Friday, February 6 - Sunday, February 8

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. 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 Response assignment. For the Responding assignment, you should be looking for the Week 3 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 3 essay and/or Week 3 story, just pick another post in their blog instead so that you end up commenting on a total of two blog posts per person.

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.

Famous Last Words. Many 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, take a DEEP BREATH, and ponder what you are expecting around the corner next week... while getting extra credit for it, too! :-)

February 7: Laura Ingalls Wilder. Saturday, February 7, marks the birthday in the year 1867 of the American author, Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'm sure many of you may have read her series of books about life growing up on the American frontier, starting with Little House in the Big Woods, and you might also have seen the old Michael Landon television series based on that series, Little House on the Prairie. You can read more about the life and career of Laura Ingalls Wilder in this Wikipedia article. This photograph shows the Ingalls family, with Caroline (mother) on the left, Carrie and Laura standing, Charles (father) sitting, with Grace and Mary on the right (web source):

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Thursday, February 5

Today is Thursday of WEEK 3 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 2 Storybook assignment yet, you have until noon today to turn that in for partial credit. For those of you in Myth-Folklore or World Lit, Thursday morning, until noon, is also 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.)

My schedule today. Normally 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 - but this week I've ended up having to schedule my out-of-office appointments on Thursday instead. So, that means I may be a bit more slow to respond to your emails today because I'll be out of the office for at least part of the day - but if you send me an email during the day on Thursday, I'll definitely get back to you by the end of the day.

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, so it's a good excuse to start getting your Profile Page fixed up the way you want.)

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in this week. If you turned in a Week 2 Storybook assignment on or before Wednesday at 5PM, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned in an early Storybook assignment for Week 3 or 4 or 5, it may still be in the stack, waiting for me to get to it (you can check the contents of the stack to make sure I have received your assignment). If you want comments back on an assignment before the weekend, please make sure you get it turned in before noon on Friday; each week, I do my best to send back comments before the weekend to all Storybook assignments that are turned in before noon on Friday!

February 5: Inayat Khan. Today, February 5, marks the anniversary of the death of the great Indian Sufi, Inayat Khan, in the year 1927. Inayat Khan's teachings centered on Tawhid, or unity, as in the 10 pronouncements on unity which you can read about in this Wikipedia article; here are the first three principles of unity: There is One God, the Eternal, the Only Being; None exists save He. ... There is One Master, the Guiding Spirit of all souls, Who constantly leads all followers toward the Light. ... There is One Holy Book, the Sacred Manuscript of Nature, the only Scripture that can enlighten the reader. Inayat Khan was also trained as a music master, and in addition to sharing a knowledge of Sufism with the West, he also spread a knowledge of traditional Indian musical forms:

(Photograph of Inayat Khan: source.)
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Wednesday, February 4

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.

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 9 PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in after 9PM 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.

More Coverpages available. There are some more Coverpages that people have published for their Storybook projects; I will keep updating the lists as people send me their Coverpage addresses. This is the Week 4 Internet assignment (and in the Week 5 Internet assignment you will start looking at other people's Storybook Coverpages online, and commenting on them the way you do for the Read and Respond assignments). Meanwhile, here is the latest list of Coverpages for the semester:

February 4: Sri Lanka National Day. Today, February 4, is the holiday that celebrates the day - February 4, 1948 - when the island nation of Sri Lanka gained independence from British rule (India had gained its independence about six months earlier, in August of 1947). For those of you who are in the Indian Epics class, Sri Lanka is a place of special interest, because it is the legendary home of Ravana the demon king. You can read more about Sri Lanka in this Wikipedia article, and the image below shows a mountain, Sri Pada, commonly called "Adam's Peak" in English which supposedly holds the footprint of the Buddha (according to Buddhist tradition), the footprint of Shiva (in Hindu tradition) or the footprint of Adam (in Islamic tradition):

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Tuesday, February 3

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 Coverpages. The folks who are working ahead have started publishing their Storybook Coverpages - exciting! That is the Week 4 Internet assignment - and you can see coverpages coming online in each class. Congratulations to those of you getting such a good head start on the semester!

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the HUGE 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 Storybook assignments each week! :-)

Adding Images to Your Webpages. Congratulations to everybody who published their first webpages - you are now webmasters! 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. You might also want to try the Technology Tip about Resizing Images since you will have the best success with images that you have cropped and resized exactly the way you want for your webpages.

Dancing Shiva. I thought I would include a note in the Announcements today about a small article that I published this month in an online mythology journal, Journey to the Sea, that was founded this year by a former student in the Mythology and Folklore course, Randy Hoyt (he took the class back in Fall 2003; he has since gone on to get a Master's degree in the OU Business School, and he now works as a webmaster for Blockbuster down in Dallas). The article is about a particular style of representing the god Shiva as a dancer, the Nataraja, or "Lord of the Dance." Because it is about Shiva, I thought this article would be of interest to those of you in the Indian Epics class - and for those of you in the other classes, I thought you might be inspired to see how a student with a strong personal interest in mythology and literature has turned that personal interest into a great little online journal, making wonderful use of his web design skills (skills which far exceed my own!). You can read the article here: Shiva, Lord of the Dance.

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Monday, February 2

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 already 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 tomorrow, 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: Spring 2009.

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 Storybooks. 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. If you want full credit (10 points) you must turn the Storybook in before noon on Monday. If you turn it in late, you can receive partial credit, as follows: turn it in on Monday after noon and you can receive up to 8 points credit max.; on Tuesday, you can receive up to 7 points of credit; on Wednesday you can receive up to 6 points of credit. If you turn the Storybook assignment in on Thursday before noon, you can receive up to 5 points of credit. No late Storybook assignments will be accepted after noon on Thursday. (For those of you who were in classes with me previously, note that this is a slightly different schedule than in the past.)

Teach for America. I was contacted by Austin Spires, the OU coordinator for Teach for America, who asked me to make this announcement: "Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates and working professionals - of all academic majors, backgrounds, and career interests - who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools and become lifelong leaders for expanding educational opportunity for all children. We encourage you to apply to the 2009 Teach For America corps. Application Deadline: Friday February 13th. To learn more, visit www.teachforamerica.org." (If any of you have announcements like this related to campus events and activities that you would like me to share with the class, please just let me know!)

February 2: Imbolc. In the Wheel of the Year holidays, February 2 is celebrated as Imbolc (sometimes spelled Imbolg), the cross-quarter day which is in-between the Winter Solstice (shortest day of the year) and the Spring Equinox (when the day and night are of equal length, with the days growing longer). Because the seasons of the year are opposite in the northern and southern hemispheres, when it is Imbolc in the northern hemisphere, it is the holiday of Lughnasadh in the southern hemisphere! Here is the Wheel of the Year showing the four main holidays at the solstices and equinoxes, along with the four cross-quarter days:

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