This week, 26-year-old Olivia Sprauer told the Huffington Post that she was fired for her modeling bikini pics. She stated that she was called into the principal’s office on April 29, was shown one of her modeling photos, and was asked for her resignation.

Sprauer isn’t broken up about the firing, however, as she had planned to stop teaching at the end of the year and attend graduate school. She also stated that she will attend the high school’s graduation ceremony to see her students off.

Sprauer hasn’t performed in porn, though a few of her modeling photos are a bit more risque than just bikini pics. Her modeling page on the Model Mayhem website states that she loves being in front of the camera and loves being photographed. It also states that she is ok with a bit of nudity:

I am more than comfortable shooting TASTEFUL nudes for the right projects and look forward to hearing from photographers interested in capturing the perfect photograph!

Sprauer also has a Facebook page for her modeling persona filled with photos no one would expect from a high school teacher. She seems to be taking the job loss in stride, though, using her Twitter feed to have a laugh at all the attention she is now getting:

Follow @VictoriaVJames

Victoria V. James
@VictoriaVJames

National Teacher Appreciation Day! HILARIOUS!

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3 days ago via Facebook · powered by @socialditto

Follow @VictoriaVJames

Victoria V. James
@VictoriaVJames

I’m too sexy for my job… Lol…. http://t.co/bFKBHgMHvD

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2 days ago via Facebook · powered by @socialditto

Follow @VictoriaVJames

Victoria V. James
@VictoriaVJames

Yes, I do nudes.My limitations have changed since deciding not to return to teach high school.

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1 day ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto

(Image courtesy Victoria Valentine James Facebook page)

30-year-old Zachary Joshua Reader, a former high school teacher and baseball coach at schools in both Anaheim and Irvine, California, is accused of encouraging sex acts and possessing nude photographs of boys aged 13-17.

According to police, Reeder used Facebook to commit his crimes. Between June of 2010 and January of 2013, he allegedly created a fake Facebook account posing as a female student. Through this account, Reeder befriended many underage boys, most of which he knew through his teaching jobs.

He reportedly got at least 106 victims to send him sexually explicit photos and videos.

Here’s the full list of counts that Reeder faces:

22 felony counts of using a minor for sex acts, 15 felony counts of distributing pornography to a minor, 13 felony counts of contacting a child with the intent to commit a lewd act, six felony counts of lewd acts upon a child, two felony counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14, one felony count of possession and control of child pornography, and one felony count of distribution of child pornography.

These counts carry a total maximum sentence of 44 years in prison.

This definitely isn’t the first time that we’ve seen Facebook used in elaborate fake profile sex scams. Last year, a Pennsylvania man was charged with 68 felony counts after he went to painstaking lengths to manipulate underage girls through a series of fake Facebook accounts.

That may be the case for an Akron, Ohio middle school teacher.

Melissa Cairns is facing termination after posting a now-controversial photo to her personal Facebook account. In October of last year, Cairns posted a photo of some of her students with duct tape over their mouths. A caption read, “Finally found a way to get them to be quiet!!!”

After a colleague informed the school administration of the photo, Cairns was placed on paid leave. Last week, the school board voted to pursue termination and will rule on her future as an educator on January 28th.

The photo has since been deleted from her Facebook account.

According to Cairns, the whole thing was a joke. But of course, she now regrets her indiscretion.

Apparently, she gave a student a piece of tape in order to repair a broken binder. The student then jokingly placed it over her mouth.

“The other kids in the class thought it was funny also, and they proceeded to pass the tape and scissors around the class. The students, the majority of the class, ended up putting a piece of duct tape across their mouth,” said Cairns.

About 2/3 of the class reportedly participated in the picture.

“Do I feel that this one, stupid mistake should cost me the last 10 years of all the good I’ve done? Absolutely not,” Cairns told ABC 15.

The school board is not only concerned about the fact that students were duct-taped in class, but also about the privacy implication of posting their photo on Facebook.

