International Education Week 2009

Get ready for the big party. International Education Week is just around the corner (November 16-20).

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Education, International Education Week celebrates global learning and international exchanges. For more information and ways your school can participate, go to International Education Week. You'll find some great celebration suggestions for K-12 schools here.

Do you already have plans for International Education Week? If so, post them on the International Education Week web site. Click here to begin.

And don't forget to spend a little time with the global quizzes (made possible by the National Geographic Society.) If your students score well, they'll get a message saying that the Secretary of State may have a job for them. (And who knows? It may happen!)

Food for Thought

It's spring break around here, with the daily reminder that there are countless ways to get hooked into some online activity. Invariably you suddenly find that hours have passed, and you haven't accomplished anything.

If you or your out-of-school students are looking for some online fun that produces actual, calculable, and beneficial global results, go to FreeRice. Put your vocabulary to the test, and you'll earn free rice (10 grains per correct answer) for the world's hungry. The sponsors whose banner appear on the site fund the food you earn by playing.

FreeRice is produced by the United Nations World Food Programme with its partner, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Since the site opened in 2007, more than 60 billion grains of rice have been donated. The rice has been distributed in Bangladesh, Uganda, Cambodia, Nepal, and other countries where hunger is a continuing problem.

The default page offers the vocabulary quiz, but click on Subjects and you'll find quizzes on art, chemistry, English grammar, and math. And if you want to test your global knowledge (and why not?), try the Geography challenges (identifying countries and capitals) and Language quizzes (French, Spanish, German, and Italian).

Miss a question? Don't worry. You'll find out the correct answer right away and be given a second chance in just a while. Then you'll nail it!

Sharpen global knowledge while feeding the world's hungry. Now that's a reason to stay online just a little while longer.