Free Rice: website review

First of all, I'd like to acknowledge connections that enabled me to find this interesting website. In the mail queue yesterday morning was a weekly update message announcing over two dozen additional sites bookmarked by members of the LearningwithComputers (LwC) Group at Diigo, a group that the founder, Carla Arena, describes as "educators interested in sharing and learning about the power of technology" (Description, retrieved 2008.09.18).

That is just what I was doing as I browsed through the list of new bookmarks, after accepting an invitation to hookup through the group with Isabelle Jones, another member of the LwC. Interestingly enough, she had bookmarked a recent post on (one of) her blog(-s):

• My Languages: Free Rice is Going Multi-Lingual and Cross-Curricular

In that post, she updates her review of a wonderful site that she reviewed about a year ago (My Languages, Test Your English and Feed the World, 2007.11.18). FreeRice is a partnership project involving the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University (Cultivating Free Rice, 2008.09.01), and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP, FreeRice web phenomenon – games for a new school term, 2008.08.31). According to the WFP, the Berkman Center now provides servers for FreeRice, and works with the website's creator to develop new adaptive quiz content for the site. Thanks to generous support of various sponsors, for every correct answer to quiz items, the site donates 20 grains of rice to the WFP.

Quizzes now come in a number of different varieties. For example there is one on English vocabulary, and another of English grammar. What's more, as Isabelle points out in her recent post, there also are quizzes in other languages and subjects:

• French, German, Italian, and Spanish;
• art, chemistry, geography, and math (FreeRice, Subjects).

The FAQ explains that sponsers pay the WFP directly:

FreeRice does not make any money from this. FreeRice is simply a website committed to the cause of ending hunger around the world. While it is not a registered non-profit organization, FreeRice is run entirely for free and at no profit. All money (100%) raised by the site goes to the UN World Food Program to help feed the hungry. Sponsors make all payments to the UN World Food Program directly.

(FreeRice, FAQ, Does FreeRice make any money from doing this?
Is FreeRice a non-profit organization?).

There are options that you can set on site either to display a running total of your winnings, or a fresh tally every time you visit the site. However, the aggregate total probably works only if you use the same IP address every time you take a quiz.

Each correct answer not only adds to your contribution, but also cranks up the difficulty of the quiz items that appear next. A note on the Subjects page indicates"the difficulty levels for new subjects will become more exact as more people play." Though incorrect answers will lead to easier quiz items, they will not decrease your contribution. You can find monthly totals since the site's launch here, along with daily totals for the current month, ready and waiting to include yours!

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