Award Winning Blogger Mahmoud Salem was the Keynote Speaker at the Social Media Conference at The American University in Cairo

By Mai Maamoun, Nour Ibrahim and Sarah Yasser

     On Tuesday, March 31, Mahmoud Salem, a renowned blogger also known as Sandmonkey, talked about the negative effects of social media on society at the Social Media Conference at The American University in Cairo. “Most importantly, how social media, to be dramatic, will destroy your life,” said Salem at his session titled, “All The Roads Lead to This.” As the keynote speaker, he spoke to a large audience of media students, professors and interested visitors. 

     Salem asked, “What is social about social media anyway?” Social media improves connectedness and linkability, but it also “disrupts the natural social order of things.” It has managed to destroy the concept of leaders. There used to be respect for leaders, like Winston Churchill, but today, Salem reflected, if a political figure sneezes during a speech, people would upload a YouTube video of it which would eventually go viral, make remixes of the sneeze on Soundcloud, and create a hashtag called “The sneeze.” 

     Social media is a disconnected way of dealing with people, “It gives you a way not to really talk to people, but you make announcements,” he explained. For example, Twitter has improved communication by setting a certain character limit. He confessed, “It became really annoying when people call me on the phone now.” 

     Salem currently manages his own digital marketing company. He is most well-known for his blog and tweets under the pseudonym: Sandmonkey. He had managed to write anonymously online between 2006 and 2011 until he decided to uncover who he was in February 2011. 

     In an interview after the session (for the full interview: Soundcloud), Salem said social media is important to “put things into perspective” for users. He had stopped blogging for a while, but he blogs when “things get interesting again.” On his motive, he said, “ The only way for me to deal with the miseries of the world actually, in order not to go insane, is by making it funny.”

Academic professor and author Fawaz Gerges gives a lecture at the American University in Cairo

 By Sama El Feky and Amina El Farnawany

Cairo-Egypt- Lebanese American academic and author with expertise on the Middle East, U.S. foreign policy and international relations, Fawaz Gerges gave a public lecture on American foreign policy towards the Middle East change and continuity at the American University in Cairo (AUC) on Monday, March 30.  

Gerges is not just a professor of Middle East Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics (LSE) and Political Science, University of Oxford but he is also a holder of the Emirates Professorship in Contemporary Middle East Studies. Gerges, one of the top Middle East’s scholars, was the inaugural director of the LSE Middle East Centre from 2010 until 2013.

A former regular Middle East analyst for ABC News, Gerges, appeared on many famous shows including The Charlie Rose Show and The Oprah Winfrey Show. He wrote many books including The Rise and Fall of Al Qaeda, Obama and the Middle East: The End of America's Moment?, and The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World.

During his lecture, Gerges focused mainly on the foreign policy of the United States. He demonstrated the point that the United States does not want to be involved with the Middle East. He used phrases like ‘uninterested’ to describe how Obama feels towards this region. However, he mentioned Obama’s interest in Iran due to the fact that it is the most important nuclear portfolio at the moment.

Gerges shared his opinion on the issue of the Middle East and the United States by saying that the Middle East should not wait for the United States’ intervention in matters. “It’s about time we take ownership and stand up for our region,” said Gerges. He later on shared his opinion on Egypt who he has been paying close attention to. “If you really want to know the situation in the Arab World, always look at Egypt. I teach my students, wherever Egypt goes, the Arab World follows,” said Gerges.

Gerges did not just cover the topic of the lecture but he also humbly answered questions from the AUC audience.

Psychologist and author Philip Zimbardo discusses Time Perspective at the American University in Cairo

By Norhan Tawil, Abdelhamid Mahmoud and Tamer Hegab

CAIRO- Internationally recognized scholar, psychologist and author, Philip Zimbardo, gave a lecture at the American University in Cairo (AUC) on Monday, March 9.

Zimbardo, 81, is a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He became known for the Stanford prison experiment, and since then, became an author of many books including The Lucifer Effect and The Time Paradox, which he discussed in his lecture under the title, “The Secret Power of Time to Influence our Decisions and Impact National Destinies."

The study of time perspective investigates how the human experience is dispersed over different categories and time frames of the past, present, and future. According to Zimbardo, “Your time perspective is the most important thing about you.” He explained how one’s time perspective is even more important than their personality and the way in which it shapes their behavior.

Zimbardo believes that time perspective is easy for anyone to understand. He made that clear by saying that “People from any education can understand time perspective.” Mariam El Sawy, a student of the SAPE Department at AUC believes that, “Understanding time perspective and psychology, makes you understand life, yourself and the people around you in a better way.”

