The eldest of 5 siblings.  I have been working in IT for 5 years.  I studied for my GCSEs and A levels at Great Barr School in Birmingham, the UK’s largest school;  I achieved all of the qualifications except for one, can you guess which? I.T I made the decision to turn that around and now i have acquired just over 5 years experience working for an IT reseller on the front line listening to end user issues and keeping up to date with the latest technology to help solve network managers problems whilst thinking of the cost. I recently joined an IT Security Specialist Cygnia Technologies.

Cygnia offer data leakage protection DLP, Email Encryption, Firewall VPN/UTM, Intrusion Prevention (IPS), Web content security, SMTP Content Analysis, End point security, Identity Management, Secure remote access, Active Directory Security.

In the short 5 years I have worked in IT I have become inspired on the projects completed within the education side of the Business also I have been conscious about specialising in an area, now I have joined Cygnia I can focus on the specialist security technologies out on the market.
  
I have been lucky to have met with real world experts in their field on a number of leading technologies, including Microsoft, HP, Citrix, Lightspeed, VM Ware, Varonis, Ericom, Waterford, and Wireless Vendors including Extricom.   

I am a member on the largest Educational online IT forum www.edugeek.net which has a user group of 17,000 plus, the site has now become global.  EduGeek is an interactive site where members go to share advice and collaborate discussing the latest technologies out there on the market today and their experiences of using these technologies within an educational environment. 

I am also a member of the Learning Gateway user group which has recently been set up by Alex Pearce, this is a site where members post about their first hand experiences of use of IT within schools, you can see many worthwhile reading posts on this link here (including my posts!)  http://www.learninggateway.net

My main interest is not just on the technology itself but, how people (students/learners) adapt and use the technology for greater learning and better productivity in a 21st century work and most importantly of all learning environment.