Free Rice: Help the Hungry While You Study

FreeRice, a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program, has two goals: to provide free education and help end world hunger. The site achieves both of these things by providing fun and educational trivia games that can be played over the web. Every time someone answers a trivia question correctly, the United Nations World Food Program donates ten grains of rice to hungry people for free.

Ten grains of rice may not seem like a lot, but if you play the games for just five to ten minutes each day, the grains can really add up. More than 80 billion grains of rice have been donated since the site's conception in October of 2007. And when you consider that hunger and malnutrition are the number one risks to health worldwide-- one child dies every ten seconds from hunger-related causes--you can be confident that any contribution you make is needed and appreciated by someone.

How to Play FreeRice

Playing FreeRice games is easy. Go to FreeRice.com. In the middle of the home page, you will see a multiple choice English vocabulary question like this:

select means:

rub out

defend

fix

choose

To play, all you have to do is click on the definition that you think is correct. If you are right, FreeRice donates ten grains of rice to the hungry. If you're wrong, you will be shown the correct answer. Either way, you move on to a new question so that you can continue playing.

The site will automatically adjust to your level as you play. Answering a question incorrectly sends you to an easier level. Answering three questions in a row correctly sends you to a more difficult level. This system ensures that everyone can play and learn regardless of age or level of study.

Covered Subjects

English vocabulary is not the only subject covered on FreeRice. If you would rather study something else, you can click on the "subjects" tab at the top of the page to be shown other options. The site is constantly working to add more subjects and more material within each subject. The subjects currently offered on FreeRice include:

• Famous Paintings
• Chemical Symbols (Basic)
• Chemical Symbols (Full List)
• English Grammar
• English Vocabulary
• Identify Countries on the Map
• World Capitals
• French
• German
• Italian
• Spanish
• Basic Math (Pre-Algebra)
• Multiplication

Tracking Your Donations

If you are interested in keeping track of how much rice is donated on your behalf, you can click on the "options" tab on the FreeRice home page. Within a few seconds, you can set things up so that the site remembers your personal rice donation total from the last time you played. You will need to have cookies enabled on your computer for this to work properly.

Using FreeRice in the Classroom

Teachers all over the world have brought FreeRice into the classroom to motivate and educate students. FreeRice can be played on any computer with an Internet connection and works quite well with interactive whiteboards. The site can also be used to create a competition among students or get them involved in community service.

Guest post from education writer Karen Schweitzer. Karen is the About.com Guide to Business School. She also writes about pharmacy technician education for PharmacyTechnicianCertification.com.

Check out Interactive Whiteboard Activities on misterteacher.com

Take Your Students Around the World

Picked this one up from AngelaMaiers on Twitter. Panoramas.dk lets you travel the world in 3D by providing full screen virtual panoramas of REALLY COOL PLACES. Obviously we cannot take our students to the top of Mt. Everest, or the Grand Canyon, or to see the Barringer meteorite crater in Arizona; but we can project a virtual panorama of each of these places and let the kids experience them. Would be particularly cool on a SmartBoard!

panoramas, learning, travel,

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SnagFilms Film Widget

Last week I wrote about the educational value of some of the videos that you can find on YouTube. This week I'm writing about another video sharing website, SnagFilms. From the site:

SnagFilms is committed to finding the world‘s most compelling documentaries, whether from established heavyweights or first-time filmmakers, and making them available to the wide audience these titles deserve.

SnagFilms.com is a website where you can watch full-length documentary films for free, but we’re also a platform that lets you “snag” a film and put it anywhere on the web. With a library of nearly 450 films, and rapidly growing, you’re bound to find films that resonate with your interests. We make it easy for you to find a film that shines a light on a cause you care about. You can then open a virtual movie theater on any web site, so any one can watch your favorite SnagFilms for free.

The site has films from National Geographic, PBS, and much more. Any number of films from the site are curriculum related meaning you're bound to find something there that you can show in your classroom.

The film below, Paperclips, is a video that I felt I had to share. You may have heard the story--a middle school class in Tennessee collected 6 million paper clips for each victim of the Holocaust. A great documentary that I found, watched, and snagged.





Technorati Tags: education| learning | SnagFilms

Check out what's new at misterteacher.com: Grants 101 | Bright Ideas | Learn about Pi

OK, class, it's time for YouTube

Silly videos, crass practical jokes, music videos, bloody street fights; you name it, you can probably see it on YouTube. But what many of us (teachers, that is) are finding out is that the site is also rich in serious, professionally made videos that can teach our students a lot. My students have been finding videos on YouTube for a few years now and using them in their blogs and wikis (note: this year most of them have been using videos from TeacherTube; many of those can also be found on YouTube). What I have found is that my students are amazed that videos like these are on YouTube and love finding them.

In the article "Ok, Class, It's Time for YouTube" from the Christian Science Monitor, the site even gets a cheer from a marine biology professor. The author writes about how, through the urging of his son, he begins exploring YouTube and discovers that how it can make his classes come alive. His writing reveals his excitement:

I began my lecture on the classification of the invertebrates, reciting facts about their anatomy and habits as my students dutifully scribbled away. And then it was showtime. I booted up the laptop and projector, darkened the room, and clicked on YouTube.

