Stephen Heppell's Profile

Stephen Heppell, Founder of Ultralab

I was formerly director of ULTRALAB which had (and indeed still has) an enviable global reputation for creativity, innovation and common sense. After 22 years I left there to consolidate my policy and learning consultancy heppell.net before being head hunted to create and run the radical learning technology research team learn3k in Dublin, Ireland,

My naugural lecture as a new professor back in 1987 was "eyes on the horizon, feet on the ground!" and have taken that philosophy with me into my new team.

Indicative media coverage:

"It's an unlikely place to find a guru. A drab 1960s block in the middle of the only English university still to call itself a polytechnic. But the Chelmsford campus of the Anglia Polytechnic University (APU) is home to a remarkable institution - Ultralab. Here for the past 15 years Stephen Heppell has been building one of the most respected research centres in e-learning in the world." Financial Times 2001

"when I finally spotted him, Stephen Heppell didn?t look at all like I imagined. This geek of geeks, this net-head of all times, this revolutionary who is yanking the British education system out of its Victorian slumber and shaping it for the digital information age, surely it couldn?t be this genial fellow before me with his whitening Father Christmas beard and Hush Puppy fashion sense" Design Magazine 1999

"Professor Stephen Heppell: the UK's leading on-line education guru" Channel 4 TV 1999

"Ultralab is Europe's leading leading research institute pioneering leading edge applications in support of proven educational precepts." Oracle Corporation 1999

"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

"Stephen Heppell is Britain's leading computers-in-education guru. He heads the Ultralab at Anglia Polytechnic University - a hotbed of techno-optimism whence a constant stream of lovely educational applications has been emanating, without fuss, since the late 1980s". Dust or Magic international conference, Oxford, 2003

"Europe's leading online education guru" Guardian 2004

"stephen heppell is ICT" Googlisms 2005

"Ultralab is a world leading, technology and new media, educational research centre" DfES 2005

 

Past and present projects:

Today, I'm based in Dublin at Learn3K and carrying on with some exciting research and projects, with a more global emphasis. When I ran Ultralab it had a staff, including the NZ team, of 98 exceptional folk, with another 200 or so involved with Notschool.

Together, then and now, with many other collaborators in public and private sectors, I'm involved in many, many key projects around the world; At L3K I remain absolutely committed to this collaborative endeavour at every level:

architecture design projects include three "World Classrooms" in Richmond with Future Systems, a prison design with Learning Works; a substantial research project looking at designing for new pedagogy; and a host more including a heap of involvement with Building Schools for the Future - advising LEAs, schools, architects, Ministers... everyone

software development included a long history of developing new learning community tools from "Campus 2000" with BT in the 80s, though Schools OnLine with the DTI to Think.com with Oracle today; That development work continues with the new L3K team, but with an even bigger emphasis on mobile phones, "new" TVs and learning community tools.

new media partnerships include past and present work on user created content and policy for the BBC and Channel 4; and the new L3K team will be working on some radical visions of "new" symmetrical TV; I'm proud to be a governor of the new Teachers' TV and an advisor to

Innovative approaches to learning inclusion starts with the extraordinarily successful virtual school Notschool.net, funded by the UK's DfES and include the mobile phone based EU funded "m-learning" project for under employed youths; the QCA funded eVIVA assessment futures project (which is def. worth a look if you are depressed by where assessment seems to be going and you need cheering up)

community based learning includes the vast Tesco SchoolNet 2000 (now SchoolNet Global) with Intuitive Media (the project became the Guinness Book of Record's largest internet learning project in the world); Talking Heads,. now novated to the NCSL;

Higher education projects inlude the extraordinary "Ultraversity" project: "it could just be the most radical take on higher education since the creation of the Open University (OU) in the 1960s" The Guardian, 2003
There is ton more, but this will do for now...

Committees and Task Forces:

"The man who is singlehandedly doing more than any other to enlighten government thinking on the use of computers in schools? and who sits on more government committees, task forces and think tanks concerned with technology than almost anyone else" Times Educational Supplement 1999

Stephen continues to be be an influential in government ICT policy making globally.

Current committees include governorship of Teachers' TV, DfES Schools Internet Safety Strategy Group, the Advisory Group on Design of School Buildings, Culture On-line steering group, the Welsh Assembly's Schools of the Future committee, the QCA Creativity Advisory group, BAFTA Interactive's committee. Stephen chairs the multimedia jury for the Royal Television Society and chairs BAFTA Interactive's Technical Innovation jury.

Past pivotal committee memberships included: Chris Smith's parliamentary Information Superhighway Policy Forum; Dennis Stevenson's committee producing the influential "Information and Communication Technology in UK Schools" report that defined Labour's ICT schools policy; Oftel?s general service provision committee; the DfES Standards Task Force including chairmanship of its ICT standing committee and the DCMS Creative Industries Task Force.

Media: Stephen has a long list of TV appearances around the world including, in the UK: Horizon, Newsnight, Tomorrow's World, Equinox and much else besides including radio. He writes regularly for the popular press: broadsheets, weeklies and tabloids, and has written many chapters in books and journals.

 

Sport:

Stephen is passionate about sailboat racing too. He races his own Oyster yacht, has served as coach to UK World Championship squads and sits on the Royal Yachting Association's Race Training Committee responsible for the pathway between Junior / Youth sailing and the Olympic squad; Stephen writes and advises on the pedagogy of high level sports coaching. Stephen is also a Harbour Commissioner for the Brightlingsea and Colchester harbours and a Freeman of Brightlingsea. He is non executive director of the group that founded the fortnightly watersports newspaper "All at Sea", and publish Cowes Town Guide and the DK guide to sailing series

 

Other:

Stephen remains a teaching professor too; he is proud to be a visiting professor at Bournemouth University and has just completed three years as external examiner for the ICT in Education masters degree in Trinity College Dublin. He is currently external examiner at the OU.

Stephen acts as consultant to a broad spectrum of organisations: broadcast media, retail, finance, publishing, telecommunications and, of course, learning and eLearning. His chair in Information Technology in the Learning Environment at APU was partly supported by Apple Computers from 1986 - 2005.

Along with Harrison Ford, Mohammed Ali, Jarvis Cocker and Damion Hirst (!) he is honoured to be an "Apple Master".