes and social media combine to form a toxic mix of bad publicity for them and their school districts. The Middleton School District in Idaho may have set some sort of dubious record, however, by placing 14 elementary school educators…
Amy Hewett-Olatunde, a teacher of English Language Learning at the LEAP High School in St. Paul, Minnesota, was removed from the Minnesota Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) after making comments on Facebook that were harshly critical of President Trump. State-Wide Recognition: Just over three years ago, Hewett-Olatunde was selected as the Minnesota Teacher…
A couple of weeks ago, I traveled to Grand Central Tech to record a studio interview for the Funny as Tech podcast on the provocative topic of “Sex Robots and Our Private Data.” The podcast is now live and available for download on iTunes. As you can hear on the podcast, there are a lot…
![[L to R] Baratunde Thurston, Anneka Jong, Scott Hartley, David Ryan Polgar, and Joe Leonardo -- Funny as Tech, November 7, 2017](https://www.cybertraps.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Photo-2017-11-07-NY_Manhattan_Peoples-Improv-Theater_Funny-as-Tech-570x380.jpg)
If you live in the New York area, I highly recommend making a trip to the People’s Improv Theater on East 24th Street in Manhattan to attend a performance of “Funny as Tech.” The show is the brainchild of tech ethicist David Ryan Polgar (@TechEthicist) and comedian Joe Leonardo (@ImJoeLeonardo). Each month, they tape a…
Item: Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones threatens to bench any members of the team who kneel during the national anthem. Item: Sportscaster Jemele Hill is suspended for two weeks by ESPN for suggesting that any fans upset with Jones’s announcement should think about the fact that they are watching the game and buying products from…
Is it just me or has the news cycle accelerated to the point of near-incomprehensability? Events which once would have been a topic of conversation for a week (if not longer) are now rapidly buried under an uending onslaught of newly-shocking developments. While that is challenge for anyone who writes a blog (or frankly, for…
A disciplinary panel for Britain’s National College of Teaching Leadership (NCTL) decided last week to indefinitely ban Eleanor Wilson, a 28-year-old physics teacher at an unnamed school in Bristol, from teaching in English classrooms. The panel’s decision came after hearing testimony from a student, “Pupil A,” that on a July 2015 flight home from a…
[Update: 2017-07-12] As expected, last night’s discussion was lively. While there were considerable areas of agreement (beginning with the moral imperative to combat child sex trafficking), there were also some provocative debates about the role of major tech companies, the boundaries of speech, and the best options for moving forward. Kudos to host Cheri Roberts…
Last night, CNN aired the first episode of its new documentary series, “The Nineties,” which focused on the changes that occurred in television during that decade. Among the major themes: development and then abandonment of shows aimed at an African-American audience, fragmentation of the television audience, increased vulgarity and nudity, a growing acceptance of gay…
Over the last several months, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow has devoted large amounts of airtime to these burning questions: 1) Did the Russian government attempt to interfere in the United States presidential election in 2016 and if so, 2) did the campaign of Donald Trump actively collude with the Russians in that meddling? I don’t…
