I was born in Cairo, Egypt and now live in San Francisco, CA. I earned a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Cairo University then moved to the US to complete my masters in Computer Engineering at West Virginia University (WVU). Since graduation, I held several positions at Intel Corporation in the Bay Area in California and currently I'm a Training Program Manager in the Sales and Marketing Group. While at Intel, I have worked on a couple of technology in education assignments,the first was a project manager for the localization of an online learning solution SKOOOL and the second was a project manager for the deployment of 500 classmate PCs in rural parts of Egypt (Article). Outside of the office, I enjoy volunteering in the community, running, teaching a group exercise class, playing tennis, modeling and reading.
Over the last few years, I realized that education is at the heart of the change needed to sustain development in underserved communities, the kind of education that teaches people how to learn not the one that teaches facts. I then developed a strong desire to find a way to merge my information technology background and experience with my passion for education development in my country Egypt and the rest of the Middle East . This course will help me understand and evaluate existing online learning models, their success criteria and impact. I'm hoping to learn how technology is used in schools today as well as ideas on what’s still needed and how to improve.
I took a few online courses and deployed a few in my role as a training program manager, overall my experience has been positive. The flexibility and ability to research topics on the fly as opposed to the limitation of being in a classroom worked very well for me!
Dina
Hi Dina, it is nice to meet you. I am also entering the field of education with a technology background. I had my bachelor Degree in Computer Science in University of Texas at Austin. Similar to you, I am trying to obtain knowledge and skills that I can use to help the educational development in China. Again, it is nice knowing you and I hope we will all find the knowledge that we are looking for!
ReplyDeleteThat's great! Hopefully we can help each other achieve that goal! Very nice to meet you Xi!
ReplyDeleteHi Dina,
ReplyDeleteSo nice to meet you. I was intrigued by your introduction because I spent my winter break in Cairo (and Luxor and Aswan). I left right before the protests started in full force. I hope that if you still have family there -- that they are safe.
I too, am hoping to learn more about how online courses are facilitated as well as how to make them effective. It's still unclear to me whether it can be as effective (in terms of learning) as in a f2f class.
Anyway, I look forward to working with you at some point this semester..
Deepa
Deepa,
ReplyDeleteI too left right before the demonstrations started! Funny how we were both there at the same time! Thank you for your concern, they are all fine. Hope you enjoyed your stay.
I look forward to working with you too!
Dina