Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Free Rice

Continuing with the vocabulary idea, FreeRice.com is an amazing site that not only teaches students new words, but also feeds the hungry through the UN World Food Program. Study vocabulary and help end world hunger at the same time!

I have used this site in the classroom to encourage students to prepare for the state assessments, the PSAT, and the SAT. It is a learning game, which means that the words get harder each time you get an answer correct. By creating a login, you can track your progress and compare your abilities to other members of the site.




Teachers can create a classroom group and let students face off against each other to earn rice and learn vocabulary. The students really get into it to see who is the "wordiest".

The site also quizzes on other topics than English vocabulary. You can feed the hungry and quiz yourself on art by identifying artists of famous paintings, chemistry symbols, geography where you identify countries on a map, and more.



And Leslie, this one has Spanish vocabulary!! You can have your kids practice with this site, even if they can't get on Visuwords!

Check it out here:

http://www.freerice.com/

3 comments:

  1. This is a very nice site. What about it do you think makes it Web 2.0?

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  2. The site itself is labeled 2.0, which I find interesting. There is a debate about exactly what 2.0 is, and the concept that things are tagged with 2.0 to 'ride the wave'.

    I think 2.0 refers to the concept that sites have moved from being limited to user download focused, where the user individually accesses the page to gain information, to user interactive, where the user, the site, and others have an opportunity to communicate, create, and share information with each other.

    In the case of this site, the 2.0 label refers to the concept that the user is entering information and the site adjusts, or learns, and responds in a personal matter to that user. In addition, communities are created, such as online groups and classes. There is also a feature that allows the information from the site to be shared through social media sites.

    You can 'follow' friends and groups, and there is also an updater that allows you to see current user activity on the site.

    The feedback forum allows for users to suggest upgrades and improvements to the site that are put up to vote by the community, which gives the user ownership of the site.

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  3. Aime,
    I've played with this site before and it was rather fun. I just wish that there was a category for music as well. There are plenty of music vocabulary words that would be very helpful for the music student if they were included.

    ReplyDelete