Storybook Stack. There are still quite some Storybook assignments in the stack and I am making my way through them in the order that they were turned in. If you turned something on Sunday, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in on Monday or Tuesday, it is probably still in the stack. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.
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 end up needing to use the Friday morning grace period to finish up your Thursday assignments, please be aware of that D2L will be unavailable during that maintenance window.
The following announcements are repeat announcements, reflecting the special schedule this week:
Storybooks this week: Wednesday noon. (repeat announcement) Because this week is shortened, the deadline for getting a Storybook in order to get comments back from me is today, Wednesday, at noon. So, if you want comments back before the weekend, make sure you get it turned in this morning, and I'll be sure to get comments to you before the weekend. If you need to turn in a late Week 7 Storybook assignment for partial credit, you can still do that up to Thursday at noon, but you will not get comments back until Monday of next week. So, be warned: if you turn in a Storybook assignment after noon today, you may not get comments back until next week.
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, Tuesday, 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) Although Friday is not an official holiday on the academic calendar, 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!
October 14: e e cummings. Today, October 14, marks the birthday in the year 1894 of the American poet, Edward Estlin Cummings - better known as e e cummings. Cummings experimented with spelling and typography and the conventions of the English language in ways that were unheard-of at the time. You can read about his life and career in this Wikipedia article. I have reproduced in an image below the unusual layout of one of his poems, the sky was candy luminous:
