professor stephen heppell
For conference flyers and the like feel free to cut and paste any, but surely not all, of the text below - it is reasonably up to date as at 03/18/2020
Stephen's work is worldwide:CEO Heppell.net, from 2001 - continues
Professor The Felipe Segovia Chair of Learning Innovation at Universidad Camilo José Cela, Madrid, from 2011 - continues
Professor. Chair in New Media Environments, Centre for Excellence in Media Practice, Bournemouth University, Prof from from 2008 - 2017,
Emeritus Professor Chair in New Learning Environments, Anglia Ruskin University, from 1989 - continues
Executive chairman Learning Possibilities+ from 2010 - continues
Awards this century include:
In June 2006 Stephen was awarded the Royal Television Society's Judges Award for Lifelong Services to Educational Broadcasting.
In 2008 he received the prestigious BETT Award for Outstanding Achievement in ICT Education
In 2014 he was honoured to receive the UK's NAACE Award for Lifetime Achievement in educational technology.
Stephen's "eyes on the horizon, feet on the ground" approach, coupled with a vast portfolio of effective large scale projects over three decades, have established him internationally as a widely and fondly recognized leader in the fields of learning, new media and technology.
a school teacher for more than a decade, and a professor since 1989, Stephen has worked, and is working, with learner led projects, with governments around the world, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, with schools and communities, with his PhD students and with many influential trusts and organizations.
Press and media comments, sampled from over the years:
and a couple of nice things said about my old lab - I left it in 2004, having founded it:"Professor Stephen Heppell is a world expert on contemporary learning, specialising in online education and learning spaces" Bournemouth University, 2017.
"Digital Education Leader and learning futurist Prof Stephen Heppell is one of the most influential academics in the field of technology and education globally" CI TV, 2016
"Stephen Heppell is somewhat of a guru when it comes to learning space design and the move to what he terms agile learning environments". Open Learning Spaces 2011
"Europe's leading expert on online education and learning spaces" EduTech Future Schools, Australia, 2014
"Europe's leading online education expert" Microsoft 2006
"Stephen has a vast portfolio of successful, large scale, learning projects behind him". JISC 2006
"Professor Stephen Heppell, world renowned expert in education, media, technology and learning environments". Macmillan Education 2017
"one the world's foremost experts on contemporary learning", Queensland Courier 2011
"In a career that spans academic research, teaching, policy development, public and private sector collaboration, development of educational applications, politics, radical thinking and leftfield innovation, it is hardly surprising that the recipient of this evening's award is often referred to as the "funkiest on-line guru on the scene". Royal Television Society 2006
"the most influential academic of recent years in the fields of technology and education" Department for Education and Skills (DfES), UK, 2006
"Money alone won't make the Internet fly. Ultimately, it's success lies with kids and other folk who don't follow dot-com stocks. That's where Stephen Heppell comes in. He's a digital do-gooder, helping to bring ordinary people into the Internet age.... looking about as threatening as Santa Claus with his twinkling blue eyes and bushy beard" Wall Street Journal 2000
"He could clearly be a very wealthy man because of his unique foresight, but he's decided that he wants to help children and parents get the most out of IT and Education" European Wall Street Journal 2000
"Ultralab is Europe's leading leading research institute pioneering leading edge applications in support of proven educational precepts." Oracle Corporation 1999
"one of the most respected research centres in e-learning in the world" Financial Times 2001
Stephen is, and has been, a regular face on TV all around the world - in the UK this ranges from Newsnight, the BBC Breakfast sofa and Sky News, to Channel 4's Things to Come. On radio too: from BBC Radio 4's You and Yours to the Steve Wright Show - or even right back to Phil Miles on Australia's Island Sound radio in 1992! In Australia radio regular appearances range from national ABC to statewide Mix Radio in WA.
Stephen's ICT career (he is widely credited with being the person who put the C into ICT), began with the UK government's Microelectronics Education Programme (MEP) in the early 80s, after he had been teaching in secondary schools for some years - which he enjoyed enormously.
