Reconnecting Professional Learning
Reflections from My Wednesday ISTE Panel
At ISTE this year, I facilitated a Wednesday morning panel on professional learning. The session I organized was titled, The Future of Professional Learning: Connecting Educators Across Borders. I was joined by fellow Apple Distinguished Educators Tami Brewster, Bethany LaDue Nugent, Marcus Borders, Jason Krug and global educator Julie Meltzer. Our focus: How do we move professional development away from isolated, one-time experiences and toward something more connected, meaningful, and human?
I proposed this session because I’ve been noticing something missing. There was a time when educator self-directed and educator-led learning was encouraged and even considered innovative. Professional learning networks were a major part of the education conversation. At ISTE, people gathered at EduBloggerCon, found each other through Twitter chats, launched EdCamps, shared blog posts, and built relationships that stretched across schools, states, countries, and continents. Social media, for all its imperfections, was often a place where educators found one another and grew together.
Now, that energy feels different. Social media has lost some of its lustre, and many educators have stepped back from those spaces. There is also a growing tendency not to share as openly, even around conferences and professional experiences.
And, somewhere along the way, especially after the pandemic, many educators became more isolated. This is ironic, of course, because we now have more tools than ever for connecting. But tools alone do not create community, platforms alone do not build trust, and access alone does not guarantee belonging.
I opened the panel by sharing how becoming an Apple Distinguished Educator in 2005 changed my professional life. That experience connected me to a global network of creative, generous, forward-thinking educators. It also inspired me to learn, explore and create the best possible experiences for students and colleagues. It also convinced me that every educator deserves access to a strong professional learning network, not just a workshop, a webinar, or a binder of resources.
The panel was grounded in a few simple but powerful ideas: professional learning should nurture, guide, and empower. It should be relevant, contextual, reflective, and sustained. It should recognize educators as capable professionals, not as people who are broken and need to be fixed. Too often, professional development is still designed around deficit thinking. Too often, teachers’ needs are not the starting point, and sessions become dry, one-directional experiences where information is delivered at them rather than built through conversation and collaboration, with little choice, little personalization, and little connection to the realities of their classrooms. Our panel served as a call to action to re-think professional learning.
We explored six different approaches to professional learning, and while each model was distinct, a clear through line emerged: relationships matter most.
I shared my work with virtual conferences, especially GLOW, Global Learning for an Open World. For years, I have been organizing online events that bring educators together from around the world. GLOW typically draws hundreds of educators each November for two days of sessions, and I have tried to keep it as accessible as possible. Virtual conferences matter because not everyone can travel, not everyone has institutional funding, and not everyone can get to a place like ISTE.
At their best, virtual events can democratize access to ideas and people. But I also named an important pitfall: online events can feel cold if they are not intentionally designed. Content delivery is not enough. This year, I am thinking even more deeply about how to build in informal connection, networking, and meaningful interaction so that virtual conferences feel less like a collection of webinars and more like a professional community.
Tammy shared a powerful story from her work with Indigenous, Inuit, and Métis communities across Canada. Her reflections were a reminder that professional learning cannot begin with “click here, do this.” It has to begin with relationship. She described how her early efforts did not fully resonate until she spent time shoulder-to-shoulder with educators, helping set up classrooms, listening, and building trust.
Her work eventually supported teachers in using technology to preserve Indigenous languages and stories through multimodal digital books. In some communities, only a small number of fluent language speakers remain. In that context, recording a voice, preserving a story, and creating a digital book is not just a technology project. It is cultural preservation, reconciliation, and professional learning in service of something much larger than the tool.
Julie Meltzer from the Institute for Humane Education joined us virtually and shared their model of networked, values-driven professional learning. Their solutionary micro-credential brings educators together around the shared goal of helping students become next-level problem solvers. What stood out to me was the intentionality of the design: synchronous sessions, asynchronous reflection, plan-building, coaching, a competency-based credential, and an ongoing community through Circle.
This is the kind of professional learning that does not end when the session ends. Participants leave with a plan, a network, and continued support. Julie also reminded us that meaningful change takes practice. The analogy she used was that when one is learning to ski, you don’t start on the Black Diamond ski run. You build capacity over time, ideally with a colleague or thought partner alongside you.
Marcus Borders brought in the role of AI-enhanced coaching. He talked about how AI tools might help instructional coaches organize notes, personalize support, and create more responsive educator profiles. I appreciated how balanced his perspective was. He was not suggesting that AI replace coaching or professional judgment. In fact, he was very clear that AI does not understand the nuances of a teacher, a classroom, a school culture, or a relationship.
