Some ideas are so brilliant I can only wag my head in awe. FreeRice is one of them. Here’s how it works:
Go to the FreeRice website and play the vocabulary game you find there. You’ll see a word with four possible definitions to choose from. Choose the right one, and FreeRice donates 20 grains of rice to world hunger relief by supplementing the meager rice supplies of countries whose wellbeing depends on this suddenly expensive commodity (rice has gone sky high in price). Guess wrong and you drop down a notch.
The game is habit forming, but unlike other time-killing, guilt-producing online procrastination pursuits, it (a) builds your vocabulary, and (b) stimulates a philanthropic flow of much needed food to traumatized countries in the world like Myanmar, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Uganda etc.
It’s good for you. It’s good for the world. You can play as long as you like, and it’s free.
Americans are notoriously word-shy. Here (from the FreeRice site) is the antidote to that cultural slow poison….
"After you have done FreeRice for a couple of days, you may notice an
odd phenomenon. Words that you have never consciously used before will
begin to pop into your head while you are speaking or writing. You will
feel yourself using and knowing more words." In part this is because wrong words get recycled so that you keep encountering them.
FreeRice is a real learning tool, not just an easy-reader game. There
are
60 levels of difficulty and it’s a real challenge for players, no
matter how learned they might be, to reach the top. Very few have even
exceed level
50.
So: hunger relief and self-improvement generated by random online game-playing. What’s not to like?
As I said, I’m impressed. My hat’s off to the genius thought this one up.
