Storybook Stack. As of 6PM on Thursday, I had read and replied to all the assignments that had been turned in. If you turn something in on Thursday evening or on Friday morning before noon, I will do my best to get comments back to you before the weekend. As always, you can see the contents of the stack here.
IMPORTANT NOTE: IT Maintenance. On the third Sunday of every month, IT does maintenance on its servers. There will be a maintenance window this Sunday, November 16. This often causes service outages, which may affect you if you are trying to publish webpages at that time. The maintenance window is in the morning, and the maintenance should be completed before noon on Sunday. For specific information and updates, see the IT Alerts page at alerts.ou.edu (this is also a good page to check if you are experiencing problems with Desire2Learn, email, or other IT services).
The following are REPEAT ANNOUNCEMENTS which you should read if you did not catch them during the announcements earlier during the week.
Grading and points. As you can see in the Grading Information page, you need 410 to get an A, 360 points to get a B, and 320 points to get a C. When you get the number of points you need, you are done! It is fine with me if you decide to stop doing work for the class whenever you have the grade you want to receive. My only request is that you please let me know when you are done so I can adjust the comment assignments accordingly!
Overview of remaining Storybook assignments. For Week 12, you are adding your final new story, and the Week 13 assignment consists of revising that final story. The Week 14 assignment is to do a final revision of your Introduction. The Week 15 assignment involves revisions to your bibliography and image information for each story, making sure they are all complete. If you want, you can skip the Week 12 and Week 13 assignments, and proceed directly to Week 14 and Week 15 if you want. Be careful: if you take this option, you cannot go back and add a new story later - but if you are close to finishing, and do not need the points from the Week 12 and Week 13 Storybook assignments, feel free to proceed directly to Week 14!
Overview of Week 12 and Week 13 Internet assignments. In Week 12, you have your last assignment commenting on other people's Storybooks - it is all free choice this time! Then, for the Week 13 assignment (available on Tuesday, November 18), you will be voting on your favorite Storybooks for the semester. After you turn in your nominations, I'll set up a ballot so everybody can vote for the best Storybooks - it's not for a grade or anything, it's just for fun, and it gives the folks who have done really excellent work on their Storybooks a chance to get some well deserved recognition.
Thanksgiving. You will get a full week off for Thanksgiving break in this class. So, Week 13 will start on Tuesday, November 18, with the usual Tuesday-Thursday assignments due that week. Then, you have a week off. There are no assignments between Friday November 21 until Friday November 28 (Thanksgiving Day is November 27). You will have the usual Week 13 weekend assignments due November 29-30, with the usual grace period until noon on Monday, December 1. Then Week 14 will start up on Tuesday, December 2. I am guessing that many of you will probably already be done with the class by the time Thanksgiving break arrives!
Saturday, November 15: Birthday of Johannes Secundus. As many of you know, I used to be a Latin professor, and one of my favorite Latin authors, Johannes (or Janus) Secundus, was born on November 15 in the year 1511. Yes, that's right: 1511. Johannes Secundus is what is called a "neo-Latin" poet who learned Latin in school, rather than a classical Roman writer. He is most famous for a series of poems he called Liber Basiorum in Latin, or The Book of Kisses. If any of you have studied Latin, you might enjoy taking a look at these delightful poems, which you can find online at The Latin Library. To learn more about Johannes Secundus and his all-too-short life (he died when he was just 24), you can take a look at this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for this image:
