My last post described some of my reasons for ungeeking. The more I reflected on it, the more reasons I could come up with. Rationalizing? Perhaps, but the ungeeking proceeds nonetheless. One more reason that I did want to add is that when I am asked (or explain without provocation – that happens a lot) how a teacher can get involved in this bloggy-wiki-ey-twittery melange that is the habitat of the networked teacher (see picture below), I describe how blogs and wikis and twitter accounts can be set up for free. This elicits gasps of jubilation tinged with disbelief. Any teacher can stake their claim on a few megabytes of the intarweb-tubes for absolutely no cost, with the added bonus of someone else doing all the hosting and maintaining. And for a very minor cost, they can have it all given their imprimatur of their very own domain name. So I figure that if I’m going to tell people this, I’d better walk the walk.

- Networked teacher
cc licensed flickr photo by courosa: http://flickr.com/photos/courosa/2922421696/
Here’s my bare-bones guide to becoming master of your own personal-learning-networked-teacher.
1. Get a blog. I have mine set up at wordpress.com, but blogger is another option for well done free blogs. There may be other good options, but these are the ones I work with. I use my blogs as the centre of my online brain, both personally (that would be this blog) or profesionally (at the World of Wall). It is where my thoughts all come together. The lack of activity on this blog over the past couple of years should give you some insight into how many thoughts I’ve had during that time span.
2. Get a domain to use for your blog. I think this is important because you want to control your digital footprint. That is, when someone googles your name, your site should show up on the first page of results. If you are going to be online, make sure that you control that identity. My thinking right now is that it’s best if you can have a domain name that is obviously connected with you (like robwall.ca). I have had other domain names in the past – stigmergicweb.org, omegageek.net – but I’m confortable with this one because it is who I am. I like to think that whatever I put here is a true representation of who I am the rest of the time.
You can get a domain on your own through a hosting company like godaddy, or if you are linking a domain to a wordpress.com blog you can purchase the domain through them (for a limited set of top level domains – .com, .net and .org). WordPress.com has some good explanation of how to get started with domain mapping. I haven’t tried it but Blogger also has instructions for using a custom domain.
3. Get a twitter account Blogs are great for putting out and archiving information in a chronological order, but twitter is more like a live stream of what people are thinking (and eating for breakfast) right now. Laura Walker has put together a nice summary of why teachers should use twitter. David Weinberger once noted that the smartest person in the room is the room. I use twitter to be a part of that room. Feel free to follow me once you have the twitter account – my twitter account is @robwall
4. Start a wiki (or many). My blog is a great archive for the ideas that have occurred to me or events that are important to know. My twitter account is a way to be “in the room”. My wikis are my repositories of knowledge that aren’t necessarily needed to be sequential. Sometimes I might assign a project through my blog, but the details of the assignment are given more fully on a wiki. I have created good, free wikis at wikispaces or pbworks. Wikispaces will create ad-free wikis, normally a premium (meaning “you pay for it”) feature, for free for K-12 classroom use. You can also specify that a wiki will be for educational use if you create a pbworks wiki.
Once you have those 4 things done – created a blog, set up a domain name, get a twitter account and start a wiki – start linking them together. You can put your blog site in part of your profile on twitter. Put links to your blog and twitter accounts on your wiki(s). You can add twitter integration into your blog using various wikis. Integrate your online identity as much as possible.
As I’ve been writing this, I’ve thought of other things to do to become a networked teacher. Social bookmarking, RSS aggregators and portal sites like netvibes are also valuable tools. A problem with explaining these things to people is it ends up being like drinking water from a fire hose.