Liza Loop, M.A.

Liza Loop, M.A. is an Educational Technology Pioneer, Futurist, Technical Author, and Consultant. She is the Founder and Executive Director of LO*OP Center.

She is notable for her early use of computers in education, her creation of a public-access computer center, consulting work with Atari, Apple, Radio Shack, and others as well as philosophical musings on the future of learning environments from the 1970s on. Read Musings from Liza Loop.

In 1975, Liza was a Founder and Executive Director of LO*OP Center, which stands for Learning Options * Open Portal and since then, she has been pioneering educational visions. She opened the second public access computer center located outside a museum in 1975.

She has introduced thousands of children and adults to their first computing experience through walk-in visits to the Center in Cotati, California, USA and through school presentations, museum exhibits, recreational classes, and conference sessions. Its nonprofit corporate charter enables the company to engage in any form of education, publication, or research. So far, it has focused on exploring the use of computing for learning and on promoting intercultural communication.

In 2005, as a Vision Keeper, she started the History of Computing in Learning and Education (HCLE) Project, to document the intersection of computing and education from the 1960s to the 1990s. It comprises an archive of documents, videos, software, and hardware. The goal is to digitize, curate, and publish the contents of this archive as a Virtual Museum.

In 2016, Liza started a project within LO*OP Center called NETAA (New Economic Thinking, Analysis and Action). It contributes to the global discourse about best economic practices for continuing human prosperity. It is a node in the network of thinkers and actors who realize that market capitalism, as practiced in the United States, is not sustainable in what is being called the Long Now or the Anthropocene Era.

She studies the anthropological, economic, social, ecological, and moral literature of the past and combines their findings with contemporary flow and systems science to devise new social patterns to implement in both the local and world future.

In 2019, Liza started her most important project, her lifelong dream of creating a serious human-machine collaboration in the domain of human learning and education. This project, named KEPLAIR (Knowledge-based Environment for Personalized Learning using an Artificial Intelligence Recommender), began by developing an ontology with four major learning classes: Goal/Pathway; Learner Profile; Social, Physical, & Digital Environment; and Learning Resource. It is an online marketplace for free and low cost learning activities, adding knowledge and skills needed to achieve self-chosen goals.

Since 2021, Liza has been Participating with Open Portal Network, a network of networks where Learners, Educators, Activists, Organizations, Associations, and Networks meet and share. It is a hub to help connect participants with people working to enhance learning around the world. An individual participating is the center of a working node in the network can share his/her work to enhance others and change the world. The network is powered by OpenPortal4Learning.

Previously, Liza was a Contributor at SRC International (Supporting Resilient Communities) between 2017 and 2019. This is a nonprofit organization behind the disaster preparedness, citizen response, and recovery platform Recovers.org.

She was a Member of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance between 2013 to 2014 and is a Member of Humanities Commons.

She was an Investor and Advisor for Pangea Pictures Company between 2004 and 2010.

She was Co-owner of GoQuiet, Inc. for nine years until 2009 and Consultant at Starium, from 1999 until 2008. Between 1973 and 2007, Liza was also working in Real Estate as the Head of Liza Loop Properties.

Previously she was the Executive Producer at Big Red Pixel Production, where she developed content and did finance between 1997 and 2003.

Liza earned her Master’s Degree of Arts in Design and Evaluation of Educational Programs from the Stanford University School of Education after she was influenced by psychologist Dean Brown. She earned her Bachelor’s Degree of Art in Philosophy and Management from Sonoma State University in 1970, after she did two years of undergraduate studies in physics, chemistry, math, and philosophy at Cornell University.

In 1975, after opening her LO*OP Center, Liza, then a math teacher at Windsor Junior High School, was interested in finding ways to bring computer literacy into high schools.

A colleague told her that the Homebrew Computer Club could provide a promising pool of computer hackers from which she could find someone to help her in her quest. She joined the Homebrew Computer Club and was the first woman to join the club. After presenting her case of introducing computers to secondary education to the club, only one member of the club approached her with an offer to help, Steve Wozniak.

In 1975, LO*OP opened the second public access computer center located outside a museum. After visiting the center, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak was impressed enough with her work that he told Liza that he was working on a new personal computer, and that he wanted his computer to be an educational tool. In 1976, Woz gave Liza the very first Apple 1 unit that rolled off the “assembly line”.

For most of 1976, the center’s Apple I was the only Apple I in the North Bay. Read Liza Loop and the Apple 1, Serial Number One, Classroom tech: A history of hype and disappointment, and Apple I Replica Creation: Back to the Garage.

In 1978, when Atari was developing the Atari 800 home computer, Liza was brought in as a consultant to help meet the market for home computers that children and adults could use for learning. She saw the Atari home computers as a viable tool that could bypass the school and the traditional education process and bring real learning directly into the home. Read Atari Inc: Business is Fun.

The Liza Loop Papers from 1972 to 1984, donated in 1986, are housed in Stanford University Libraries’ manuscript division and detail the early years of educational computing .

Liza wrote the first users manuals for the Atari 400 and 800 computers. She was a Consultant and Technical Writer for Atari from June 1979 through April 1980, sometimes writing documentation for interfaces that had not been designed yet, so her description became the de facto interface specification.

Liza also worked as Technical writer at Personal Software (VisiCorp), where she wrote the reference manual for the original VisiCalc program and as Technical Coordinator at People’s Computer Company between 1979 and 1982, where she developed and managed educational programs and publications.

In an interesting Atari-related note, she and her husband Steve Smith were married by Atari 400/800 designer Jay Miner. Listen to Liza Loop, Technical Writer Interview. Read Atari 800 Operators Manual — First Version — 1979.

From 1983 to 1989, Liza was a Consultant at Apple Computer. She researched and published internal white papers on computer applications in education.

In the early 21st century, she became an advocate of preserving the early history of computing in education.

Liza published Exploring the Microcomputer Learning Environment, Report #5, Independent Research and Development Project Reports (1980), ComputerTown. A Do-It-Yourself Community Computer Project (1982), and ComputerTown, bringing computer literacy to your community (1983).

She is the former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Trainer at the Intercultural Relations Institute.

Watch 50 Years of Computer Literacy – A presentation at Vintage Computer Festival East 2023, Computer Literacy 2023: What you need to know about computers today, and How the Personal Computer Changed Teaching and Learning – A presentation at Vintage Computer Festival West 2021.

Read The Path to Perfection: Utopia or Eutopia? and Maslowbackground. Read her Contributions at her NETAA Blog and Medium.

Visit her LinkedIn profile, Academia profile, and her Google Scholar profile. Follow her on Facebook, ResearchGate, and Twitter.