Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

Whenever I feel the need to vent, I write. I try to publish at least five or six pieces a year, depending on how hectic the rest of my life is. This page is dedicated to articles I've written professionally on issues related to education and technology. For more personal pieces, be sure to visit my travels page to read my adventure journals from around the world, including the Middle East, Peru and Bolivia, India and Nepal, Southeast Asia. You should also check out my latest journal, Anatolian Fortnight, which details my 1999 Turkish backpacking adventure from Istanbul to Mount Ararat.

EdWeb:
Exploring Technology and School Reform

Of all my work I'm best known for my website, EdWeb: Exploring Technology and School Reform. As I note in on my Projects page, EdWeb is my attempt to explain some of the major trends in education reform and how new technologies like the Internet can enhance learning. You can also use it to learn about the history of the Internet and the role of the Web in education. It's been online since October 1994 and it was one of the very first websites to suggest that student web publishing could be a powerful educational tool.

Writing on the Job:
Articles for the Benton Foundation

As part of my work at the Benton Foundation, I get to write on a variety of issues. Here's a brief list of some of my articles:

When a Picture Is Worth a Thousand Secrets: The Debate Over Online Steganography. In the wake of the September 11 attacks, various news outlets have reported on the possibility that terrorists have used a technique known as steganography to hide secret messages in publicly available Internet documents -- including pornographic image files -- to covertly communicate with each other. Though there's little direct evidence to support this at the moment, the speculation has raised the profile of steganography -- and raised weary eyebrows among policymakers and civil libertarians as they debate privacy rights in cyberspace.

An Inside Look at the ConnectNet Database. In March 2001, the Benton Foundation's Digital Divide Network and a coalition of national organizations launched a groundbreaking online resource, the Digital Divide Database. This database allows uses to track down the locations of over 20,000 organizations that provide free or low-cost Internet access and training opportunities. This article describes the development of the database and includes instructions for organizations wishing to add or edit their own data listings.

Cada Vez: An IT Enterprise with Community Connections. Part conference center, part restaurant, part training facility, Cada Vez is a hybrid high-tech operation that hopes to offer the latest IT tools to area businesses, nonprofits and residents -- while at the same time serving as a focal point for community technology activities.

Commercialization in Schools: New Technologies, Old Debates. Edtech ventures such as AOL@School and ZapMe! raise important questions regarding commercialization in schools. But are teachers' attitudes towards commercialization beginning to change?

Student Free Speech Rights on the Internet and the Ghosts of Columbine. A detailed look at the legal rights of young people to publish freely on the Internet -- and how many schools have begun to crack down on these rights in an unconstitutional manner.

From UUNet to UnionNet: Collective Bargaining and the Digital Divide. In February 2000, Ford and Delta both announced that they would supply their entire labor forces with free computers and low-cost Internet access. How could such policies affect the digital divide?

Mending the Breach: Overcoming the Digital Divide. Published in George Lucas' edtech journal Edutopia, this article serves as a primer for digital divide issues.

Technology Professional Development for Teachers: Overcoming a Pedagogical Digital Divide. Schools are getting wired to the hilt, but will the traditional teaching practices of many teachers get in the way of using the Internet effectively?

1's and 0's:
Columns for Multimedia Schools Magazine
Over the years I've had the pleasure of serving as a featured columnist in several major edtech periodicals. In November of 1998 I joined the board of editors for Multimedia Schools magazine. I contributed a column to the magazine called 1's and 0's, which was about the convergence of the new digital culture and the world of education. Probably my most read column was Mind the Gap: The Digital Divide as the Civil Rights Issue of the New Millennium, which was one of my first digital divide articles that helped re-define the issue in terms of literacy, content needs and community-building. Another essay, AOLification: A Metamorphosis from Community to Consumption?, looks at how the Internet has become a world of polished content and endless websites, possibly to the constant frustration of new online educators. Finally, my very first column, Talkin' About a Revolution: Education and the Moral of the Amazon.com Story, examined how businesses no longer have to rely of physical locations in order to make a sale. What will this trend mean for education?

Other Writings from the Recent Past
An op-ed of mine was featured in 1997 in a special issue of THE Journal. It's called Shooting Craps in Cyberspace, and it's basically an off-the-cuff prediction piece of where the Net is going in relation to education....
Back in '95 and '96 I was on the board of editors and a regular contributor to On the Horizon, an education journal that until recently was published at the University of North Carolina. It's now released by publishing giants Jossey-Bass. As OTH's Internet Editor, I wrote a column on issues related to new media and education. Please feel free to check out some of the pieces I wrote:
- The Electronic Fieldtrip: No Bag Lunch Required
  Andy praises trends in virtual fieldtrips
- Net Gain, Net Loss: A Grim Future for Student Web Publishing?
  Andy complains about trends in online access and publishing
- Searching for Bobby Fisher (Or Anything Else, For That Matter)
  Andy complains about the functionality of current online search engines
- You Say You Want A Revolution: An Educational Internet in a Commercial World
  Andy complains about the 4th International WWW Conference in Boston
So complaining beats praise three to one...
Read my Bill Gates story yet? In July 1997, I discovered that Bill Gates was going to pay a visit to the MLK public library here in Washington to dedicate a new computer lab. The event was mainly for DC VIPs and the press, which of course gave me a great excuse to crash the event. One thing led to another, and I was forced to confront the profound question, "If you could ask Bill Gates one question, what would it be?" Find out my answer in my essay An Encounter with The Man: Bill Gates, Libraries and a Momentary Redressing of Grievances, originally published in Web Review (before it became a 100% techie magazine).
Meanwhile, over at the U.S. Department of Education, you can find a nice collection of white papers on learning and the future of networking technologies. Along with these essays, you'll also notice a conference report I wrote on a two-day educational networking symposium hosted by the Department and attended by the white paper authors. Check it out and see what the experts had to say.
In the January 1996 issue of High School Journal, I contributed a piece called More than Just Hype: The World Wide Web as a Tool for Education. Though it's basically a rehash of EdWeb's WWW and Education section, it's still nice it got published in print.
Long long ago (well, long ago for the Internet - 1995), I penned the cover story for John December's CMC Magazine. It's called The Kids Who Would Be King: Electronic Publishing, Self-Esteem, and the Rocky Road to Expertise. It's a self-imposed change of pace from my usual "why I think the Web is neat" ramblings.
Finally, I wrote a couple of chapters on K-12 networking in The Internet Unleashed 1996, published by Sams/Macmillan. Unfortunately, I'm not in the more recent updates of the book, so if you want to read what I said, you'll have to hit a decent used bookstore.
home | welcome | what's new | travels | projects | writings | diversions | trivia

Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth. Copyright 1994-present by Andy Carvin (acarvin@benton.org). All Rights Reserved.