I have to admit that I've looked over this site a few times as wondering how they could pull it off. For every silly little click, someone somewhere gets 10 grains of rice donated to them from someone else.I don't know why but for some reason, it just didn't sit well with me. Which was kind of weird since I work with so many organizations who do donations like this.
Anyway, I got pointed to the site again this morning and I noticed that updated the site a bit. Instead of just sitting there mindless clicking on an icon, there's a bit of teaching involved. When you visit the site, you get a English Vocabulary question that you have to solve. Get it right, the 10 grains get donated and you get a slightly harder question. Get it wrong and all that anyone gets is you getting an easier question. For example, I got the word "prompt" and asked if it means "inflammable, gutless, very tired or punctual." Pick punctual and your total goes up by ten.
If you're like me and English isn't the strongest skill in your skill set, there's other categories like World Capitals (I'm not touching that one) and Chemical Symbols. Are you a bit of an artist? Try the Famous Paintings category. Or try one of the Mathematics categories. And if you would like to work on your language skills, there's French, Spanish, German, and Italian vocabulary.
My thanks to Pia for the link.
I love FreeRice. A student showed it to me, and I was hooked. There is also a site FreePoverty. The premise is that when can locate a particular spot on a map, you earn cups of water for those who need it. I don't have the link handy, because I'm multi-tasking.
Also...the site you mentioned at Edublogger...where you can post a link and see how a page looks in a number of browsers. I started and then got kind of nervous when it looked like it would take a while. Suggestions?
Best,
Nancy Devine
Nancy Devine | February 15, 2009 10:45 PM | Reply to this comment
Hi Nancy. Thanks for the comment.
I believe the first site you;re thinking of is FreePoverty.com. I've gone ahead and added a link to the site in your comment as well as mine. Haven't tried it since I"m kind of tied up this morning but thanks for pointing it out.
What's really a shame though is it seems like both of these sites point to problems overseas but yet don't tell the whole story. We have the same situation here in the States as well. I spend a lot of time volunteering with churches and organization nearly every day that feed and try to help the local homeless. We see the lines are getting longer and longer. It's a shame really.
I believe the other site you mention is the browsershots.org site. That's the one where you can view a website or blog in a number of different browser and see how it looks. I've suggested it before. Sometimes the queue gets fairly long but the system will send you an email when it;s done. Trust me. It's a big help.
Thanks again,
-drmike