Barnaby Blackburn
Barnaby Blackburn is a British web site creator, known for his web site iamdyslexic.com.
He was born on 5th June 1989 in Somerset, UK. He started primary school with a statement of special educational needs due to very poor speech. When he was 7 he was diagnosed as being Dyslexic and he started using a laptop at the age of 9 at St Bedes Prep School, Eastbourne.
He launched his website, www.iamdyslexic.com in October 2000, which was a massively popular world wide website to see dyslexia from a child’s point of view. It explains how he has overcome many of his difficulties with good tips to get around them, for children, parents, and teachers alike. The message board is hugely popular, where thousands of people have left their views, as well as their advice and stories. As he often says 'it’s not just my website, everyone contributes to it.'
In 2002 he moved to Charterhouse School, Godalming. He then started to create his own software after working in a special needs school as part of his Duke of Edinburgh award, seeing massive holes in the market, so he tailor made various educational resources, which are in us in schools all around the world, which he sells via his dyslexia website. His latest development is a behaviour tracking database, in use in various schools around Surrey, UK. The schools that use it currently have been highly commended by OFSTED in their reports.
Barnaby left Charterhouse in the summer of 2007 after doing A Levels in Maths, Further Maths, Further Maths Add, Physics, and Chemistry. During the summer, he went to Malaysia with Raleigh International to undertake community work in a small village at the foot of Mount Kinabalu, where a team of 10 school leavers all helped build a dam up in the hills above the village and pipe water down to the villagers. After 3 weeks of work the value was turned on and water presure was so strong, a 20m high steam of water shot into the air - this was the first time these villages had ever had clean water, and are very thankful to the team and Raleigh International.
On returning to England, he started his degree at St John's College, Oxford Univisity reading for an MEng in Engineering.