#001: Marwa Soudi — Tinkering, Troubleshooting, and Teaching During a Pandemic

-Stream The Cogcast, Hosted by Cogmation Robotics-

• Spotify — https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Wkuo657eRHgS6mrnOdB3d?si=XheAc57mTB2rnw0yXTVMuw

• Apple Podcasts — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/001-marwa-soudi-tinkering-troubleshooting-teaching/id1549950901?i=1000507285356

• Stitcher — https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-cogcast/episode/001-marwa-soudi-tinkering-troubleshooting-and-teaching-during-a-pandemic-81266642

-Bio-
Marwa Soudi is an engineer, entrepreneur, teacher, and self-proclaimed tinkerer who claims she never uses a manual to build furniture. Marwa has a B.Sc. in Electronics and Electrical Engineering, as well as a M.Sc. in High Power Lasers and Meta-material devices from Alexandria University. She has also earned her Masters in Educational Technology from the University of Tartu. She co-founded the STEM-centric company, Ideasgym, in 2011, an organization which enriches the educational journeys of children in Egypt through project-based curricula.

Marwa is decorated with a lengthy list of awards, including but not limited to:

• Winning first place in the MSMEs category for her Ideasgym work in the Women in ICT Awards
• Being a finalist in Miss Digital Africa 2019
• Being selected as a Tony Elemelu Foundation Entrepreneur in 2018
• She has been a World Robot Olympiad National Organizer
• She has been a former speaker at the 2012 Global Education Forum in Dubai

In addition to all of these accomplishments, Marwa is also a co-founder of the IEEE Egypt Women in Engineering affinity group, a former IEEE RAS Juniors chair, and was a DigiGirlz robotics workshops leader for Microsoft Egypt from 2014 to 2019. As we speak, her and her team are working hard to develop a new e-learning environment based on constructionist principles.

Follow Marwa and Ideasgym via the links below ↓

Marwa’s LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/marwasoudi/
IdeasGym website — https://ideasgym.com/
IdeasGym on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/company/ideasgym/
IdeasGym on Instagram — https://www.instagram.com/ideasgymegypt/
IdeasGym on Facebook — https://www.facebook.com/IdeasGym/
IdeasGym on Twitter — https://twitter.com/IdeasGym

-Time Stamps-
0:00 Intro
3:00 Her work with IdeasGym & Tools, teaching during a pandemic
8:51 On troubleshooting and how to cultivate it as a skill
14:40 Failure’s Role in the Learning Process
22:25 What She Learns from her Students
31:02 Building a Healthy Relationship with Technology
39:00 Mental Wellbeing, Combating Burnout, Splitting Focus, Mission as a Teacher
42:25 How the Transmission Model Fails and What we Should Do Instead
44:15 Avoiding the Jargon Trap, Communicating Effectively with Students and Colleagues
50:58 What she Learned from her Teachers and Why We Should Teach Differently
59:37 Where Technology Is Going and How the World Will Have to Adapt
1:06:45 Message to Everyone

#TheCogcast #VRTCogcast #VirtualRoboticsToolkit

Sound effects from https://www.zapsplat.com.