Posted by Jack Hanlon, Northeast Regional Director



Over at GeekSugar, the femme hip/intelligentsia mashup site, they have some interesting information about literacy.  First of all they have the following:

The Education Department is blaming the country's increasingly poor spelling and writing skills in youth on their love of text messaging. In a recent report on the national test results in English for about 37,000 students aged 15 and 16, the department's Examination Commission said cutting-edge communications technology has "encouraged poor literacy and a blunt, choppy style at odds with academic rigor."

Regardless of whether or not you're buying into that as legitimate, GeekSugar links to The Great American Word Challenge.  The game involves filling in the missing letter of the word, as defined.  Why would you engage in such a thing?  Well...

The city that achieves the highest-cumulative average score takes the title and the prize of a Ubisoft donation of My Word Coach video games and Nintendo DS systems to local NCFL learning centers. Even better, everyone who takes the challenge will be entered to win a trip for two to Washington, DC, and have the chance to win one of two Wiis.

Ah!  The plot thickens!  So support the NCFL as Nintendo battles illiteracy in the USA (seriously).  If that doesn't feel right for you, you could always go to FreeRice (as previously reported).