FRIDAY MORNING: Desire2Learn maintenance. For those of you who will be doing schoolwork on Friday, please be aware that Desire2Learn will be down for scheduled maintenance on Friday morning between 7AM and 9:30AM. So, if you need to use the Friday morning grace period to finish up your Thursday assignments, you'll need to be aware of this maintenance downtime. There is the usual grace period on Friday morning until noon, but you won't be able to use Desire2Learn between 7AM and 9:30AM - so you either need to log on before that time window, or afterwards.
SUNDAY MORNING: IT Maintenance. On the third Sunday of every month, IT does maintenance on its servers. There will be a maintenance window this Sunday, October 18. This often causes service outages, which may affect email, web publishing, and other OU IT services as well as any webpages on the ou.edu system and possibly Desire2Learn. 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.
Storybook Stack. I've finished reading and replying to all the Storybook assignments that were turned in by noon on Wednesday. If you turned in something after noon on Wednesday or later, it will go into the stack on Monday. So, first thing on Monday, you can check the contents of the stack to make sure that I did receive your assignment.
NEW GROUPS. (repeat announcement) For the second half of the semester you have been put in NEW GROUPS for the Blog Responding assignment, and you will also be reading Storybooks from people in your group, in addition to the random Storybooks and the Storybooks you choose from the whole class. The Week 8 Internet assignment is available starting today, Thursday, so make sure you check to see who is in your group before you start reading the Storybooks for that assignment.
OU-Texas weekend. (repeat announcement) Friday is not an official holiday on the academic calendar, but I know many of you will be out of town. So, this week only, the Blog Responding assignment will become available on Thursday. That way, if you are planning to be out of town on Friday, you can get your assignments done before you leave, including the Responding assignment. It may be that quite a few people will not have posted their Week 8 blog posts (since those are not due until Thursday), but that's okay - you have new people in your blog groups, so you can read their Week 7 story and essay even if they have not yet posted anything for Week 8. So, when you do the Week 8 Blog Responding assignment, make sure you check to see what your new group assignment is!
Friday, October 16: Oscar Wilde. Friday marks the birthday in the year 1854 of the great Irish writer, Oscar Wilde. You can read more about Oscar Wilde's life and career as a writer in this detailed Wikipedia article. Wilde is probably most famous for his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray and his play The Importance of Being Earnest - and also for his conviction in 1895 of "gross indecency" (homosexuality). He spent two years in jail as a result, and died three years after his release from prison, penniless and in self-imposed exile. My favorite works by Oscar Wilde are his fairy tales, which you can read online at SurLaLune. The image below is an illustration by Jessie King for Wilde's fairy tale entitled The Fisherman and His Soul:
