Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Feed the Hungry While Practicing Your Vocabulary

It's possible at FreeRice.com, a website that's been around for just over two months now.
Here's a description of how to play from the website:

  • Click on the answer that best defines the word.
  • If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an easier word.
  • For each word you get right, we donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.
  • WARNING: This game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, job performance...

There are 50 difficulty levels in all, although the website admits it's difficult to get above a 48. I played and was surprised to get up to level 42 and donated 300 grains of rice in just a few minutes of play. The rice is paid for by advertisers whose logos appear at the bottom of the game screen. The site was launched on October 7 and only 830 grains of rice were donated. On December 10 this number had grown to 7,786,631,170 grains of rice. I wonder what that translates to in pounds??? What a great way for students to build their vocabulary and feed the world at the same time! Who knows—maybe you can even have a class discussion about world hunger?

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