Selfie number 9

Bill Rammell, Stephen Heppell and Steve Wheeler

OK, so this one's not really a selfie, but it caught your attention didn't it? This is the second in my short series on my top ten photographs with people who have influenced my thinking. Click here to see selfie number 10.

This picture was taken in April 2011 at the start of the Plymouth Enhanced Learning conference (Pelecon), which was an annual learning technology event I chaired at Plymouth University. Our opening keynote speaker that year was Professor Stephen Heppell, and our Deputy Vice Chancellor was Bill Rammell.

Professor Stephen Heppell has been a regular mainstay on the keynote circuit for some time, due to his wide ranging and innovative research around education environments and learning technology. He has influenced my own work, encouraging me to be more aware of the entire learning environment. Stephen's research has resulted in some very useful insights into how children learn and why they don't. Consider for example his claim that red lighting in the morning wake students up, while blue lighting in the afternoon calms them down after lunch break. He also suggests that the entire sensory experience of school, including odours and configurations of wall spaces can positively influence children's learning. What resonates most for me though, is his statement that 'everything technology touches grows exponentially'.

Before joining Plymouth University as Deputy Vice Chancellor, Bill Rammell served as Member of Parliament for Harlow between 1997-2010. Among his other roles in government was his tenure as Minister of State for Higher Education under Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. During his all too short stay at Plymouth, Bill developed our student experience services and was also responsible for international developments. I will never forget his great spirit of service and his willingness to go the extra mile. He not only opened our conference that day, but also returned twice more during the 3 day event to see how we were doing. He left the university in 2012 to become Vice Chancellor of Bedfordshire University.

Coming soon: Selfie number 8.

Photo by Jason Truscott on Flickr


Selfie number 9 by Steve Wheeler was written in Plymouth, England and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.