An individual’s time perspective is so important it “can influence therapy,” according to Zimbardo. Dina Hassan, psychologist, and AUC alumni said, “I have a lot of patients with PTSD, and I think I should apply methods of time perspective to my therapy.”

The psychology unit at AUC, nominated Dr. Zimbardo as a Distinguished Visiting Professor for the SAPE Department. He communicated his work to his audience via intriguing and active presentation slides, that were full of bright images and funny videos. The 225-seat Mansour Lecture Hall at AUC was overpacked with excited students, faculty and attendees. 

This is the second lecture for Zimbardo at AUC . He gave a lecture on Sunday, March 8, at the Tahrir campus under the title "My Journey from Creating Evil to Inspiring Heroism." According to Hassan, Zimbardo has the ability to “take something that could otherwise be very bland and make it interesting.” 

"Gamifying Your Classroom" by Fady Morcos

 By Karim Abdel Kodos and Nada El Nakoury

Cairo, Egypt - The Center for Learning and Teaching (CLT), organized a  faculty workshop under the name of  “Gamifying Your Classroom”, by the facilitator Fady Morcos, on Tuesday,  Nov. 4, about using games as a tool, not only to solve problems around student motivation and engagement, but also to enhance their experience.
In an effort to reach more students, the CLT at The American University in Cairo introduced a new teaching technique under the name “Gamifying your Classroom.”

According to the event description, “Gamifying Your Classroom” will integrate game-thinking technique in classrooms that could promote active learning, and enhance student interest and engagement.

Integration of game-thinking techniques Adding a “game layer” to a syllabus, course policies, workload, grading system, and learning material can generate products that are very engaging and influential to both the player (student) and the developer of the gamified experience.

According to Maha Bali, associate professor of practice at CLT, the workshop, which was held at AUC New Campus Library, was their most attended workshop.

She also talked about the role of the (CLT) in always updating professors with new techniques, and how they can facilitate workshops according to certain departments and their needs.

The presentation was mainly about boosting the motivation and engagement of the students.

“I’m in the process of gamifying the whole thing for my classes, but at this point, I’m trying to use different tools to test different things to know how they work,” said Morcos.

On the other hand, when Morcos was asked to what extent does he think such applications are effective, he said that it’s important but it’s not the only answer.

“It’s a tool, if you look at the goals that you want to achieve in education, you will see that games have been successful in achieving all those goals, so it’s just a different domain,” Morcos added.

Some professors realized they have already been doing this in their classes. They enjoyed the workshop because they knew how exactly it should be applied.

“I found it very useful and refreshing, but I would’ve liked to have more sessions even one to one because it went really fast."  

About the capability of AUC professors to apply such techniques, he said that it’s like any other application and it needs training.

“It requires a little bit of work in the beginning when you start teaching it at class, but then, I think it pays off dramatically,” said Morcos.

Although it needs some time for the professors to get used to such technique, Morcos thinks that gamifying the classrooms will have a great impact on the motivation and engagement of students.

http://hosting.soundslides.com/2shk9

The Path to a Green Egypt
Reem Fatteh El Bab and Yossra M. Hamouda

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    Egyptian young entrepreneurs disagreed on the government’s role in environmental sustainability Sunday, Nov. 9.

  This lecture was the third lecture of Seminar Series called "RISE Seminar" organized by Research Institute for a Sustainable Environment at the American University in Cairo. The lecture was moderated by Rachel Diniega, a Virginia University graduate with a double major in global development studies and environmental sciences and a minor in Middle Eastern studies. The lecture’s objective was to present some of the successful start ups initiated by young entrepreneurs in the greater Cairo region.

      Amr Bassiouny, the founder of Egyptian Hydrofarms said that the government acts as an obstacle to organic food industry; and that he wished the government eliminated its intervention.

      While Yaseen Abd El Ghaffar, the founder of Solarize Egypt along with Rana Alaa, said  that they find the government contributing with mega-scale projects to the solar energy field in Egypt.

 

      The three speakers continued explaining more about their projects. Bassyiouny said that the general public’s belief in organic food in Egypt declines because of the dishonesty of the farmers with the consumers; while on the other hand, the niche market of organic food was increasing. The farms sometimes sold food that is not organic claiming that it is.

       Abd El Ghaffar and Alaa said that their company’s target is to solve the problem of electricity in Egypt and its social impact through solar energy. Abd El Ghaffar added: “Calculating opportunity and exporting costs reveal that fossil fuels are more expensive than solar energy.”

