Ananny holds a Bachelors of Science (Honours) from the University of Toronto where he double-majored in Computer Science and Human Biology. While an undergraduate, he was a founding member of Expresto Software, a company that developed movie-making software for young children to make multimedia stories. (The company was sold in August 2002.) He was also Nortel Networks’ on-campus representative and acted as a liaison between Nortel’s Human Resources department and the University of Toronto’s Engineering and Computer Science schools. He then went to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory where he worked with the Gesture and Narrative Language and Tangible Media groups, designing and evaluating new technological toys to support the language development of very young children. Ananny has consulted with toy design companies, helping to translate the concepts and prototypes he developed at the Media Lab into new product lines.
After graduating with a Masters in Media Arts and Sciences, Ananny moved to Ireland as an original member of the research staff of Media Lab Europe, the European research partner of the MIT Media Laboratory. While at Media Lab Europe he worked with the Everyday Learning group to design new technologies to support informal learning and public opinion development. Ananny led collaborations with people from the BBC (UK), the University of Tampere (Finland), the Ark Children’s Cultural Center (Ireland), Notre Dame University (USA), Loyalist College (Canada), the Amsterdam Computer Clubhouse (The Netherlands) and Fatima Mansions, a low-income urban apartment complex in Dublin, Ireland. His custom software was licensed to a European university for classroom research, and he regularly spoke in European academic and corporate venues.