This is my third day in a row posting on here. So, after these two topics, I'll probably wait until I post some 3-D photos that I hope turned out OK of an interesting site/sight in Madison.

Improving knowledge about First Amendment content
In this morning's state news on WPR was a story on how two candidates for the state legislature at a debate couldn't list all of the rights protected by the First Amendment. Because my intro to soc and contemporary American society classes cover political sociology, a couple of years ago I decided to force my students to learn some basic civics information for exams. One question has asked them to list three out of the five freedoms covered by the First Amendment, but this news story has led me to decide that I'll now ask my students to list all of them. For my previous comments on this topic, see the fourth paragraph of my March 8, 2006, entry at Livejournal:  http://xizhimen.livejournal.com/2006/03/08/

More on cheaper or free textbooks
At this morning's opening assembly for my school's convocation (Madison Area Technical College's version of in-house training), two students gave a presentation asking teachers here to sign-up for the rental textbook program, which they also discussed at the August convocation. They ended with an alternative that I had discussed with them in August, free open textbook programs. See, for example,  http://www.opentextbook.org/ and http://www.studentpirgs.org/open-textbooks/catalog