iLearn Technology

01/31/2008

Students work to end world hunger

Holly Cook , Staff Writer

	Ann Foster | afoster@ccnewspapers.com Cherry Hills Christian School third-grader Joshua Parchen looks at his computer while working on FreeRice.com, a program that donates grains of rice for every correct vocabulary question answer. Parchen is one of his class’ highest scorers.

What if just knowing what 10 vocabulary words meant could help stop world hunger? Well, at FreeRice.com it does and students at Cherry Hills Christian School in Highlands Ranch know enough vocabulary words to send 1.3 million grains of rice to people in need.

Before Thanksgiving, technology teacher Kelly Tenkely introduced FreeRice to her elementary students to remind them about how much they had to be thankful for, and to do something to help others.

FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com. FreeRice provides a free vocabulary game that accumulates grains of rice, paid for by supporting advertisers, for every correct answer. The donated rice is shipped to the United Nations World Food Program and distributed internationally to impoverished countries.

The results are two-fold. Students increase their English vocabulary while donating effortlessly to world hunger.

“I don’t even think they really connect that they’re learning vocabulary,” Tenkely said.

FreeRice has become such a hot item in Tenkely’s class that students are playing in their free time when school work is finished. Third-graders Joshua Parchen, 8, and Luke Mason, 9, are what Tenkely calls her “FreeRice rockstars.” Both boys have taken up playing at home and have donated more than 77,000 grains of rice individually.

“We try to get homework done in our carpool so we can play when we get home,” Mason said.

“It’s addicting and really fun,” Parchen said.

Aside from just playing the game, Tenkely’s students are taking it upon themselves to develop commercials to motivate others to play FreeRice and to raise awareness about world hunger. To reach technology class curricular goals, students are using GarageBand and Keynote computer software to make their commercials. GarageBand helps students create background music and Keynote is similar PowerPoint software.

“The goal of the commercials is to teach our kids how to use Keynote and GarageBand but also to teach them about poverty and hunger. We are creating the commercials to tell others about the subject and to tell them about one way that we can help out with FreeRice.”

Mollie Gardner, 9, wants her commercial to show people how hungry others are and how thankful they are to receive food. Petra Sikovkski’s commercial says the same thing.

Tenkely wants to place the finished products on other Web sites like TeacherTube and SchoolTube.

“My goal is to let FreeRice know about them, although I’m not sure if they will add them to their site or not,” Tenkely said.

See the full article here Colorado Community Newspaper