His point was that AI can support the process, but it cannot replace the human element. This is exactly the kind of conversation we need more of in education right now. The question is not whether we should use AI or reject it outright. The better question is: How do we use these tools responsibly, with attention to privacy, equity, bias, and professional wisdom?
Bethany Nugent shared one of my favorite ideas from the panel: the “humble trap.” She talked about how educators often do incredible work but hesitate to share it because they do not want to seem boastful. As a result, powerful stories stay hidden inside classrooms or around dinner tables instead of becoming resources for the larger profession.
Bethany and her colleague Jason Krug have been part of an at-scale Apple Vision Pro K–12 pilot at La Crosse Polytechnic School in Wisconsin. There was no roadmap for what they were doing. They had to figure out device setup, prescription lenses, student use, instructional time, and classroom logistics in real time. Instead of waiting until everything was perfect, they shared the messy middle.
That openness led to connections with researchers, school districts, and educators in other parts of the world. Her message was clear: share the process, not just the polished outcome. Share the struggle, the question, the pivot, and the plot twist. Someone else needs to see that ambitious work is possible, even when it is imperfect.
Jason Krug extended that story by talking about cold-call networking with developers and vendors. When existing Apple Vision Pro apps did not meet their school’s needs around privacy, price, or classroom use, he and Bethany reached out directly to developers. They positioned themselves not just as customers, but as partners.
That shift is important. Educators should not feel powerless in the face of products, platforms, and companies. We know our learners, our contexts, our privacy concerns, and the realities of school budgets. Jason’s challenge was practical and bold: go to the vendor hall, find something that interests you, and have an honest conversation about what educators and students actually need.
As I listened to each panelist, I kept hearing the same ideas surface again and again: relationship, relevance, humility, agency, equity, courage, and connection. The technology varied across the stories. We talked about virtual conference platforms, Apple Vision Pro, AI tools, NotebookLM, Base44, Circle, Padlet, LinkedIn, and developer communities. But the technology was never the main point. The main point was how these tools can amplify human connection when used thoughtfully.
Technology can certainly make professional learning more accessible, but it can also make it feel impersonal. AI can help personalize coaching, but it can also flatten the very human complexity of teaching. Virtual conferences can connect people globally, but only if they are designed for interaction. Social platforms can help educators share their work, but only if we are willing to move past the fear of being seen.
One question we discussed near the end was: What should professional developers stop doing? The answers were direct. Stop generalizing. Stop assuming the same content will resonate with every audience. Stop using the same slide deck for every group. Stop ignoring what teachers actually say they need. Most of all, stop designing professional learning as if educators are passive recipients.
That last one is especially important to me. I do not want to design professional learning that is done to people. I want to design professional learning that is built with people.
Before a recent AI keynote for library staff, I sent out a pre-survey to understand how people were feeling. Some responses were skeptical, and some were strongly opposed. Rather than dismiss that feedback, we used it to redesign the session. The result was a much better experience, and the post-session feedback was positive. That reminded me that resistance is not something to dismiss or ignore. It is information, context, and part of the design process.
As I reflect on this ISTE panel, I am more convinced than ever that we need to reclaim the idea of professional learning networks, but in a way that fits this moment. The early PLN era was energizing, but the landscape has changed. Social media is more fragmented, educators are exhausted, AI is shifting the ground under our feet, travel is expensive, time is scarce, and trust has to be rebuilt.
That means our professional learning models need to be more intentional than ever. We need virtual spaces that feel warm and participatory, communities of practice that continue after the course ends, coaching models that use technology wisely without losing human nuance, educators willing to share unfinished stories, and more direct conversations between educators and the companies building tools for schools.
Above all, we need to stop treating professional development as an event and start treating it as an ecosystem. That ecosystem should include formal learning, informal learning, coaching, mentoring, storytelling, resource sharing, global collaboration, and sustained community. It should honor the expertise educators already have while opening doors to new possibilities.
The future of professional learning is not another sit-and-get workshop. It is connected, relational, global, and human. And it is built by educators who are willing to nurture, guide, empower, and be empowered in return.
Session Resources
Our Padlet - Share resources and introduce yourself
Our Slides - Meet our panelists and learn about our work
Our Google NotebookLM - This notebook contains dozens of resources related to research and best practices in educator professional learning
The Connected PD App - This is an app I’m building in Base 44 to help people plan great professional learning experiences
Absolutely. Excellent point as always!