Stephen founded and ran Ultralab for almost a quarter of a century, building it into one of the most respected research centres in e-learning in the world - at one time Ultralab was the largest producer of educational CD-ROMs in Europe - before leaving it in 2004 to found his own global and flourishing policy and learning consultancy heppell.net which now has an enviable portfolio of international projects all round the world.
An early pioneer of multimedia - heading Apple Computer's Renaissance Project (kickstarting the development and use of CD ROM in education), Stephen went on to pioneer, and be the guiding "father" of, early social networking in Learning with seminal projects including:
- the pre-internet Teletext and email social networking project *ESW in the 1980s,
- the pioneering nationwide Schools OnLine for the UK Department of Trade and Industry in 1995/6
- Tesco Schoolnet 2000 from 1999 - the then Guinness Book of Record's largest internet learning project in the world.
- Think.com with Oracle from 1999,
- Talking Heads linking every English headteacher into an on-line community of practice;
- Stephen created in 1997, and guided for ten years Notschool.net, at the time a uniquely effective project to re-engage children excluded from school by behaviour or circumstances;
- In 2003 Stephen led the creation of the remarkable on-line, work placed, research based, undergraduate degree ultraversity, variants of which are running in a number of universities today.
Stephen's long track record of supporting children in making, creating and programming with their computers, rather than just using them (from Logo and Prolog through HyperCard to Scratch today), has led to a string of constructivist projects including the EU funded éTui robotic project for 4 year olds, or Maker4Maker.net with Syrian refugee children, in Jordan
In recognition of much of this work, along with just 51 others including Sam Mendes, Damien Hirst, Zaha Hadid, Jarvis Cocker, Harrison Ford, Lauren Bacall, Muhammad Ali, Stephen became an Apple Master in the 1990s. Apple were the initial sponsors of his first chair as a young professor in 1989 in his 30s.
Stephen's learning design work extends beyond the virtual and he has a broad portfolio of new learing spaces ranging from new school and universities, to sports coaching facilities and corporate spaces. Current school projects include whole schools, Science and STEM spaces in Australia, South America, Europe, Taiwan, India and more.
A current major research direction, the Learnometer project, is an Internet of Things device monitoring all the core environmental variables impacting on cognitive processes inside learning spaces: CO2, pollution, light, temperature, sound and more. With millions of hours of data and schools all around the world installing LoMs and monitoring their resultant improvements, the aggreggation of marginal gains philosophy from Stephen's work with elite sports has spilled over into some extraordinary transformations inside education too. The Learnometer data has been particularly insightful during the CoVID pandemic - highlighting, for example, the cognitive impact pf TVOCs from deep cleaning, and the importance of outdoor learning in reducing aerosol transmissions.
Around the world a string of innovative schools are proud to trace their remarkable progress back to his direct involvement. Complementing the work designing on-line communities and computing in learning, Stephen is at the heart of a global revolution in physical learning space design, with a string of major new projects worldwide including 0-21+ academies, and a complete makeover of a national education system in the Caribbean. His research project in 2003 exploring for CABE and RIBA in the UK on the impact of new pedagogies on the design of learning spaces began a new rhetoric of third millennium school design in the UK and beyond.
Stephen pioneered learning designs in the UK "Classrooms of the Future" project from 2000 (see Ingenium), completed much work in the UK Building Schools for the Future initiative from 2003, led pivotal research for CABE and RIBA on schools design, is partnering JISC in an exploration of physical environmental data from 2016, and more. Together these experiences and projects have led to Stephen being in considerable demand to transform physical learning spaces worlwide.
Much of Stephen's work is on-the-ground, practical project based. Around the world a string of innovative schools from Peru to Australia, from the emirates back to Scotland and of course in England too, are proud to trace their remarkable progress back to his direct involvement. Stephen is at the heart of a global revolution in physical learning space design, complementing the work designing on-line communities, with a string of major new projects , particularly with major elite sporting organisations, worldwide.
