Tom Barrett, one of the best known primary teachers in Britain, joins top educational consultancy NoTosh Limited this May. Barrett joins NoTosh founder Ewan McIntosh to begin growing the company, which recently has won several significant projects.

Barrett is one of the UK’s best known classroom teachers, working in the primary schools sector. He curates and shares thousands of practical ideas from teachers across the globe on his blog edte.ch, and puts into practice the very best thinking on educational technology to inspire and engage children in their learning.

With NoTosh, Barrett will lead new projects in Brixton schools, as well as working on new products with educational publisher Rising Stars, in contracts he brings to the firm. He will also help develop existing NoTosh projects on emerging technologies, school leadership and improving teacher capacity, in the UK, US and Australia.

“Dream job”

Speaking from his current Nottingham classroom, Barrett said: “It’s a dream job. It’s a great opportunity to amplify what I’ve been doing, and help more teachers excite learners with – and without – technology.

“I’ve found ideas that have helped engage learners in my own schools, so this offers a chance to share those ideas even wider and help teachers implement them in their own settings.

“One of the things I’m most excited about is the huge opportunity I’m going to have to research fresh, cutting edge ideas, and then try them out with schools seeking something different.”

New client Rising Stars’ Head Andrea Carr said of the new partnership: “Building relationships with teachers and educators has always been at the heart of Rising Stars’ success. I am really excited that Tom and Ewan are working with us to develop these relationships further and to build the Rising Stars community online, here in the UK and internationally.”

Barrett’s reputation for seeing worthwhile trends in educational technology is well founded. He’s an award-winning teacher, recognised in 2011 by the world’s largest technology professional organisation for his contribution to public service. He was the first teacher in the world to work with multitouch tables in the classroom, pre-dating iPads by some three years in a partnership with Philips. He currently sits on the steering group for Durham University‘s SynergyNet project that is researching the future path of multi-touch pedagogy.

In 2010 he worked with Google to bring their teacher academy event to Google HQ London. It was the first time Google held the teacher training event outside of the US.

Barrett has also been a key figure in spreading the popularity of “for teachers, by teachers” unconference TeachMeet, a movement created in part by NoTosh founder Ewan McIntosh. He devised the commercial partnership model of TeachMeet Takeovers at the world’s biggest education show, BETT.

He has a particular passion for helping teachers connect and learn together through the use of online tools. He has been instrumental in supporting and encouraging thousands of teachers, the world over, to connect and to build networks that help support their professional development.

If you want to work with Tom Barrett, Ewan McIntosh or one of the growing number of associate consultants at NoTosh please call 0791 992 1830 or send an email to ewan@notosh.com