Teaching
Portfolio
I once thought that being good at a subject was enough to be a good teacher. I knew my acoustics, I knew my vibration — so surely I could teach them well. But after years in the classroom, I realised that teaching is a skill in itself. And like any skill, it requires deliberate practice, the right community, and a commitment to keep growing.
The journey I have described across the previous pages — from my early days of conventional lecturing, to designing digital content, to flipping my classroom — did not happen in isolation. Behind every transformation was a professional development experience that opened a new door.
Finding the Right Community
One of the most important things I have learned is that professional development is not just about attending courses or collecting certificates. It is about finding the right people who share your passion and challenge your thinking.
Why do we need community?
Because transformation is hard to sustain alone. When you are the only person in your department trying something new, doubt creeps in. A community gives you evidence that it works, ideas you haven't thought of, and the confidence to keep going.
For me, that community came in the form of the Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) programme. I was drawn to the ADE community after seeing what other ADEs were doing in their classrooms — the way they were using technology not as a gimmick, but as a genuine vehicle for deeper learning. Their work inspired me to push further with my own interactive content, to rethink how I designed every learning experience I delivered.
And that commitment to change was recognised. In 2025, I was awarded the title of Apple Distinguished Educator (ADE) by Apple which took place in Singapore.
Mrs Noraini & Becoming an APL Specialist
Becoming an ADE opened a door I had not expected. Mrs Noraini, the Apple Education Lead in Malaysia at the time, saw what I was doing and offered me something invaluable — the opportunity to go beyond my own classroom. She brought me into a wider mission: sharing and training students and teachers in schools across Malaysia.
What struck me about Mrs Noraini was not just her network or her position. It was her depth of expertise in instructional design. Every conversation with her sharpened how I thought about learning — not just what content to create, but how to architect an experience that genuinely moves people. I learnt a great deal from her, more than I could have from any formal course.
She reminded me that great teaching is not just about passion. It is about design.
By 2018, that combination of classroom transformation, community involvement, and deepened understanding of instructional design led me to become an Apple Professional Learning Specialist (APLS) — a role that allowed me to formally support other educators and institutions in building meaningful technology-integrated learning programmes.
Mentoring Colleagues — The Story of Zakiah
Sustainability is the word I keep coming back to. A transformed classroom is wonderful. A transformed faculty is something else entirely.
At some point, a colleague of mine — Zakiah — came to me. She was frustrated. She could see that her students were disengaged, unmotivated, going through the motions. And like most of us at that time, she did what we all did: she blamed the students. She blamed their generation. She felt so worn down by it that she was considering retiring early.
I recognised that feeling immediately. Because I had felt it too.
I am honestly not sure exactly how it began — how I started to shift her thinking about interactive content, about how learning should be designed in the LMS, about what a classroom could feel like when students are actually engaged. I simply showed her some of my content. I walked her through how I developed it, how I thought about it.
I could see the spark in her eyes
She bought her first iPad. Then I brought her into the Apple community — her, and two other colleagues: Juff and Nidzam. Together we formed a very strong team. We started delivering training together for secondary school students and teachers, and also lecturers in Higher Education on using iPad for learning. Through that series of real-world involvement, her capability in developing learning content grew rapidly.
And somewhere along the way, something shifted in her. She realised that for all those years, she had been doing what average lecturers did — standing in front of a class for two hours, reading off slides, and expecting students to somehow find their way to understanding the concepts on their own. She saw it clearly now. And that was where her transformation began.
What does mentoring a colleague look like in practice?
It starts with listening — understanding what they struggle with in the classroom. Then it is about sharing small, practical changes rather than overwhelming them with a complete overhaul. One good habit, consistently applied, is worth more than ten ideas that never get implemented. And sometimes, all it takes is showing someone what is possible.
The impact of Zakiah’s transformation went far beyond her own classroom. Over the years, the recognitions followed — each one a reflection of how completely she had reinvented herself as an educator:
Teaching Excellent Award 2019
University Academic Awards events held bi-annually to recognize academic staff who have demonstrated exceptional performance in various categories at Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka.
Apple Professional Learning Specialist 2023
Educators uniquely qualified to demonstrate how to best use Apple products for learning and teaching. They coach, mentor and support educators through onsite and virtual coaching and professional development engagements.
Special Award - Curriculum Design and Innovative Delivery (AKRI) 2024
Annual National Award by Ministry of Education Malaysia to recognise of share best practices of projects and initiatives implemented at Higher Education institutions.
Apple Distinguished Educator 2026
Educators who are using Apple technology to transform teaching and learning, actively helping other educators rethink what’s possible with iPad and Mac to make learning deeply personal for every student.
I will not pretend that I am responsible for those awards. Zakiah earned every single one of them through her own hard work, creativity, and courage to change. But I am proud to have been part of her journey — just as others were part of mine. And perhaps the most meaningful part is this: she is now an Apple Distinguished Educator herself. The student has become the teacher.
Continuous Learning
I have always believed that educators should be learners first. Attending and presenting at teaching and learning conferences kept me honest — exposed to new research, new tools, and new perspectives that I could bring back to my students.
The presentations I am most proud of were not the ones where I showed polished results. They were the ones where I shared what was still in progress — the experiments, the failures, and the lessons in between. Those conversations were the most honest and the most useful.
Professional development is not a box to check. It is the ongoing practice of becoming a better educator — one reflection, one conversation, and one brave experiment at a time.
Discomfort at the edge of change is exactly where the best teaching begins
And now, a new challenge is emerging — one that I believe is bigger than anything we have faced before. Artificial intelligence is not simply another tool to add to our classroom. It is reshaping the very nature of knowledge, access, and thinking. When a student can ask an AI to explain a concept, generate an essay, or solve a problem in seconds, the question we must ask ourselves is no longer what we teach — but why, and how.
The way we design learning experiences must shift. If AI can deliver information faster and more patiently than any lecturer, then our role as educators is no longer to be the source of knowledge. We must become the designers of experiences that develop judgment, curiosity, creativity, and the ability to think critically with and beyond AI. And perhaps most urgently, the way we assess our students must be fundamentally redesigned — because assessments built for a pre-AI world are no longer fit for purpose.
I am still very much in the early stages of this new journey. But if there is one thing the previous chapters of this portfolio have taught me, it is that discomfort at the edge of change is exactly where the best teaching begins.