Recent projects included the Lindfield transformation of UTS in NSW from a university into a cluster of schools within school, and school transformation locations from the Caribbean to Scandinavia - particularly a long standing relationship with schools the SEK schools based mainly in Spain, and in Silkeborg in Denmark (see here for example), an adviser to the redevlopment of Melbourne City Libraries, Thinker in Residence at the wonderful Mark Oliphant College in South Australia, the creation of a world class Science Building of Tomorrow for Wesley College in Western Australia's Perth, the redevelopment of the old Naval College at Portland into an all-through building at the heart of stage-not-age, all-through, tech rich learning, and much more.
Stephen is designing, with his daughters Juliette and Melissa, and with others, a signature suite of affordable third millennium school furniture.
Board memberships: Stephen was a founder board member for Teachers.TV - a UK public service TV and broadband channel for professional development of teachers;
Until recently, Stephen sat on the board of the UK's Skillset - guiding professional development and training in the Creative Industries, and until recently sat on the innovative board of Digital Jersey;
He sits on BAFTA's Council as a former trustee and board member. Stephen formerly chaired it's Technical Innovation Jury, and sat on its Film Committee;
Indeed Stephen sits on quite a number of steering and advisory boards - like the UK Science Museum's "Making Modern Communications" Advisory Panel with its exciting new £10m gallery opening in 2014. He is a member of the Adobe Education Leader Program. He also sits on the UK's Youth Gambling Commission.
Stephen sits on the Advisory Board of Educurious Partners Inc. in the US, set up the Inclusion Trust charity, and is Technology Advisor to the GEMS Education in Dubai.
Stephen has retired from teaching at all levels. However, he sill holds the chair on New Media Environments , helping steer the Centre for Excellence for Media Practice at Bournemouth University, where all his PhD students are currently based and where he is now an emeritus professor. Stephen's eclectic activities there range/d from support for new pedagogic approaches for air traffic control education through to helping develop a manifesto for media education.
Today, Stephen is proud to hold, through Heppell.net, the fairly recently (2014) created Felipe Segovia Chair of Learning Innovation at Universidad Camilo José Cela, Madrid. Progress there ranges from their innovative Learning Laboratory to clear advice for schools during the pandemic.
Stephen's policy work is eclectic and sought after. After such a long career at the heart of much effective change, Stephen is inevitably much in demand for his policy and analysis reports.
In the UK this ranges from co-authoring the Stephenson Report for an incoming ("Education, education, education") Blair Labour government in 1997, through to being asked by UK conservative government ministers Michael Gove (then Secretary of State for Education), David Willetts (then Minister of State for Universities and Science) and Matthew Hanccock (then Minister of State for Skills and Enterprise) to chair their Education Technology Action Group formulating policies for the next decade. This latter substantial work, was watched by a number of other countries too.
More narrowly focussed policy work includes a guiding creativity and ingenuity policy for the Victoria State Government, focussing on using single board computers to transform digital engagement and understanding throughout the state.
Other indicative policy reports range from a detailed analysis of learning futures, completed in in 2020, for the Lego Foundation, to "Learning Environments for Learning Technologies" for Saudi Arabia.
Latterly, Stephen was one of a small team drafting a proposal for a future Labour government's National Learning Service (NLS) - building on the successes and strengths of the National Health Service (NHS).
And also: people who really know Stephen will also know of his passion for sport - in particular sailboat racing - which extends to work on Learning approaches for Olympic level elite coaches, having himself been an international level coach. Stephen's work with Olympic coaches now also branches out, for example to the English National Rugby team.
Stephen's current (and forever) raceboat is an unlikely but delightful 1907 Oyster Smack listed in the UK's Historic Ships Register.
Who's Who suggests that alongside silicon chips, he is also rather fond of fish and chips.