     “Projects like these are what really gives us hope. The lecture was really beneficial, and I might consider pursuing this as my career after I graduate,” said Amina El Gammal, one of the lecture attendees. She further explained that she attended the lecture because she found the title interesting, and that she had always thought that the lack of environmental sustainability was one of the largest problems Egypt is facing.

Candygirl Author Gives Lecture on Imagination and The Reader

By Maghie Ghali, Amr Zaghloul and Menna Abdelbaky

Here are some selected audio highlights from the lecture:

A slide show featuring photos taken at the event:




Selected clips from the lecture:

Mohamed Tawfik, Egypt’s ambassador to the United States gave a lecture on Thursday Nov. 6 about his novel Candygirl at The American University in Cairo (AUC), to talk about imagination as part of the One Book, One Conversation, One community Reading Initiative.

           

Tawfik began by talking about his early experiences with Egyptian workers and how they would tell stories and enjoy new tales, “one day they discovered I had traveled out of Egypt and I would tell them stories about Paris; about Vienna.” Due to these experiences Tawfik saw the wonder of storytelling and it inspired him to tell his own, leading to him becoming an author who has written several books.

           

As the lecture progressed, Tawfik’s main topic was presented. He talked of the creative interactions between the author and the reader, believing that “the act of reading is essentially an act of creation.” What the reader imagines is almost more important than what the author envisions.

           

Furthermore, imagination and knowledge were two concepts that were also addressed by Tawfik. He stated that “regarding the element of imagination, a good novel for me is like a good symphony.” An important aspect is the way imagination is used, especially when talking about cultural stories. His novels are “set in densely populated, noisy Egyptian backgrounds” to give a multitude of sense to explore.

           

The section on knowledge explored the idea that “what is important is how humans interact and react” to things like books and media. Tawfik also covered issues of translating Arabic to English and the loss of meaning. However, he saw it as “a different way of looking at your own work.”

           

After the lecture, a Q&A session took place with Tawfik and the audience members. Rhetoric and Composition professor George Marquis was personally not a fan of the novel and felt that “inspiration is more than just a few words of wisdom.”

In relation to upcoming projects, Tawfik said he would be taking time to attend to his political duties for a few years to come.

Other events as part of the One Book, One Conversation, One community Reading Initiative will be taking place throughout the semester as well as another lecture with Tawfik on Wednesday Nov. 12.

A Storify to show the Tweets posted while covering the lecture:

Fashionistas Rejoice: The Cairo Fashion Festival Returns

By Gloria Botros, Nadine El Guiddawy and Farah Fayez

Cairo, Egypt - The Cairo Fashion Festival returned for a third season on Friday, Nov. 7, 2014 at the Cairo Festival City Mall in New Cairo. 

The Cairo Fashion Festival is an annual event that gathers international brand names and local fashion enthusiasts in one place. 

The Cairo Fashion Festival takes place every year with the purpose of shining more light on the field of fashion in Egypt: "If Cairo was once a fashion capital then why can't we bring it back?" says Omar Madkour, founder of the Cairo Fashion Festival on the official Facebook event page. 

This year, the fashion festival included 15 runway shows featuring designers from Egypt, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and Jordan. International brand names like U.S Polo and Levi’s were also represented. The runway shows were hosted by actors Ashraf Hamdi and Amina Khalil.  

The Cairo Fashion Festival was also an opportunity for 50 exhibitors to display their products in a bazaar-like area open for the public.

The festival was not only about runway shows and exhibitions but also included live music: Screwdriver, a live band, also provided entertainment for the guests. 

The runway show was only accessible to about 400 guests with an invitation or press pass. The selected fashion-lovers gave the event a lively and extravagant vibe. According to Nayrouz Abouzid, editor-in-chief of Alter Ego Magazine and one of the PR managers of the event, the guest list included fashion enthusiasts as well as diplomats from the Mexican and Swiss Embassies who attended the event ‘’to really monitor and see what the fashion scene is like.” 

Abouzid also believes that the role of her PR company is to “make sure that the international media and the regional media are aware that Cairo is a fashion capital and is becoming more and more so with time.”

One Egyptian fashion designer in particular got extra attention from the media as she was part of the London Fashion Week. Farida Temraz, an AUC graduate, received an honorary award for her outstanding work in London as she successfully showcased her new collection there. Temraz said that she’s “very proud of all the Egyptian designers [who participated]’’ in the event.