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A film on OhioLINK. Could be helpful for students researching bilingualism. When Massasoit hailed the Plymouth settlers in their own language, they might have taken it for a sign that English would dominate the New World. Packed with surprising etymologies and intriguing stories, this enhanced DVD traces the dynamic relationship between English and America, exploring the linguistic influence of westward expansion, cowboy culture, slave culture, and encounters with the French and Spanish languages. Key works examined include The New England Primer and Webster's The American Spelling Book. Can be viewed using a DVD player or computer DVD-ROM drive. (50 minutes, color)\nPart of the "Adventure of English" series.

This article calls for young Americans to get involved in politics and make their voices heard. Presidential candidates are promising everything to everyone but will likely fall short of that and some group will not get what they want. To ensure that young Americans get what they need, they should demand that the new president follows through with the promises he made. With Barack Obama promising Social Security reform and lowering the cost and making college more available to the youth of America. "Ask not what you can do for Barack Obama, ask what Barack Obama can do for you" challenges young Americans to demand that there needs be met by their president.

The "New Media" such as Youtube, Facebook, and Myspace today are changing the political scene for young Americans. The technology today allows people to be more involved with politics, as seen during the 2008 election. Now people can watch debates on YouTube or ask questions at town hall meetings with icams connected to your computer, or even "friend" a presidential candidate on Facebook or Myspace. Technology today is promoting political awareness especially with the youth of America, and will make for interesting turnout in the 2008 election. This article explains how technology is being used to promote political awareness in a new way that has never been used before during a presidential election.

This article from the Washington Post discusses the problem of aliteracy. Much more prevalent than illiteracy, it is also more insidious because unlike teaching someone how to read, which is fairly straightforward, how do you teach someone to LIKE to read? This article contains statistics on aliteracy in America and interesting ways in which aliteracy has changed the way our society functions.

This blog, published by Stephen Dubner, talks about financial literacy among high school students, and the problems in a dangerously low financial literacy level. He also helps diagnose financial literacy by offering a series of questions to test the reader's own financial literacy. It is a very useful article to use not only in studying the financial literacy of America, but also to diagnose yourself on your own financial literacy. The comments posted on the blog are also very informative of the reactions to the freakonomics blog.

Good for background information.