Flipping Professional Development Presentation Slides

The Dr. Will Show (Episode 21 - PD via iTunes U) with Sabba Quidai

By Dr. Will

Today, I chat with Sabba Quidwai about delivering professional development via iTunes U. 

Sabba Quidwai is a passionate educator with a love for creating innovative student-centered learning experiences.  What Sabba loves most about the creation of technology-enhanced curriculum is its potential to empower all learners and is driven by the following philosophy:

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." ~ Confucius.

Sabba currently serves as the Director of Innovative Learning for the University of Southern California - Keck School of Medicine where she works with faculty to create innovative learning experiences for students.  Sabba specializes in creating professional learning programs to motivate and empower educators as they create 21st century learning environments.

She is the author of iLearn. iTeach. iLead - a professional learning course for educators.

Prior to joining USC, Sabba successfully led the technology-enhanced curriculum initiative at Fairmont Private Schools in Orange County, California where she developed a three year plan that put mobile devices in the hands of every student.  It is here that she also taught Social Science.  Prior to joining Fairmont, Sabba taught at Northwood High School in Irvine, CA, Mayfair High School in Lakewood, CA and Huntington Beach High School in Huntington Beach, CA

True to her philosophy to, "Discover, Innovate and Share," Sabba has presented at several conferences including EdTechTeacher, OCCUE and iPads in Higher Education. Sabba shares her experiences and ideas as a featured writer for iPadEducators.com.

Sabba holds a Master’s in Education, Social Science Teaching Credential and a B.A. in Social Science from the University of California, Irvine. She is currently pursuing a Masters in Educational Technology Leadership at George Washington University.

The Dr. Will Show (Episode 20 - Coding and Mobile Technology) with Alefiyah Bhatia

By Dr. Will

In this episode, I hung out with Alefiyah Bhatia from Cresecerance. We talked about coding and mobile technology in schools.

Alefiya believes that involved communities result in higher academic and social outcomes, stronger values, and increased future success for students. Her degree in psychology and education from Emory University, along with her training and experience as a Montessori teacher, power her passion for wide-scale education improvement. It is this passion that led her to start her company Crescerance (cris-seer-unce) in 2011.

In Crescerance’s short lifespan of just over 3 years, Alefiya has enabled over 150 educational institutions in America and throughout the world to better communicate with and engage their communities through the growing power of mobile. Alefiya is passionate about making mobile an easily available and powerful channel to thousands of schools worldwide. She is now focussing on brining the concepts and tools of app development to students as young as the 3rd grade by enabling them to build mobile apps with the newly launched MAD-learn program. In her spare time, she enjoys touring the world, meeting new people, learning new languages, and experiencing new cultures. She is also a closet adrenaline junkie who loves the occasional sky or sea dive expedition.

Crescerance began its journey in 2011 with the simple idea of wanting to make it easier for schools to connect and truly engage with their parents, staff, students, alumni, and community at large. Through working with schools in creating their school apps (so that everyone could be connected through Mobile and have quick, easy access to the information they needed), we met students that had a keen interest in not just using the app that we created for their school, but in wanting to learn about the creation process of that app. 

"How did you make our app?" was a question that we got asked through numerous in person or Skype calls from teachers wanting to bring an App Developer perspective to their students. This is where MAD-learn was born. It was born from the curiosity of our students. From their quest to know more and absorb more. From our passion to feed that curiosity.

MAD stands for Mobile App Development and MAD-learn is a program that is teaching students how to be Creators of Technology, instead of just Consumers of it. To learn more about MAD-learn, watch this video: MAD-learn.com