Your Name and Title:

Mehreen Saleem

Organizations that Aspire to Learn

Organization Name:

Notre Dame Institute of Education

Country from Which You Will Present:

Pakistan

Language in Which You Will Present:

English

Target Audience:

School pedagogical leadership and educators

Short Session Description:

The session will be based on ideas that would guide school leadership to establish a dynamic learning organization.

Full Session Description:

The biggest problem of today in the world of education has to do with the credibility, authority, and relevance of educational institutions. The educational institutions are very static and inflexible institutions, which was alright if they were living in static and inflexible world. Our institutions, people who in them and the technologies that they use have trouble keeping up. Our societies are mobile but our institutions are not. It is possible that they might lose the kind of authority and credibility that they have; and they will be increasingly becoming irrelevant.

For individuals and schools to be successful, a shift in paradigm is needed. Being a teacher, my experiences have taught me that a shift in paradigm is not readily accepted by everybody. However, the principle of the survival of the fittest says that a school organization that is static in nature and not dynamic will fail to meet the needs of the society, thereby developing learners that are not competent enough to share their part. The solution lies in the institutions being agile, permeable and responsive. The school, which I belonged to, faced similar challenges and found its solution in creating a collaborative culture among the teachers. Certain collaborative techniques were introduced as a support mechanism that assisted teachers to adjust to the changes of present time.

The presentation will discuss the importance of establishing learning organization that promotes collaborative culture at school. The presentation will also include some of the strategies, some of which were successfully practised in my school, that develop collaborative culture at schools to ensure learning among educators. One of the strategies that I used to collaborate and communicate to the global community was the I joined Venture Lab, which is one of the primary platforms used by Stanford University to offer free online courses. Recently, I am engaged in collaborating and communicating with the globe on the topic 'Designing a New Learning Environment'.

Website:

http://venture-lab.org/