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Webspiration Wednesday: Sleedo

April 21, 2010April 21, 2010Kelly Tenkely2 Comments3932 views

Today, I am doing something a little different for Webspiration Wednesday. As a staff, we still gathered for Webspiration Wednesday finishing the Guy Doud video from last week. Since I have already summed that up in this post, I thought I would write about a webspirational website instead. Sleedo is a great Webspiration Wednesday website.

What it is: Sleedo is a search engine that I learned about from @cspiezio today on Twitter. This is a search engine with a mission to better the world with each and every search. Every time you search using Sleedo, 10 grains of rice will be donated to help feed the poor. Sleedo is a Google powered search engine. Sleedo makes money through advertisements and donates that money to the World Food Programme, feeding those in need. So, for every search you do, you are helping improve the lives of people around the world. Pretty cool right?

How to integrate Sleedo into the classroom: Set up Sleedo as your homepage on classroom computers. When students perform searches, they can be doing double duty: searching and helping the hungry around the world. Sites like Sleedo are wonderful vehicles for teaching students about empathy, world issues, and compassion. Have your students dig in and learn more about how the World Food Programme operates or take a closer look at how website advertising works.

Tips: I have found that students are passionate about websites with a cause (Free Rice, Free Corn, Aid to Children, Free Kibble, Free Kibblekat). Often students feel helpless to do something important that makes an impact on this world. Sites like Sleedo help students enact real change that they can feel proud of.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Sleedo in your classroom.

Websites with a Cause

July 21, 2008Kelly Tenkely1 Comment3413 views

What it is: I have posted before about a website called Free Rice. This vocabulary game has the added benefit of donating rice to help end world hunger. For each correct answer, Free Rice donates 20 grains of rice on your behalf. This isn’t the only website with a cause. Aid to Children is a vocabulary game like Free Rice, for every correct answer $.25 are donated to children in need through World Vision. Free Poverty is a world geography game. See how many cups of water you can donate by testing your knowledge about the world. Each correct answer means that 10 cups of clean water have been donated on your behalf. Free Corn is another vocabulary game like Free Rice, for every 25 visits to the website, 1 kernel of corn is donated. Free Kibble is a trivia game. Every day your students play Bow Wow Trivia 20 pieces of kibble are donated to Animal shelters to help feed their hungry dogs. Free Kibble Kat also donates 20 pieces of kibble per player each day…this time students are raising kibble for cats.

How to integrate Websites with a cause into the classroom: Each of the above websites offers a wonderful opportunity to teach students to look outside their own needs to the needs of others. Use these websites to teach your students compassion, about other cultures, and about helping those less fortunate. The websites will also be a great way for your students to practice vocabulary or geography. Encourage your students to play these games from home when they are “bored” or just for fun. See how much rice, money, corn, water, or kibble you can raise as a class. Use these figures to teach graphing and charting. You can also use the sites to teach persuasive writing. Students can create a “commercial” for the site, a poster advertising the site, etc. (I found a commercial that I made as an example for my students on Free Corn…small world!) Using these websites with my class taught me just how compassionate and concerned my students are. It was wonderful to see my students come together around a common goal. Using these websites with a cause in your classroom is a real life character education lesson!

Tips: Bookmark these sites on classroom computers, kids who finish their work early can sit and play one of the games while they wait for the next activity.

Leave a comment and share how you are using Websites with a cause in your classroom.

Free Rice

November 10, 2007Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment2807 views

What it is: Free Rice has two goals: to provide English vocabulary to everyone for free and help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free (this is made possible by the sponsors on the site). Free Rice is a sister company of www.poverty.com. Free Rice began in October 2007 and to date has donated over a billion grains of rice. Students play a vocabulary game online. For each word they get correct, 10 grains of rice are donated. If a student gets a word wrong, the words get easier. If the student gets the word right, the words get harder.

How to integrate Free Rice into the classroom: Free Rice is a wonderful vocabulary game for the classroom. I love the added lesson about helping those who are less fortunate. Free Rice would be the perfect game to play during the holiday season…particularly around Thanksgiving. As our students give thanks for plentiful food and nutrition, they can play a game to help others get much needed food and nutrition. Visit the FAQ page to find out more about how the Free Rice program works and how rice is donated. This vocabulary game could also be a great way to teach students how to use the dictionary. As students get an unfamiliar vocabulary word, encourage them to look the word up (online or “old school”).

Tips: Use Free Rice as a math lesson, students can document the number of grains of rice donated each month. Use these figures to introduce graphing and charting skills (among others!).

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Free Rice in your
classroom.