Friday, September 12 - Sunday, September 14

HAPPY WEEKEND! This is the end of Week 3. The Week 3 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and the remaining Week 3 assignments are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon. If you have not turned in your Week 2 Storybook assignment yet, you may turn it in BY FRIDAY AT NOON for partial credit. Also, Friday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Thursday.

Week 3 blog posts. For the Responding assignment, you should be looking for the Week 3 essay and story - you may need to scroll down, because some people are working ahead. Two people (Ann and Christina) are enrolled in two classes, so make sure if you read their blogs that you read the posts for the class you are enrolled in together with them. If someone does not have the Week 3 essay and/or Week 3 story, just pick another post in their blog instead.

Storybook Stack. On Friday, I should finish reading and responding to every Storybook assignment in the stack that is turned in before Friday at noon (contents of the stack). If you turn something in before Friday at noon, my goal is to get comments back for you before the weekend. I don't do any grading over the weekend, so if you turn something in after noon on Friday, it will go into the stack. I'll start working through the stack first thing on Monday morning, in order. So, if you want comments back next week sooner rather than later, don't wait until Sunday to turn in your assignment.

Famous Last Words. Some of you have already discovered the Famous Last Words extra credit option. Given how crazy the semester gets for everybody, I highly recommend this as a nice way to just pause and reflect on how the semester is going for you. If your semester is like mine, every week flies by and you cannot even quite figure out where it went! By doing the Famous Last Words extra credit assignment, you can take a few minutes to just think about how the past week went for you and what you are expecting around the corner next week... while getting extra credit for it, too! :-)

September 12: Lascaux caves. Friday, September 12, marks the anniversary of the discovery in 1940 of the amazing prehistoric cave paintings found at Lascaux in France. The cave walls were decorated with upwards of two thousand images, including hundreds of animals. You can read more about the Lascaux cave paintings in this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for the image shown below. The paintings are estimated to date to approximately 16,000 years ago, during what used to be called the "Stone Age" (Upper Paleolithic, a period of human culture that lasted from around 40,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE). As you can see, the paintings are truly beautiful and very dramatic... although, without recorded language, we will never know just what stories the paintings commemorate.

Thursday, September 11

Today is Thursday of WEEK 3 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 2 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit. For those of you in Myth-Folklore or World Lit, Thursday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday. (Indian Epics has no Wednesday assignments, so there is no Thursday morning grace period.)

Ning blogging tips. Many of you will be posting at the Ning tonight, Thursday. If you need reminders about images and links in blogs, just check in the Ning FAQs and Tips section on the main page of the Ning, left-hand column, and you should be able to find the information you need. You can also get extra credit for sprucing up your Ning Profile page by adding a YouTube video and/or an RSS feed. (In Week 5, people will start visiting your Profile page to add comments on your Storybook project - those comments will go into the Comment Wall.)

Week 3 blog comment assignment. The Week 3 blog commenting assignment is not available yet; it will be available starting on Friday, September 12. The blog commenting assignment is the only assignment you cannot complete early, because people will still be adding posts to their blog today, Thursday. At midnight tonight, the list of blog assignments will become available and you will have Friday-Saturday-Sunday to complete the blog commenting assignment.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment over the weekend, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, it is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it (contents of the stack). A couple of people wrote to ask why they had not gotten comments back yet: that is because the stack is first-come, first-served. About 40 or 50 people usually turn in their assignments on the day that it is due, which creates a kind of virtual traffic jam. I always get through the stack by the end of the week, but if you turn in the assignment on the due date or after the due date, you will end up having to wait a bit longer for comments back from me.

September 11. Today is the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in the year 2001. Many of you in the Myth-Folklore class may have looked at the Snopes.com Urban Legends website for urban legends to use as a Storybook project. One of the sections at Snopes.com is devoted to rumors and legends about 9/11 - you might be interested to take a look at it, and see what the patterns of legend and rumor tell you about the American experience in those days. One of those legends had to do with the secret codes supposedly contained in Microsoft Wingdings font, shown below - a legend that actually dates all the way back to the year 1992, when people were using Microsoft's "new 3.1 Windows operating system" (that's 16 years ago - ancient history in computer software years).

Wednesday, September 10

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 3 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 2 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit. Wednesday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Tuesday.