It seems unlikely that Cairns posted this photo with any other motivation than as a joke. But this just goes to show, jokes on Facebook, especially when then involve minors, can really backfire.

The actress says she wants to encourage the teachers protesting her controversial new movie, “Won’t Back Down”, because it is not only their right, it is one thing that brings about change.

“I welcome protest. I welcome discourse. I think discourse is a good thing, I think it spearheads change, I think we saw that in the ’60s,” Davis said. “That’s why we enjoy some of the privileges we do today. And you know what, in this movie, the teacher, at the end of the day, is the hero. They save the day.”

The film, which opened on Friday, focuses on the true story of a jaded teacher and a mother so frustrated with the school system that she starts a campaign to take over. The story, while inspirational to some, has educators upset because they feel it portrays them negatively. Though Davis says she can appreciate the feelings of the teachers, she also appreciates the strength of the women who figure central to the story, her character included.

“I don’t think it would be easy to come in and say, ‘Hey, let’s start a school.’ I do think that comes at a cost. That’s what life is about,” she said.

The funds were dispersed in two separate grants to the National Center on Time and Learning and Clemson University totaling over $1.1 million dollars. The grants are trying to find out if “Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) bracelets which will determine the feasibility and utility of using such devices regularly in schools with students and teachers.”

Thats right, the bracelet is going to determine if the students are engaged in the current discussion. kind of Orwellian don’t you think? Some other people tend to think it is a waste of money saying, “That’s more than $1.1 million that could have been spent on things that schools actually need, such as books, teachers, librarians, etc.” I don’t know if I agree with that but that is her opinion.

The study of galvanic bracelets is part of the “emerging field of neuromarketing,” which “relies on biometric technologies to determine a participant’s emotional and cognitive response to certain stimuli.”

photo courtesy of MIT technologyreview.com

After spending nearly four years in the New York City public school system, Paul Edelman founded Teachers Pay Teachers, a website that offers lesson plans in a wide variety of different subjects to educators around the world. For a small price, of course.

“I had an insight that the materials teachers created night after night had monetary value, so I set out to create a marketplace called Teachers Pay Teachers,” Edelman explained to Mashable. “Teachers are now making a pretty significant supplemental income and creating higher quality materials.”

Deanna Jump, a kindergarten teacher from Georgia, started using the service to sell her lesson plans to other education-oriented professionals. Since she began peddling her plans online, Jump has made an estimated $700,000, which is certainly a bit more money than most working teachers see in a decade. Jump also has an official Facebook page with nearly 12,000 followers, who are immediately alerted to any new plans she has for sale.

Teachers Pay Teachers currently has 700,000 registers used, with 10,000 of those individuals listed as sellers. The price for such materials range from $5 to $10, though Edelman stated that the site also has quite a few plans available for free. Recently, the company launched an option that allows schools to purchase multiple plans for several teachers at once.

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The first video tells the story of a North Carolina middle school student, Malachi, who had developmental troubles and struggled with the physical task of using pencils or pens to write. His teacher, Elaine Waters received a Google Chromebook, which enabled Malachi to improve his writing speed.

The second video shows how Gina Nunez, an Arizona college prep school teacher, was able to use Google+ Hangouts to keep in touch with her class throughout her recovery from a medical procedure. The students were able to interact with their teacher, who was at home on medical leave, almost as if she were in the classroom.

Frodella claims that the Google in Education Google+ page will feature more of these stories, though none have yet been posted. She suggests that those interested in how Google hopes educators will use technology should check out the YouTube videos from last week’s Education On Air conference, and online education technology conference that Google hosted using Google+ Hangouts. The videos can be found on the eduatgoogle YouTube channel.

What do you think? Were you ever helped or inspired by a teacher using technology (Google or not) in a creative way? Leave your story below in the comments.

