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How do you combine vocabulary lessons, the Internet, and social awareness to help feed starving people? Just ask FreeRice.com. When you visit John Breen's FreeRice.com, you're greeted with a simple enough design. But this vocabulary building website has a twist: every word that you correctly match with its definition adds 10 grains of rice to your virtual bowl. Back in the real world, whatever you tally by the end of your session is donated to UN World Food Programme (WFP) to help end world hunger.
 How It Works
FreeRice features a simple, multiple-choice style platform. A word displays on the page and presents four possible definitions. If you choose the correct one, a little wooden bowl to the right fills up with grains of rice; there's a running total listed below.
Like the electronic GREs that I took ten years ago, each correct answer leads to harder questions; incorrect responses lead to easier ones. Fear not, however, for wrong answers do not take away food. The question is just recycled for later use, hopefully giving you the opportunity to recall the right answer - and learn.
Scam or Program?
According to other websites, FreeRice.com is not a scam. Rather, it's a legitimate partner of The Hunger Site, which allows direct contributions to a variety of world issues, as well as with the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. There's also its relationships with the WFP. According to both Snopes.com and Discourse.net, FreeRice is the real deal. The fact that John Breen's site was awarded Yahoo's Charity Find of the Year for 2007 further credits its authenticity.
At FreeRice.com, the donated rice is paid for by companies that advertise at the bottom of the page. These ads are so unobtrusive that I had to look for them. While it may not seem that much rice is donated with each answer, the latest data show that over 15.3 million grains were donated on 7/26/09 alone. Since the site's launch almost two years ago, a whopping 66 billion grains of rice have been donated to the WFP. Perhaps this is the best example of the old adage "many hands make light work" in the Internet Age. You can even track how much you have donated lifetime.
 "He Likes It. Hey Mikey!" – Students Actually Want to Learn Vocab?
On a professional level, students love FreeRice. When there are a few minutes to burn at the end of class, students to whom I've shown the site ask if they can spend some time there. Students who usually just hang out after school are also willing to visit the site, and have fun while both helping others and learning.
Wha' if English Vocab Ain't Me Thing, Govenor?
FreeRice began as a way for people to feed the hungry while improving their vocabulary. Since the site's launch in October 2007, however it has expanded to include the following subject areas. All use the same simple platform.
- Art: Famous Paintings
- Chemistry: Chemical Symbols (Basic) and Chemical Symbols (Full List)
- English: English Grammar and English Vocabulary
- Geography: Identify Countries on the Map and World Capitals
- Language Learning: French, German, Italian, Spanish
- Math: Basic Math (Pre-Algebra) and Multiplication Tables
Curious? It's fun - and quick to get addicted. Don't believe me? Give FreeRice a shot yourself!
Resources:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/charity/freerice.asp
http://www.freerice.com/
http://www.wfp.org/
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/
http://www.discourse.net/archives/2007/11/free_rice.html
http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/finds2007/charity/
http://lotpro.com/blogphotos/Misc%20Article%20Images/tn_Mikey%20Cereal%20commercial.jpg
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Re: Feeding the Hungry with Vocabulary - FreeRice.com
