FreeRice.Com - New and Improved!

In March of 2008, I wrote an article entitled Feed the Hungry, Twenty Grains of Rice at a Time. Today, I would like to call your attention once again to FreeRice.com.

For those that are unfamiliar with FreeRice.com, the website began as an online vocabulary test in October of 2007. The concept at the time was that users of the site would answer multiple choice questions. You would be given a word and four choices. Each time that you selected the right defenition, 10 grains of rice would be donated to starving people through the United Nations World Food Program. Shortly after their inception, the amount of rice donated per correct answer was increased from 10 up to 20 grains of rice.

Recently, FreeRice.com has expanded their offerings. The concept has not changed - you still donate 20 grains of rice per correct answer that you provide (at no cost to you). However, instead of simply being able to test your vocabulary knowledge while helping to feed hungry people, you are able to choose from a variety of subjects.

The subjects are as follows:

ART - Famous Paintings : In this subject, the user is shown a painting and is tasked to identify the artist. There are currently ten levels of difficulty for this subject.

CHEMISTRY - Chemical Symbols : This is actually broken down into two subjects, Basic and Full List. Here, the user is given a chemical name - Oxygen, Neon, Potassium, etc. - and asked to choose the correct symbol - O, Ne, K. The Basic option offers only one level of difficulty while the Full List option offers three levels of difficulty.

ENGLISH - English Grammar : This one is a bit different in that it asks the user to choose the correct usage of a word. The same sentence is offered twice with a word in bold print. One choice offers the word used correctly, while the other is incorrect. This subject has five levels of difficulty.

ENGLISH - English Vocabulary : This is the original subject upon which FreeRice.com began. There are now sixty levels of difficulty for this subject!

GEOGRAPHY - Identify Countries on the Map : Users are shown a map of a continent with one of the countries shaded in. You need to select the country from the four options provided. This offers five levels of difficulty.

GEOGRAPHY - World Capitals : FreeRice.com provides the city and four countries to choose from. The user must select the country for which the city is the capital. Like its geography counterpart, this subject also offers five levels of difficulty.

LANGUAGE - French, LANGUAGE - German, LANGUAGE - Italian, LANGUAGE - Spanish : All four of these subjects function similarly. The user is provided with a word in the language selected and asked to select the English translation. All four languages have ten levels of difficulty.

MATH - Multiplication Table : The user is asked to select the correct answer for the provided multiplication problem. This subject only has two levels of difficulty.

If you have not yet checked out FreeRice.com, I urge you to head on over there and give it a whirl. If you have not been there in a while, go back - you will enjoy the upgrades. If you are a FreeRice.com junkie (like me), thank you for doing your part to donate more than 49 billion grains of rice to starving nations! (Actual total: 49,352,689,810 grains of rice donated through November 4, 2008)