About Me

My full CV is avail­able here.

I live in Edinburgh.

I am an edu­ca­tor, tech­nol­o­gist, con­sul­tant, trainer and speaker. In my early career in schools, I was a class­room teacher, depute head­teacher, head­teacher (in two very dif­fer­ent schools), and local author­ity edu­ca­tion man­ager. I also spent some time as a national pol­icy ana­lyst with the Scot­tish Government.

I joined Cisco Sys­tems in Jan­u­ary 2007 as an Edu­ca­tion Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­ager cov­er­ing the Emerg­ing Mar­kets — this takes in South Amer­ica, the Caribbean, Africa, Mid­dle East, East­ern Europe, Rus­sia and the Cau­ca­sus. While with Cisco, had the priv­i­lege of vis­it­ing more than 50 coun­tries around the world to learn about edu­ca­tion and to advise national and regional gov­ern­ments, uni­ver­si­ties and other agen­cies on the effec­tive con­junc­tion of edu­ca­tion and the dig­i­tal and net­work­ing technologies.

In 2001 I was asked by the Scot­tish Gov­ern­ment to ini­ti­ate a national project called the Scot­tish Schools Dig­i­tal Net­work. Today the result of that project are still devel­op­ing in the form of Glow, a national learn­ing plat­form for every school in the coun­try. Sup­port­ing Glow is a national dig­i­tal net­work­ing infra­struc­ture that was built as a pre­cur­sor to the design and devel­op­ment of the learn­ing platform.

I have a long-standing inter­est in the use of tech­nol­ogy in teach­ing and learn­ing — the BBC A com­puter was intro­duced to me in the year I started teach­ing, 1980. We have come a long way since that time — but with a longer way still to go!

I believe that my gen­er­a­tion (I come in some­where between the baby boomers and Gen X) has prob­a­bly expe­ri­enced the great­est step-change in tech­nol­ogy since time began, but our chil­dren, and their chil­dren, will see mas­sive changes that my gen­er­a­tion (or theirs, for that mat­ter) sim­ply can­not fore­see at this time.

§ 9 Responses to About Me"

  • Don’s Learning Log » Blog Archive » Are we destined to spectate? says:
    March 11, 2007 at 11:34 pm

    […] John Con­nell pro­vides a tremen­dous win­dow on edu­ca­tion in the devel­op­ing world through his new job as Cisco’s Edu­ca­tion Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­ager for the Emerg­ing Mar­kets — cov­er­ing South Amer­ica, the Caribbean, Africa, Mid­dle East, East­ern Europe and Russia. […]

  • Andrew Fraser says:
    October 15, 2007 at 12:37 pm

    Hi John

    I didn’t get a chance to catch up with you at the recent ACEL con­fer­ence. I thought your key was great. Very excit­ing and thought provoking.

    You may not remem­ber me, but I met with you last year when I was trav­el­ling on a CHurchill Fel­low­ship from Sydney.

    I never really got a chance to thank you for your time. A lot is hap­pen­ing for me since then.

    I have finalisewd my report and recently accepted a posi­tion with Par­ra­matta CEO (with Greg and Judy). I hope it will be a psace to put into prac­tice my think­ing and the ideas I am devel­op­inf fol­low­ing on from the Churchill.

    I have a blog — http://www.andrewjfraser.blogspot.com

    I have added a link to your blog. I hope that you don’t mind.

    Thanks again for your time when I was in Glas­gow, and also your keynote here in Syd­ney. I hope to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going.

    Kind regards,
    Andrew

  • John Connell says:
    October 19, 2007 at 5:04 am

    Andrew — apolo­gies for not com­ing back to you sooner. Your com­ment was picked uop as spam for some rea­son by my spam fil­ter. I have saved it from the drop, so to speak, and I am glad I did. I remem­ber our meet­ing well and it would have been nice to catch up in Syd­ney while I was there. It is great to know that you will be work­ing with Greg in Par­ra­matta, and of course with Judy O’Connell!

    I look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing the con­ver­sa­tion with you.

    I have rec­i­p­ro­cated and linked to your blog too.

  • Xandro says:
    February 12, 2008 at 4:33 am

    Howdy,
    I am not sure why you have a web site at all, but I want one.
    I just hap­pen to be surf­ing and here I find myself send­ing you a mes­sage.
    How can I have a web site like yours?
    Alexan­dro
    Syd­ney, Australia

  • John Connell says:
    February 12, 2008 at 6:22 am

    Xan­dro,

    Go to http://www.wordpress.com and set one up for your­self — it’s very easy to do.

    John

  • Michael Richardson says:
    March 20, 2008 at 5:04 am

    Would love to have you beta test and send thoughts: An appli­ca­tion for cre­at­ing inter­ac­tive graphic time­lines that scale, scroll, etc. (Flash-based). Plans include seri­ous collaborative/social tools, import­ing from RSS/Flickr/Dublin Core/+

    Best,
    Michael Richardson

    Mnemo­graph LLC
    Boise, ID USA

  • Jane says:
    April 11, 2008 at 10:42 am

    Hi John

    The Asus sounds fan­tas­tic — do you still feel as keen as ever after using it for a while?

    Uncon­nected ques­tion — how do I add one of those neat lit­tle anti-spam word boxes to my web page? I espe­cially like your ver­sion because I believe any­one would be able to read it, and adding in the option of hear­ing the word is good too (though you couldn’t do that for the usual mish-mash of dif­fi­cult to read ran­dom let­ters and numbers!).

    Many thanks

    Jane

  • Paul Foreman says:
    April 15, 2008 at 10:16 am

    Tried to leave this on Mind Map­ping post although the word in anti-spam wasn’t recognised?.…

    Thought I would add details of my Hand-drawn (& painted) Mind Maps…I have a web­site at — http://www.mindmaps.moonfruit.com It could help spark ideas for you and your read­ers. Every­thing is FREE to down­load includ­ing exam­ple Mind Maps.
    Regards
    Paul

  • » Civil Grand Jury Don Ledingham’s Learning Log says:
    December 23, 2009 at 9:16 am

    […] good friend John Connell’s blog is always worth a read and so it was this week when  I came across his post about the Civil […]