Yesterday, I traveled to Watsonville[1] for Alive15, the Educational Technology Leadership Consortium’s annual teaching and technology conference, hosted by Monte Vista Christian School.
In the process of co-writing a book that involves interviewing high school teachers across the country, I’ve come to realize that those who are most often doing the most creative things on campus are often doing it alone. What this really means is that even our best teachers are missing out on the curricular, instructional, and social-emotional support of a personal learning network[2]. They could be doing even better with just a little support.
As such, it’s of vital importance, I maintain, for a school to do everything it can to help teachers build and sustain a PLN:
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Watsonville is just shy of 90-miles from San Francisco; that’s really, really far for this bike-commuting city bus-riding guy to trek. But, seeing as the Castro family originally settled in that area in the late–1700s, I always enjoy a visit. ↩
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I won’t even bother defining a personal learning network. The idea is common enough even if the term that’s in vogue changes with surprising regularity as each recent author insists on rebranding the concept in an attempt to express some creative credit. ↩