My Wednesday schedule. I do most of my work during regular business hours on Monday-Tuesday and Thursday-Friday, while scheduling my out-of-office commitments on Wednesdays. That means I may be a bit more slow to respond to your emails on Wednesday than on the other days of the week - but if you send me an email during the day on Wednesday, I'll definitely get back to you by the end of the day.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment before 10 PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in after 10 PM on Sunday or on Monday or Tuesday, it is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. It usually takes me most of the week to return all the Storybook assignments; the sooner you turn it in, the sooner you will get comments back.

Technology Tip: Picnik.com for images. Now that you will be using images on your webpages, you might want to try this Technology Tip for Picnik.com, a FREE online service you can use for editing your images - cropping them, resizing them, etc. When you work with images online, it's very useful to be able to get them just the size you want. If you learn how to crop and resize images, you can easily make a coverpage for your Storybook like this wonderful coverpage with four images, one for each story in the Storybook: Clash of the Heroes.

Tuesday, September 9

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 3 of the class. For those of you who are working ahead, Weeks 4 and 5 are also available! If you have not turned in your Week 2 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment on or before Saturday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in on Sunday or on Monday, it is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. I read the assignments in the order that they are turned in, so the later you turn in the assignment, the longer you'll need to wait to get the comments back. It usually takes me all week to get comments back on all the Storybook assignments people have turned in. In fact, this is the main part of my job teaching online: I spend about 30 hours each week reading the Storybooks! :-)

Adding Images to Your Webpages. Congratulations to everybody who published their first webpages! For the Week 3 Internet assignment, you will be adding images to your pages. Again, as with last week's assignment, please try to do this early in the week if it is your first time creating and publishing webpages. I am available during the week to help you if you run into any snags as you add images to your pages and publish them.

September 9: Pieter Bruegel. Today, September 9, marks the anniversary of the death of the great Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder, who died in 1569. Bruegel is famous for his painting of the Tower of Babel - which may be of interest to those of you in the Myth-Folklore class this week who are choosing to do the readings from the Book of Genesis. You can read more about Bruegel's life in this Wikipedia article, and you can also read an article there about his painting of the Tower of Babel (1563). For a larger view of the image, click here:

Monday, September 8

Today is Monday, and Week 2 of the class is now over. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Week 3 will begin tomorrow - and those Week 3 assignments are available now if you want to get started. The Week 4 assignments are also available now, too! (For those of you who are working ahead, Week 5 will be available starting on Tuesday.)

Monday: last day to drop. Today, Monday, is the last day to drop a class and get a full refund. For more information about the academic calendar, visit the Admissions and Records Calendar: Fall 2008.

Weekend email. If you sent me an email over the weekend, you should now have received a reply (except for the Storybook assignment emails; for that, see the next announcement). If you were expecting a reply, and didn't receive one, please send the email again - especially in the first weeks of the semester, I get a TON of email over the weekend, and something may have gotten lost in the shuffle. I'm online all day today, Monday, to answer any questions you have and should be able to reply quickly to any email.

Storybook stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the Storybook stack that were turned in over the weekend or on Monday morning. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. So, after 8 a.m. or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. I will then start reading the assignments in the order they were turned in. Please do not go on to the Week 3 Storybook assignment until you get Week 2 comments back from me (and the same is true for those of you who have turned in Week 3 or Week 4 assignments - please do not go on to the next Storybook assignment until you get my comments).

Late Storybook assignments. Each week, the Storybook assignment is the only assignment that can be turned in late for partial credit. Since I cannot get all the Storybooks graded and returned immediately, it is fine with me if you turn in the Storybook late. A Storybook assignment turned in on Monday after noon can receive up to 9 points credit; if it is turned in on Tuesday, you can get up to 8 points of credit, up to 7 points on Wednesday and up to 6 points on Thursday. The absolute deadline for turning your Storybook assignment for partial credit is noon on Friday, when you can get up to 5 points of partial credit.

September 8: Star Trek begins. Yes, today is a great day in the history of television - it marks the broadcast of the first episode of the original Star Trek series in 1966, a series which ran for three seasons until June 3, 1969. My devotion to Star Trek began in 1972, when the show was in reruns and I was able to watch every afternoon when I came home from school (I was in third grade). I have never lost my love of that show and I can shamelessly confess to owning the complete original series on DVD. Anyway, it was a breakthrough show for television in so many ways, and if you're interested in catching some of the spirit of the old show, I highly recommend the 1986 movie, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, a wonderful feature film written and directed by Leonard Nimoy, who plays Mr. Spock, the one with pointy ears here in this cast photo from the original series: