Andy Carvin
Andy Carvin is the founding editor and current coordinator of the
Digital Divide Network, an online community of more than 7,500 Internet activists in over 120 countries working to bridge the
digital divide.
Carvin is often quoted in the news media on issues related to the
digital divide. He is also an active
blogger as well as a contributor to the
vlog Rocketboom.
Carvin lives in
Boston,
Massachusetts.
Born in
Boston and raised in
Florida, Carvin is a graduate of
Northwestern University. While working for the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1994, he authored the website
EdWeb: Exploring Technology & School Reform, one of the first websites to advocate the use of the
World-Wide Web in education.
In 1999, he was hired by the
Benton Foundation to help develop
Helping.org, a philanthropy website that eventually became known as
Networkforgood.org. At the December 1999 US National Digital Divide Summit in Washington DC, President
Bill Clinton announced the launch of the
Digital Divide Network, a
spinoff of Helping.org edited by Carvin.
In 2001, he organized an email forum called
SEPT11INFO, an emergency discussion forum in response to the September 11 attacks. Following the
Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004, he created the
RSS aggregator
Tsunami-Info.org, and served as a contributor to the
TsunamiHelp collaborative blog.
In January 2005, Carvin began advocating mobile phone podcasting as a tool for
citizen journalism and human rights monitoring; he called the concept
mobcasting. Utilizing free online tools including
FeedBurner,
Blogger and
Audioblogger, Carvin demonstrated the potential of mobcasting at a February 2005
Harvard blogging conference and at
The Gates, the
Central Park art installation created by the artist
Christo. He later demonstrated mobcasting as part of a collaborative blog called
Katrina Aftermath, which allowed members of the public to post multimedia content regarding
Hurricane Katrina. For Carvin's work on mobcasting and the digital divide, Carvin received a 2005
TR35 award from
Technology Review, awarded annually to the 35 leading technology innovators under age 35.
Carvin has also been honored as one of the top
education technology advocates in
eSchool News magazine and
District Administration magazine.
In May 2006, Carvin began serving as host on a blog called
learning.now on
PBS. According to Learning.now's website, it explores "how new technology and Internet culture affect how educators teach and children learn. It will offer a continuing look at how new technology such as wikis, blogs, vlogs, RSS, podcasts, social networking sites, and the always-on culture of the Internet are impacting teacher and students' lives both inside and out of the classroom." Learning.now is part of PBS TeacherSource, PBS' educator website.
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Andy Carvin's personal website*
Digital Divide Network*
PBS learning.now (blog)
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EdWeb: Exploring Technology & School Reform*
The Gates @ Central Park*
Mobcasting (blog)
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Katrina Aftermath (blog)
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TsunamiHelp (blog)
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Mind the Gap: The Digital Divide as the Civil Rights Issue of the New Millennium 1999 essay by Andy Carvin, Multimedia Schools magazine
