Blogging Pedagogy

There's been lots of talk about "Free Rice" lately on my poetry listservs. Have you all been doing this?

You build your vocab by playing their vocab game; they donate the money from the on-screen advertisements to the United Nations World Food Program: www.freerice.com

I'm wondering about various classroom uses/studies of this concept. I think there's possible conversations here about civic engagement/engaged scholarship, about how "intellectual activity" and social action come together. The site makes a number of claims about this kind of thing: how can learning vocabulary help you in your life? How can learning vocab help you make a difference in the world? What connections are there between language and social change? These seem like fun conversations to have with undergrads and Free Rice provides a interesting, unusual entry into the conversation. (There's probably something interesting here about the role of games/use of the internet....)