New games pay off
Jessica Kumor
Issue date: 11/14/08 Section: Opinion
There are better ways to procrastinate on the Internet than Facebook.
Yes, I know eating up the latest news feeds on your friends' pages and sending witty bumper stickers to classmates are incredibly entertaining ways to waste time. But next time you log on to Facebook to flirtatiously "poke" the Internet crush of your dreams, take a few minutes out of your time to donate some rice.
At this point, you may be scratching your head, wondering where you could acquire rice on Facebook.
But if you travel to www.freerice.com, you'll find plenty of rice.
Established in October 2007, Freerice.com, a non-profit organization, was created with two goals in mind: help terminate world hunger by giving starving people free rice and educate anyone with the Internet for free, the Web site reported.
So far, the Web site's users have generated enough rice to feed two million people.
Here's how the site works:
When you reach the home page, you'll be given an English word and four possible meanings to define it. If you select the right answer, 20 grains of rice will be donated to the United Nations Food program, reported www.freerice.com.
With every three answers you get right, the difficulty level increases. While the English vocabulary section is made up of 60 levels and more than 12,000 words, the Web site said participants scarcely make it to the 50th level.
English vocabulary isn't the only skill tester www.freerice.com offers.
By clicking on the "subjects" link, you can choose to be quizzed in the areas of math, geology, chemistry, art and language learning.
With those areas, you can challenge yourself to complete the multiplication table, match the names of countries with their location on a map, identify the artists behind famous paintings, identify the elements behind various chemistry symbols and test your language skills by translating Spanish, French, German and Italian words into English.
Yes, I know eating up the latest news feeds on your friends' pages and sending witty bumper stickers to classmates are incredibly entertaining ways to waste time. But next time you log on to Facebook to flirtatiously "poke" the Internet crush of your dreams, take a few minutes out of your time to donate some rice.
At this point, you may be scratching your head, wondering where you could acquire rice on Facebook.
But if you travel to www.freerice.com, you'll find plenty of rice.
Established in October 2007, Freerice.com, a non-profit organization, was created with two goals in mind: help terminate world hunger by giving starving people free rice and educate anyone with the Internet for free, the Web site reported.
So far, the Web site's users have generated enough rice to feed two million people.
Here's how the site works:
When you reach the home page, you'll be given an English word and four possible meanings to define it. If you select the right answer, 20 grains of rice will be donated to the United Nations Food program, reported www.freerice.com.
With every three answers you get right, the difficulty level increases. While the English vocabulary section is made up of 60 levels and more than 12,000 words, the Web site said participants scarcely make it to the 50th level.
English vocabulary isn't the only skill tester www.freerice.com offers.
By clicking on the "subjects" link, you can choose to be quizzed in the areas of math, geology, chemistry, art and language learning.
With those areas, you can challenge yourself to complete the multiplication table, match the names of countries with their location on a map, identify the artists behind famous paintings, identify the elements behind various chemistry symbols and test your language skills by translating Spanish, French, German and Italian words into English.
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