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In the city of Denver, Colorado, there’s an ugly fight breaking out over whether public libraries should provide books and other materials in Spanish. Anti-immigration groups argue that publicly funded libraries should be English-only, while library supporters retort that curtailing Spanish-language content is discriminatory and doesn’t reflect the ever-changing population demographics of the United States.
More »Andy Carvin
Andy Carvin is coordinator of the Digital Divide Network, an online community of more than 8,500 activists, policymakers, business leaders and researchers in more than 135 countries working to find solutions to the digital divide.
Andy is the author of the pioneering online education resource EdWeb: Exploring Technology and School Reform, launched in 1994. Named by NetGuide magazine as “One of the Top 50 Places to Go Online,” EdWeb was one of the first websites to advocate the use of the World Wide Web in education. Andy is the founder and moderator of WWWEDU, the Internet's oldest and largest email forum on the role of the Web in education, and DIGITALDIVIDE, the Internet's premiere discussion group for examining digital divide issues. He also served as creator and moderator of SEPT11INFO, one of the most successful online communities created in the hours following terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Andy has been featured in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Harvard Educational Review, Education Week, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Village Voice, Wired, San Jose Mercury News, The Industry Standard and the second edition of The Internet Unleashed, published by Sams/MacMillan.
In December 2001, Andy was named by District Administration magazine as one of America's top 25 edtech advocates. Andy received similar honors from eSchoolNews in 1999 when they named him a member of its Impact 30 list of edtech leaders. He is a former member of the board of the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), which advocates policies advancing the role of information technology in schools. From 1999 to 2001, he served on the Board of Directors for the Asia/Pacific Center for Justice and Peace, a consortium of NGOs that promotes democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of religion across Asia.
Andy holds a bachelor of science in rhetoric and a master of arts in telecommunications policy from Northwestern University, where he received the prestigious Annenberg/Washington graduate fellowship. While living in Illinois, he was co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Chicago-area arts weekly, Art+Performance. Andy has traveled extensively around the world and has written about his adventures in popular online travelogues. In January 1999, Andy premiered From Sideshow to Genocide: Stories of the Cambodian Holocaust, a virtual history of the Khmer Rouge regime and collection of survivor accounts. More recently, Andy has been reporting on his travels through stories, podcasts and video on his popular blog, Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth.
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Latest posts by Andy Carvin
12 March 2006
Mauritius: Video Montage Honoring Independence Day
The Indian Ocean island nation of Mauritius is a veritable paradise, but is going through hard times due to an outbreak of the mosquito-borne illness, chikungunya. Since the disease has...
17 November 2005
Video Blog from WSIS: Negroponte's $100 Laptop
Eight-minute video documentary of the prototype of Nicholas Negroponte's $100 laptop, which premiered yesterday at the WSIS summit in Tunis. Andy Carvin talks with the chief technology officer of the...
8 November 2005
Video blog: The Liberian Refugees of Buduburam
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Video documentary of my July 2005 visit to the Liberian refugee camp in Buduburam, Ghana. I learn about the challenges faced by Liberians forced to flee their homeland, as well as some of the training programs available to them. I visit one of the camp's telecentres, as well as an women's literacy support group. Music used with permission of Alula Records.
Low-res version (20 megabytes): |
26 October 2005
Video: Scenes from a Bangladeshi Telecentre
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Video montage of a telecentre based at a girls school in Comilla, Bangladesh. The telecentre is run by Relief International's Schools Online program, which coordinates 20 telecentres across the country. |
23 October 2005
1 September 2005
Sept 2, 2005: International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day
Tomorrow, Friday September 2, is International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day. Why? Because it needs to be done. If you have a blog, here's what you can do. Sometime tomorrow, take a break from whatever it is you usually blog about, and post something constructive related to disaster relief. You can keep it topical to your blog; or, you can just dedicate blog space to listing websites where people can donate money (maybe even challenge people to match your donation). Or, share a story of a hurricane survivor. This goes for photo bloggers, podcasters and video bloggers as well - there's no reason why this should be text-only. Though this is inspired by Hurricane Katrina, the goal is to deal with disaster relief efforts worldwide, posting about a disaster relevant to your community. Post lists of supplies needed for victims of yesterday's stampede in Baghdad. Post an update on how your family is recovering from the tsunami. Post multi-lingual resources for African families in Paris displaced by the recent apartment fires. Blog about whatever you choose, as long as it supports some kind of disaster assistance in a constructive way. When you've posted to your blog, be sure to include a link to this Technorati tag: International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day. That way, when people follow that link, they'll be able to find a collection of all relevant postings published throughout the blogosphere. There will also be an RSS feed on that page, which can be used to aggregate all of the postings and display them on a single webpage. I plan to aggregate them on my Katrina Aftermath blog; you can do the same. (Later, I'll post a javascript on my Katrina blog to make it easy for anyone to do this - more soon.) One collection of disaster relief resources, countless bloggers. That's the power of the blogosphere. So please join me tomorrow and participate in International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day. Take a break from whatever it is you normally blog about - even if it's just for one post - and give back to the Net. -andy
20 August 2005
12 August 2005
Image from Thailand
Two hilltribe girls in Mae Sai, Thailand, standing along the Thai-Myanmar border, by Andy Carvin.
Chad: Habré Henchmen Ousted
Human Rights Watch’s news blog is reporting that six henchman of Chad’s former dictator Hissène Habré have been ousted from positions in government.
“The Chadian government’s move follows a report last month by Human Rights Watch naming these six and 35 other leading Habré-era figures, many accused of torture and killings, who still hold key posts in Chad. Those dismissed include the powerful director of the Judicial Police who was deputy director of national security under Habré; a surveillance chief who was the director of Habré’s dreaded political police, the Documentation and Security Directorate (DDS); and a man described by a Chadian truth commission as one of Chad’s ‘most feared torturers.’ It is believed that more sackings may be forthcoming.”
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