Jean Johnson has worked in the education field for 25 years following a spell in industry. She began her teaching career in East London schools working with difficult and disaffected teenagers. In 1993 she began working with new technologies and was one of the first teachers to pilot the use of the internet in schools. She was part of the early developer group of schools for Oracles' Think.com, contributing to the final design of the software.
Since then she has been involved in a number of high profile on-line projects both in the UK and abroad, working with schools as far apart as Sweden, Finland, the USA, India, Japan and New Zealand. Projects have included Web for Schools, Learning in the New Millennium, Schools on Line and the Virtual Classroom. Her work with in Europe was influential in developing a model for the use of the internet in schools in the European Union. In 1998 she was presented with an award as Teacher of the Year.
Jean went on to develop and lead the Notschool.net research project, working in the field of social inclusion for disadvantaged youth focussing particularly in the creative and innovative use of multimedia to develop learning. In 2005, she formed TheCademy, a charity committed to inclusion with Notschool.net as its flagship project. Her team won the prestigious 2005 e-well being award for digital inclusion. Jean has written a number of reports and papers including extensive work on internet based accreditation and content delivery models.
Jean is a frequent presenter at conferences and has contributed to a number of TV and radio programmes. She has been described as "the pre-eminent expert internationally" in the use of ICT to engage disaffected and excluded students.