Connect with Digital Activism

Not familiar with digital activism? Check out the short video on Harvard’s Internet & Democracy Project‘s site: “Introduction to Digital Activism.” You may also want to read the short article “Digital Activism on YouTube.”

Democracy

A Crucible Moment: An examination of students’ civic learning and democratic engagement in college study.

Environmental Issues

Groundwire: “Groundwire delivers technology to engage people, organizations and communities in building a sustainable society.”

Global Water Challenge: “Founded in 2006, the Global Water Challenge (GWC) is a coalition of leading organizations in the water and sanitation sector. Drawing upon the experience, expertise and assets of its 24 members, GWC is able to create partnerships that achieve far greater results than any one organization could achieve by itself.”

It’s Getting Hot in Here: “It’s Getting Hot in Here is the voice of a growing movement – a collection of voices from the student and youth leaders of the global movement to stop global warming. Originally created by youth leaders to allow youth to report from the International Climate Negotiations in Montreal in 2005, It’s Getting Hot in Here has since grown into a global online community with over 300 writers from countries around the world.”

Social Justice

Fahamu
Fahamu has a vision of the world where people organise to emancipate themselves from all forms of oppression, recognise their social responsibilities, respect each other’s differences, and realise their full potential

Ushahidi
Ushahidi, which means ‘testimony’ in Swahili, is a website that was initially developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. Ushahidi’s roots are in the collaboration of Kenyan citizen journalists during a time of crisis. The website was used to map incidents of violence and peace efforts throughout the country based on reports submitted via the web and mobile phone. This initial deployment of Ushahidi had 45,000 users in Kenya, and was the catalyst for us realizing there was a need for a platform based on it, which could be use by others around the world.

Mideast Youth
A student-owned independent network that promotes constructive dialogue and understanding within the Middle East and North Africa. Arabs, Iranians, Kurds, and Israelis work side by side on a variety of different projects in order to advance towards moderation and interfaith understanding.

Feminist Digital Activism

Online Resources for Feminist Activism
A list compiled by the Stanford’s Women’s Community Center.

Activist Web Sites for Women’s Issues
Site created by Joan Korenman.

AWID
The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) is an international, multi-generational, feminist, creative, future-orientated membership organization committed to achieving gender equality, sustainable development and women’s human rights. A dynamic network of women and men around the world, AWID members are researchers, academics, students, educators, activists, business people, policy-makers, development practitioners, funders, and more.

Feminist Majority Foundation

National Organization for Women

Free Speech Issues

Global Voices Advocacy: “Global Voices Advocacy is a project of Global Voices Online. We seek to build a global anti-censorship network of bloggers and online activists throughout the developing world that is dedicated to protecting freedom of expression and free access to information online.”

Track Your Activism

Splashlife: Take action and earn points. Points can be used for deals and discounts.

myImpact: Record, share and track your impact when you volunteer. Connect these activities with the greater good happening on the Stockton campus. Create your personal or group account and then add “eCitizenship-RSCNJ” as your organization. When you volunteer, serve as a mentor, or donate time or money, connect these activities to “eCitizenship-RSCNJ” and see the results add up.

Tools to Do Your Own Digital Activism

Facebook: network your way to change.

FrontlineSMS: “FrontlineSMS enables instantaneous two-way communication on a large scale. It’s easy to implement, simple to operate, and best of all, the software is free. You just pay for the messages you send in the normal way.”

General, Multi-Purpose/Topic Digital Activism Sites

DigiActive: “DigiActive is an all-volunteer organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use the Internet and mobile phones to increase their impact. Our goal is a world of activists made more powerful and more effective through the use of digital technology.”

MobileActive: “A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact.”

Twitter List of Top Digital Activism Voices

Connect with Technology

What are some of the most useful tools for students, professors, staff and administrators to keep organized and connected? Below are a list of FREE tools, frequently recommended in academic circles, to help keep you organized and in touch. Have a free tool you want to recommend? Let us know!

Meeting Scheduler

Are you using email to try to coordinate meeting times? Consider using a free meeting scheduler to make this process easier.

• Doodle: “The world’s leading online scheduling tool, Doodle takes the pain out of finding the right date and time for a group of people to meet and makes scheduling virtually effortless. The basic service is a free online coordination tool which requires neither registration nor software installation.”

• Tungle: “Tungle.me is a scheduling application that syncs with your existing calendar.
  • Eliminate double-bookings, time zone mishaps and the back-and-forth of finding a time to meet
  • Easily schedule meetings, inside or outside your organization
  • Invite others to schedule with you, without having to sign up”

Read ProfHacker‘s article on Tungle for more information on scheduling tools: “Scheduling 101.”

Scholarship and Educational Tools

• zotero: “Zotero [zoh-TAIR-oh] is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, cite, and share your research sources. It lives right where you do your work—in the web browser itself.” This tool will change how you conduct your research. Also works with MS Word (formats citations), allows you to annotate sources, and works with many library electronic databases.
• iTunes U: “a powerful distribution system for everything from lectures to language lessons, films to labs, audiobooks to tours — is an innovative way to get educational content into the hands of students.”
• YouTube EDU: explore the wide range of channels from various educational institutions
• Talks@Google: “@Google events–such as the Authors@Google and Women@Google series–featuring everyone from newsmakers to bestselling authors.”

File Sharing/Storage

These tools will help you share and store files more efficiently. So, stop emailing files to yourself, stop trying to write in groups over email, and stop forgetting to back up files or saying you don’t have time to back up files. Start using a file sharing/storage application and watch your productively and ability to conduct virtual group work increase.

• dropbox: “Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers.”
• googledocs: “Create and share your work online and access your documents from anywhere.”

Aggregators

Aggregators work with anything with Atom or RSS feeds. When content is added or updated, the aggregator will let you know new content is available.

• googlereader: An especially helpful web-based aggregator if you use iGoogle (allows you to customize your google search page). Anytime you open a google search page, you can see if there is new content available on the sites you follow or you can go directly to your googlereader page.
• bloglines: “A web-based personal news aggregator that can be used in place of a desktop client.”

Social Networking & Communication

• YouTube (Stockton’s channel)
• Facebook
• Myspace
• Twitter
• Ning
• Epsilen (free for educators)
• googlevoice: (currently by invitation only) “One number for all your phones, voicemail as easy as email and many calling features for free.”

Connect with Government and Politics

What is going on in the state and federal government? What state and federal legilsative districts do you live in and who are your representatives? Learn the answers to these questions and how you can become engaged in state and federal elections.

New Jersey State Government and Politics

• State of New Jersey
• New Jersey Courts
• New Jersey Legislature
• State legislative distrcits
• Where and how to register to vote in New Jersey

Federal Government and Politics

• Our Federal Government (links to Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches)
• New Jersey congressional representatives and House district map
• What's going on in the federal government? GPO Access