The effect was magical. The blue ocean ebbed and flowed before us as myriad sea creatures swam, crawled, and flew about. I stood alongside the screen, narrating the action, occasionally pausing a video clip to point out this or that detail that illuminated my students' notes. From sponges to mollusks to starfish and their kin, we covered all the phyla of invertebrates.

The "wows" and "whoas" from the class confirmed for me that I had struck gold. When the lights came back on one of my students gushed, "That was a real trip."

I love reading articles about epiphanies like this. If you haven't checked out YouTube for educational purposes, do so as soon as possible. Chances are you'll discover some good material for your classroom.

Technorati Tags: education| learning | YouTube

Check out: Angles | Constitution Webquest | misterteacher.com

From Blogs to Wikis

For several years now, my math students have written in blogs. They've done some pretty amazing work on them. This year I decided to switch over to a classroom wiki. My kids are loving it! They did some pretty great work last week on an assignment that required them to create their own pages on one of the lessons from the chapter we are currently studying. Check the link below to see their work. They were able to find some awesome websites and quite a few of them posted some videos from YouTube and TeacherTube. They did grab some images from other sites and did not cite them. At this point, I just want them to be able to locate and insert the images. In the future, they will be required to cite everything.

As the year goes on, I'd like to continue to increase the complexity of their assignments on the wiki. The next one will require them to create a webpage on π. Kids are fascinated by this amazing number and I want to take advantage of that enthusiasm. But instead of individual webpages, I'll require them to construct the pages collaboratively--outside of school! I figure that wikis are meant to be collaborative spaces that are created asynchronously, so why not see if my students can work as a team while not actually working together in person! I'm very interested to see how it turns out.

Here's the link to the wiki pages. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see links to student work.


Check out: Digital Cameras in the Classroom | Symmetry in Nature | Tessellations

Additions to misterteacher.com

This summer I was able to make some additions to the misterteacher.com website. First is the Constitution Webquest. It's kid-tested and in the form of a quiz (just like the Rainforest Webquest) that requires students to follow links to websites that will help them answer the questions. Second is an addition to the Alphabet Geometry website. Joining the pages on transformations, angles, and tessellations is a new page on parallel lines. Just like the rest of the site, it teaches the concept through animations and is interactive.

Head on over to misterteacher.com and check out the new material.

teachers, education, constitution, tessellations, geometry

Why I Love the Internet - Reason #2 - Learning to Tie Knots

Ever the outdoorsman, I've decided it's time to learn how to tie some basic knots. I was not a boy scout as a kid, so I never learned. Enter the Internet. Just google the word "knots" and check out the first result, Animated Knots by Grog. Here you can learn how to tie 119 knots. Don't know where to begin? Then search for a knot under one of the following categories:

• Boating
• Climbing
• Fishing
• Search & Rescue
• Household
• Decorative

Oh...I forgot to mention, each knot is animated--you are shown how to tie it through a sequence of photos that break down the process into manageable steps.

Why I Love Internet - Reason #1 - Identifying Snakes

Remember when you were a kid, fascinated by a meandering creek or stream? Think back to how fun it was to turn over rocks and search for critters like frogs and crawdads. I still enjoy roving creeks and streams, searching for wildlife; not so much because I've managed to hang on to that childhood fascination, but more because I want to pass it on to my kids.

A couple weeks ago the four of us (Anna, Andrew, and Audrey are my four year old triplets) we're roaming a creek close to our house when Anna came across a small snake. "A snake, Daddy!" she yelled as I dashed up to where she was standing. I managed to catch a glimpse of it as it slithered under a rock. It was small with a very attractive pattern on its back. With thoughts of Steve Irwin in my head, I lifted up the rock and had every intention picking up the snake and allowing my kids to observe it and even touch it. The snake had other thoughts.

Ignoring the fact that the snake was coiled in a defensive pose and was ready to strike, I reached down, grasped it by the tail (or the end furthest from its head), and picked it up. It did not want to be picked up. It immediately began thrusting its head up towards my hand, trying to bite me. After a few tries, it was successful. I dropped it to the ground, and, undeterred, I again reached down to grab the snake, and, for a second time, he bit me. One of the strikes broke the skin, though no more than a paper cut would.

What was I thinking? Why would I continue to pick up an aggressive snake? For one, the snake was small and far from frightening. Furthermore, I was in no danger from its bite; living in Ohio, I was sure that the bites had released no venom because there are no poisonous snakes where I live. I'm no biologist though, and a slight sense of anxiety lingered throughout the rest of our trip to the creek.

When I got home, I jumped on the computer and googled "Ohio snakes." The first result was a page called "What's That Snake?" from the Ohio Public Library Information Network (OPLIN). The site allows you identify snakes based on their markings by taking you through a series of screens, each with a pair of choices. Your job is to try to determine which of the two choices better fits your snake, and then go on to the next screen.

Anyway, using this identification system I was unable to figure out precisely what the snake was that bit me. My anxiety grew a little after one of the possibilities turned out to be a Northern Copperhead! Luckily though, the Eastern Milk Snake and the Kirtland Snake also resembled the one that bit me. I've experienced no ill effects of the bite, so it obviously wasn't the copperhead.

Since that trip, I've repeated my searches with spiders, leaves, and even salamanders. Having the Internet as a resource has turned me into an amateur biologist and once my kids are old enough, I'll have them searching with me.