By Renee Martinez
I know it’s a little late for me to jump onto the FreeRice bandwagon and write about how much I enjoy this site, but it had only recently occurred to me to share it with the boys.
For those unfamiliar with the website, FreeRice is a non-profit website run by the United Nations World Food Program and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Its 2 goals is to provide everyone with free education, and to help end world hunger.
It works like this…You go onto their site and choose from 6 different subjects: art, chemistry, English, geography, language learning, and math. The website will quiz you on the subject, and scale the questions to your level. For each question you get right – they donate 10 grains to rice through the World Food Programme, and when you get a question wrong, they will sneak it back later so you actually learn new things!
One of my boys (third grade) was having a little trouble reviewing his multiplication table, and that flashcard bit was indeed getting very old. He was cranky and in the midst of lamenting on how unfair life is, when it occurred to me to set him up in front of FreeRice. I explained to him how the website works and the little display that shows how many grains of rice you have accumulated was a real motivator for him. We both agreed he should try for 500 grains, and we were both surprised at how fast he got there – so we went for 1000 grains. After 1000 grains, he actually wanted to stay longer and explore the geography topics.
So, keep this wonderful resource in mind if you are looking for a fun alternative to flash cards or just an educational game for your boys when they are on the computer. It is free to play and you don’t need to deal with any membership shenanigans. It is also a great opportunity to get your kids aware of world issues and how they can also help (my boy actually listened and had a lot of questions about world hunger).
My boy’s favorites on FreeRice are the geography (where you can name capitals or identify countries) and math categories. If your boy is interested in chemistry, there is a quiz on chemistry symbols. The language section has French, German, Italian, and Spanish, which is great for brushing up. The English vocabulary section is also great for preparing for the SATs!
What beats having fun, getting smarter, and helping a good cause all at once?
About the Author: Renee Martinez consults and speaks professionally on social media marketing, integrated marketing communications, public relations and branding. She is the president of Ruby Marketing Communications (www.rubymarcom.com), a boutique marketing communications company that specializes in providing branding, social media strategy and integration, and creative services. Her blog (www.lisac95.sg-host.com), provides resources on everything marketing and social media for her active audience.
Renee has contributed as a featured monthly columnist in the monthly jewelry industry publication, JCK on matters related to internet marketing as well as in InStore Magazine as a featured blogger where she writes about developing effective marketing strategies for the jewelry industry using social media. She is the founder of: Social Media Biz Summit (www.socialmediabizsummit.com), the first large-scale SM conference to come to Buffalo, NY; #jewelrychat, a weekly twitter chat for the jewelry industry and www.RaisingBoysWorld.com. Renee teaches social marketing courses at Canisius College in Buffalo, NY for the business school as well as offers small group social media marketing training and educational seminars for businesses in Western New York and beyond.
Renee has dabbled in internet marketing arena since the early 90′s and is not ashamed to call herself a “marketing geek”. From chatting in AOL, “sharing” music on Napster, and teaching HTML classes before it was considered “cool” to developing comprehensive social media strategies, effective public relations campaigns and managing online communities (most recently Chevy Girls Buffalo).
She enjoys being able to help people find their voice online and to create buzz about their product or service that will give them the results they desire. Renee can be found on Twitter (@reneemmartinez) and Facebook (http:/www.facebook.com/RubyMarCom).
