DUBLIN IRELAND: Talking with Professor Stephen Heppell. Episode 1 - Learning in the Third Millennium

When I was setting up this journey of course Educause 2005 was the centre piece of the trip. Yet the economics of around the world tickets, with multiple stop overs, made it economically possible to add places, and new people to meet, into the itinerary, as long as I was flying in the same direction. A colleague in Adelaide told me if I was going to the United Kingdom I had to meet Stephen Heppell. I did some research, sent some email and got this wonderful invitation to jump over to Dublin and say G'day. I decided I had better do some research on my host.

The first indicator to what lay ahead is the amazing fact that "Stephen Heppell" gets 19,900 hits on Google and if you navigate to the very last entry it is still the Stephen Heppell I was travelling to meet - I know this as I did it. I also read the following from the web before leaving and thought, this is just media hype. A reporter from Design Magazine reported in 1999 "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".  How wrong I was, after less the 48 hours in Dublin I can confidently say that it describes Stephen to a tee. He is truly a visionary, a pioneer and a great "bloke" too :-).

Stephen set up and managed Ultralab in the UK for over 20 years and the UK Goverment DfES (Dept for Education and Skills) said this year that Ultrlab is a world leading, technology and new media, educational research centre. Ultralab is a good place to work and has a great team of people. In this two minute video Stephen talks about Ultralab. You will need the latest Quicktime from Apple. Enjoy the Ultralab Video for Broadband (4.1 mb) or for Dialup (576 kb).

Recently Stephen has moved to Dublin to set up a new research lab for the third millennium, called Learn3K. This was to carry on with some exciting research and projects, with a more global emphasis. What projects? There are too many even to attempt a short list. To get just a glimpse of what Stephen is doing please visit his website Heppell.Net and navigate to his work page

This is the first episode of a wonderful conversation we had together in Dublin. In this podcast Stephen and I are joined by Gavin Dykes of the UK Dept for Education and Skills and together we explore some of the characterisitics of learning of the young people today.

Highlights of the Dublin first podcast 28th Oct

• Stephen explains Learn3K
• Learning in the Third Millenium
• 20th century was doing things for people. The model of learning was delivering a curriculum and wisdom was received
• At the beginning of the third millennium we are in a world of peer to peer, viral, agile, community based, collaborative endeavour which is a whole different world
• The 20th century in Learning and teaching was largely spent finessing the teaching model of the 19th century
• Brand new school is opened in England every 4 days - so we need more than just perfecting the l9th century
• Stephen explains his network of learning research expands to Thailand, Virtual schools and Museums
  Explains the challenge of 3K for TV - changing from "we will do it for you" to user generated content is the future for TV
• 20th century content was king while in the 21st century content surely is not king and community might be sovereign
• We talk about a new project to include children produced video in the BAFTAs (British Academy of Film, Theatre and Arts -UK Academy Awards)
• Young people peer reviewing videos - in a peer to peer world where content is not king it is all about individuals, personalization and communities.
• Gavin Dykes of the UK Dept for Education and Skills who works with a team of people to manage almost a billion dollars a year in putting learning technologies in Schools in the UK - he joins the podcast
• Stephen explains he is podcasting at Hepple.Net
• Gavin and Stephen talk about a video podcasting program called "Be Very Afraid" which is also at BAFTA ... kids video work which is so awesome it makes the professionals very afraid 
  

Please contact us if you would like to discuss anything we have shared in the podcast or have any comments.

Regards
Allan