#QuiztheBill - Because Congress Needs Help With Their Homework

I’ve been spending most of my time lately working on a community resource site for taking and making quizzes, called PlopQuiz.

But like many other Americans, I’ve been distracted by the troubling lack of transparency in the federal legislation process lately — most notably when reps were given only 13 hours to read the 1,000 page stimulus bill, but there are plenty of other examples.

So in the spirit of “being the change”, I’ve spent the last few days making #QuiztheBill.

About #QuiztheBill

#QuiztheBill helps you make PlopQuiz quiz material based on the text of federal legislation. Just click a bill and watch the video tutorial to start contributing quiz items.

I’m hoping that this will be a nice resource for students and interested citizen type people. And the source code for this app is GPL licensed, so developers can draw on the app’s use of congressional data and/or its built-in PlopQuiz publishing client.

You’ll notice that the top ranked bill at the moment is “Fair Copyright in Research Works Act” (boo!), and I’ll put up the Dubin-Specter campaign finance bill (yay!) as soon as it is introduced to the House.

Unfortunately, federal legislation is mostly written in the type of “legalese” that doesn’t fit well with our simple copy/paste quiz aesthetic.So I’m investigating some ways that we can augment the text of the bill to assist with the quiz publishing process. As always, let me know if you have any suggestions.