Jonathan Furness' profile

Jonathan is a software developer at ULTRALAB, a learning technology research centre in Chelmsford, Essex, having taught for several years at a primary school. Jonathan enjoyed his very rewarding time in the primary classroom, teaching children from 7 to 11 years old, and now looks forward to making a greater impact on education at a national level.

Over the past seven years, much of Jonathan's work has centred around using, supporting and even building, online learning communities. Back in 1997, he supported the first pilot of the Online Learning Network (OLN), Learning in the New Millennium, Oracle's Codename Scoop (think.com), and more recently, Ultraversity - Ultralab's online degree course for undergraduates. He is responsible for developing the online community software and portfolio tools which allows the researchers to share their understanding amongst themselves and facilitators.

In addition, Jonathan is writing the specification for the Distributed School project, a key opportunity to explore whether children living in small village communities can use technology to bring them together into a much larger community of learners. Imagine a node of 12 children connected to two other nodes of equal size via video walls that opens the door to discussion and collaboration.

Besides his involvement in many other ULTRALAB projects, Jonathan sits on the Royal Television Society jury for Multimedia in Primary and Secondary Education.

You can read more about Jonathan and his current thinking by visiting his blog site, Jonathan's Blog

or email, jonathan at ultralab dot net