HAPPY WEEKEND! This is the end of Week 4. The Week 4 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and the remaining Week 4 assignments are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon. Also, Friday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Thursday.
Week 4 Blog Response assignment. For the Responding assignment, you should be looking for the Week 4 blog essay post and blog storytelling post - remember that you may need to SCROLL DOWN, because some people are working ahead. If someone does not have the Week 4 essay and/or Week 4 story, just pick another post in their blog instead so that you end up commenting on a total of two blog posts per person. Some people have asked about the assignments: they are RANDOM - really! So you may get the same person two weeks in a row (especially in World Literature, which is the smallest of the three classes). All I can tell you is that it is the magic power of random at work: you cannot predict just what will happen!
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, January 18. This often causes service outages, which may affect email and other OU IT services. 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).
Storybook Stack. On Friday, I should finish reading and responding to every Storybook assignment in the stack that was 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. If you want to get comments sooner from me next week rather than later, turn in your assignment earlier - the huge majority of people turn in their assignments on Sunday, and it sometimes takes me several days to reply to all of those. If you turn your assignment in on Saturday instead, you will get back comments from me more quickly.
Font size in Composer. Many of you will be working on your Storybook coverpage this weekend. As you do that, please be careful with font size and read these Instructions for Larger Fonts in Composer. The best way to change the font to something larger is by designating it as a Heading. That way, you can be sure that you will get good results on every browser. Other methods of changing the font size can vary enormously from browser to browser and may not lead to the results you want. So, make sure if you want to make something a larger font size, you choose Heading 1 or Heading 2 or Heading 3 - depending on how large you want it to be.
Important repeat announcements. I've included some information in the announcements this week about the Week 4 Introduction assignment, along with some sample Coverpage layouts for you to look at. If you did missed some of those announcements, please take a look back at the past announcements. Those announcements will be helpful as you work on the Week 4 Storybook and Internet assignments this weekend!
Snopes.com: Green M&M Legend. In honor of Valentine's Day on Saturday, February 14, I decided to look for a Valentine's Day Legend from Snopes.com. Here is the first one I found: in 2008, the Mars Candy Snackfood Company promoted the distribution of packages of all-green M&M candies because the green candies are supposedly an aphrodisic - true or false??? Well, it is true that Mars promoted the green candies for Valentine's Day last year, but as to whether the green ones really are an aphrodisiac, Snopes.com is not saying! Other legends about the candy colors are as follows: orange M&Ms are good luck, brown ones are bad luck, and if you get a red one last out of the bag, you should make a wish and it will come true. As for the green candies being an aphrodisiac, no one is quite sure how this rumor got started - but it has been circulating since the 1970s! Happy Valentine's Day!
