Free Rice and Vanishing Edges

In the e-learning chapter of The World is Open, Bonk cites the website www.freerice.com as an example of one type of e-learning site. If you haven't seen this site, by all means, visit it. It's notable for a few reasons, but the most interesting is the bucking of the trend to put everything in life into silos. We tend to separate work from play, and charitable giving hardly seems to even be in the same plane as either, but freerice.com manages to combine them all into a single site.

This blending together of disparate aspects of life is something of a reversal of a larger trend toward increasing separation. Where work and play were once separate realms, at least in education they are beginning to come together. Games like the one on freerice.com are on the rise, because they add additional motivation to the learning process, and help to engage students that would otherwise be apathetic.

Freerice.com could benefit from some additional "gamification," as it is sometimes referred to in the popular press. Psychologists and casinos have long conspired to rob people of thier money by getting them to continue doing what they otherwise would have avoided. These same tactics can be used to benefit the "victim" by encouraging them to keep at the task of learning for longer. While freerice.com takes advantage of the user's altruistic urges, it could go farther by enabling users to log in and see a record of their progress toward learning new words. Additionally, an optional (since not everyone benefits from such things) level of competition could be added as another layer of motivation. A way for learners or even teachers to modify the word list to fit their needs would also increase the utility of the site. The site's author seems to be satisfied with the admirable goal of providing some education and free food for the needy, but it could be pushed even further.