Feed the hungry while practicing your vocabulary???

Yep. It's possible at FreeRice.com, a website that's been around for just over a month now.
Here's a description of how to play from the website:

• Click on the answer that best defines the word.
• If you get it right, you get a harder word. If wrong, you get an easier word.
• For each word you get right, we donate 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.
• WARNING: This game may make you smarter. It may improve your speaking, writing, thinking, grades, job performance...

There are 50 difficulty levels in all, although the website admits it's difficult to get above a 48. I played for a few minutes and got up to level 37 while earning 200 grains of rice.

The rice is paid for by advertisers whose logos appear at the bottom of the game screen. The site was launched on October 7 and only 830 grains of rice were donated. On November 12 this number had grown to 188,987,290 for a grand total of 1.5 billion grains of rice. I wonder what that translates to in pounds???

What a great way for students to build their vocabulary and feed the world at the same time! Who knows, maybe you can even have a class discussion about world hunger?