Promoting language and global citizenship 10 grains of rice at a time

My Take

At first glance, this seemed like a fairly basic 'game' that had a fairly short shelf life. How wrong I was! Free Rice hooks students in multiple ways. It is a game; it's not considered 'learning' by many students. It has a win/lose outcome and a method of tracking score (via grains of rice). Lastly, it has a feel-good factor; students can take pride in the fact that they are helping those less fortunate. For teachers there is the added bonus of increasing or decreasing difficulty levels according to class ability and progress, as well as many informative links that help students to become aware of events in the wider world around them. Although there are dozens of topics to quiz students on, the main limitation is that the website doesn't seem to allow teachers to tailor questions to their needs and learning goals.