Back in 2006 when public wiki platforms were young, I came across one that stood out of the pack for its beauty. It was called WetPaint. When it finally opened for use, I created a open-ended project for classes called wikiPlaces. It took the well-used idea of an alphabet book and moved it to the internet where it would reach a larger audience and could include hyperlinks.
Over the next year or so I was enchanted to see a few classes make use of it. Then WetPaint changed. It rebranded itself as a social media site. I expected that my wikiPlaces site would eventually be deleted.
This evening I was catching up in Feedly, my new home for my old Google Reader feeds. Flipping through posts I was startled to find myself suddenly looking at edits to wikiPlaces. I hadn’t even remembered that was one of my feeds.
The old site has been monitized by Wikifoundry.com, the current owner of the old Wetpaint platform. Although the ads are obtrusive, none of them were inappropriate for a K-8 audience.
Back in 2006, not as many elementary schools had the capacity for students to edit a wiki. Now, there are better tools which allow more than one person to edit a page at a time. Therefore, I was surprised to find classes still using it. I still think the project idea was a good one. It is waiting there for you to share a place that you love.