Tony Browne's Profile

A Mancunian by birth, I had an excellent education at St Ambrose College, Hale Barns, Altrincham, at the same school from the age of 7 to 18!

Alongside my academic studies I was taught to sail at Tatton Park, Cheshire, and now, having developed my pastime, I have sailed many thousands of miles around the shores of the UK and Eire. I presently own a Camper and Nicholson 43 sailing boat, which is based at Conwy in North Wales.

Having trained in Design and Technology at Alsager, I taught mainly graphical communication and ICT at Secondary level, finally realising my ambition of becoming a Deputy Head Teacher at a large primary school in North Wales. I still live there in Colwyn Bay with my wife Sian, and two children, Simon and Lucy.

After leaving the school environment, I joined the 40 strong SchoolNet 2000 team working with Tesco and Ultralab. This was a Doom's Day type initiative aimed at recording school children's environments, and was featured in the Dome at Greenwich. This intiative is now called Schoolnetglobal.

At the end of the secondment, I went on with 13 others to work for ULTRALAB on many projects, beginning with Talking Heads. This project seeked to lessen the isolation of Headteachers, and I established several localized headteacher online environments, which informed the basis of the NCSL in Nottingham. I organized many Face to Face training sessions during this project in different venues throughout the UK

Over the last 3 years I have worked in Ultraversity guiding some 20 plus Researchers through a BA (Hons)in Learning Technology and Research. This is an action research project, which is developing an online, inquiry based research undergraduate degree. This is exploring e-learning pedagogy through facilitated online learning communities. The research considers the adaptation of teaching and learning for online learners, student support infrastructure and e-assessment.

I have also been involved in developing and delivering a range of research projects, and have played a lead role in bidding for funds from public and private organistions. Examples of research projects are :-

The Thinking Skills Conference

The Really Creative School Event in the NorthWest of England

The Northern Ireland Summer School in Derry, and soon...

At present I am collaboratively involved in researching the Cohort Leader's role in Ultraversity and indeed have recently taken on the position of Cohort Leader for Cohort 6 starting on September 2006.  I also have responsibilty for the Independent Learning Module Level 2 in Ultraversity.