The latest city to put the brakes on such activities is New York City. The city’s Education Department has released a list of guidelines for teachers to follow when it comes to social media and students, strictly prohibiting communication between teachers and students via personal pages. However, instructors are permitted to set up pages on Facebook and Twitter that are dedicated to classroom use.

The opportunity for teachers and students to communicate personally on social media still seems so near enough with that one permission that the consideration will undoubtedly still cross somebody’s mind, eventually. However, at least there’s a policy set up that dictates whether you, as an employee of NYC’s education system, are doing something wrong. The New York Times points out, though, that the new policy does nothing to discourage personal texting or even phone calls between students and teachers, which has been a more widespread problem.

So as to clarify what’s appropriate and what isn’t, in case it isn’t obvious, the city will be providing training sessions for teachers in order to demarcate ways that they can still apply social media in the classroom – something the Education Department says is a good thing – but to do it in a professional manner.

New York officials said that they chose not to prohibit all forms of direct electronic contact, and that they could still discipline teachers who used cellphones inappropriately. “The last thing we want to do is prohibit communication and prevent a teacher from helping a student in distress, even if that means making a phone call,” a spokesman, Matthew Mittenthal, said.

The new policy also recommends is that teachers utilize privacy settings on their social media pages so as to reduce the incidence of personal communication from students. Conversely, parents will have to sign consent forms for their children that grant permission for students to use the classroom-dedicated social media webpages.

The thing about all of this is, though, is that teachers and students already know it’s a bad idea to carry on a personal relationship via social media. Well, students might be in disbelief about it but teachers definitely should know. If you have to covertly communicate in personal messages, posts, tweets, texts, whatevers, that’s likely a good indicator of Things Not To Do. A fine litmus test for this problem, I propose: if the message you’re about to send to your student isn’t something you’d post publicly on their wall or tweet publicly to them, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it at all.

So how about it? Do you think this goes far enough to curb any temptation teachers and students might have to exchange personal messages on social media sites? Think the Education Department is over-reaching on this policy? Let’s have some discussion about it below.

These rates comprised the new Taulbee Survey, conducted by the CRA, which compiles demographic information regarding computer science enrollment, graduation rates, graduate employment, etc. This year’s data also indicates that students might be more interested in a CS degree than can be gauged, as many schools have computer science programs that have constrained enrollment due to lack of space, faculty, etc.

Overall enrollment was up 11.5% per department as compared to the 2010-2011 school year. The total number of bachelor of science degrees for CS was 10.5 percent higher in the 2010-11 school year, according to the report – of those schools who responded to both year’s surveys, CS graduates were up 12.9 percent.

In total, 1,782 CS Ph.D’s were handed out in 2010-2011, 267 Ph.D.-offering schools. Regarding CS master’s degrees, 75.4% of the degrees were awarded to males, and interestingly, 56.7% were awarded to nonresident aliens. The Taulbee Survey also reports that women’s enrollment in computer science is on a decline, with bachelor’s degrees falling from 13.8% to 11.7%.

One wonders where over half of those who are awarded Ph.D’s in computer science are ending up after they graduate, being nonresident aliens. It all seems indicative of the strange world tech culture involving code-writing foreigners being paid a dollar an hour to edit the steady stream of Facebook wall posts written by Americans who wouldn’t know what to do outside of any pastel-colored graphical user interface.

But when the numbers were announced for last month’s drawing, a special education teacher, an elementary teacher, and a school administrator realized they had the winning tickets–which were bought in a pool–and decided to keep working despite their spoils.

The friends, who wish to remain anonymous, have each worked multiple jobs to make ends meet in the recent economy slump but don’t want to let a sudden windfall affect the children who are in their care every day.

“I can’t give up on my kids,” one of the winners said.

The $656 million jackpot was split between three winning tickets scattered across the country; aside from Maryland, a winner was also announced in Kansas and Illinois. No one has come forward to claim their share in the latter state.

The friends, who call themselves “The Three Amigos”, remain humble about their winnings–about $35 million each–and say the ticket is a prayer answered for unpaid bills.