Dive Brief:

• Administrators no longer need to wait for conferences to have meaningful networking opportunities with their peers in other districts — apps have stepped in to provide virtual collaboration spaces, and school tours give an up-close look at what’s working.
• Edutopia reports suburban Chicago superintendent Nick Polyak uses the Voxer smartphone app to communicate with his peers around the country through short, recorded messages, and he considers opening his school for scheduled group tours as a way to pay it forward after they benefited that in 2010.
• Digital Promise's League of Innovation Schools, the Digital Consortium, Digital Leader Corps and the Kentucky Educational Development Corporation are all additional groups that bring school leaders together to discuss ed tech, helping them make decisions based on each other’s experiences.

Dive Insight:

It is easy for school districts to feel like they are on an island, especially rural districts that don’t have close neighbors. Digital communication tools, even those as basic as Twitter, can help build professional communities online without requiring any mobility at all.

Eric Sheninger, former principal of New Milford High School in New Jersey, brought his school national attention after realizing Twitter could help his professional practice and create a platform from which to shout his school’s progress. Administrators increasingly want to see proof that teachers are building global networks. They can lead by example online.