Friday, February 20

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 5! The Week 5 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and so is the Week 5 Internet assignment (Storybook commenting). Please make sure you get started on those assignments soon; they are due this weekend. For those of you working ahead, Week 6 and Week 7 are available now, too.

Storybook Stack. If you turn something in before Friday noon, I will do my best to get comments back to you before the weekend, although it may take until Saturday morning (this is always my busiest week of the whole semester, and the D2L problems set me back even further). To make sure I have received your assignment, you can check the contents of the stack. If you turn something in after noon on Friday, it will go into the stack, and you can check on Monday morning to make sure I have your assignment. Meanwhile, if you want to work ahead on the Week 6 Storybook assignment, you can do that without waiting for my comments back on the Week 5 assignment - you don't need my comments back on the Introduction to move ahead with your first story!

Week 5 Internet assignment. If you did not read the previous announcement about the Week 5 Internet assignment and the Ning Comment Walls, make sure you take a look at those announcements now - you can even get extra credit for making your Comment Wall ready for visitors, both by making some more room on your Ning page, and also by adding a YouTube video to your page if you want!

Desire2Learn. Let's hope that Desire2Learn is able to behave this weekend! If you run into any problems, check the alerts.ou.edu page first, and if you do not find any information there, contact me by email. If it is over the weekend, I do not read my email as frequently, so you can also call 325-HELP (it is staffed all weekend long, 24/7). I think I've taken care of any Gradebook corrections that people needed from the various Desire2Learn errors this week, but if I missed something, please send me a note!

February 21: International Mother Language Day. The United Nations agency UNESCO has declared February 21 an international holiday in celebration of the world's languages. You can read more about this holiday and its history at this Wikipedia article, along with an article listing the people who have been awarded the LinguaPax Prize, whose winner is announced each year on International Mother Language Day. Here is a map showing the language families of the world (from Goode's World Atlas); click on the image for a larger view:

Thursday, February 19

Today is Thursday of WEEK 5 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 4 Storybook assignment yet, you have until noon today to do that for partial credit. Thursday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday or on Tuesday (because of the Desire2Learn outage).

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in - of all the weeks in the semester, this is the slowest week for me because the Introduction is usually the hardest part of the Storybook for people to write, and it takes me a lot more time to send back comments. But don't worry: I'll get through the stack before the weekend, I promise. If you turned in an assignment on Sunday, 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 - you can check and make sure I have your assignment by looking at the contents of the stack here.

Desire2Learn Maintenance. They are going to try to do some more maintenance on the Desire2Learn computer system on Thursday morning from 7AM until 8AM. Normally, IT is very good about getting the system up and running at the scheduled time, but if there are delays, you can check the alerts.ou.edu website for the latest information. You should not have any trouble logging on to Desire2Learn after 8AM.
UPDATE: Desire2Learn is back up and running normally! :-)

My Thursday schedule. My schedule this week is a bit unusual and it looks like I will be away from my computer for at least part of the day today, Thursday. That means I may be a bit more slow to respond to your emails today than usual, but if you send me an email during the day today, I'll definitely get back to you by the end of the day.

February 19: Fat Thursday. You've probably all heard about the pre-Lenten festival of Mardi Gras ("Fat Tuesday"). In many countries, there is a similar festival celebrated on the last Thursday before Lent, and it is called "Fat Thursday" - Tłusty czwartek in Poland, Fetter Donnerstag in Germany. As I learned in Poland, this is a day for the eating of the marvelous Polish pączki, delicious jelly-filled donuts. Yummm! You can read more about the holiday in this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for this delectable image of Polish pączki:

Wednesday, February 18

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 5 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 4 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

D2l problems on Tuesday. Because of the Desire2Learn outage on Tuesday afternoon, the Tuesday deadlines have been extended until Wednesday. You will see the new dates reflected in the quizzes and declarations there in Desire2Learn. I hope you were able to the Tuesday assignments tonight, but the deadline has been extended until Wednesday, just in case the outage caused any problems for people trying to do the work on Tuesday afternoon. Please make sure you finish up those Tuesday assignments today, Wednesday, if you did not finish them on Tuesday.

Week 5 Internet assignment. If you did not read yesterday's announcements, make sure you take a look at those announcements now, especially the information about the Week 5 Internet 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 on or before Sunday at noon, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in on Sunday afternoon or evening, or on Monday or on 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.

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.

February 18: Nikos Kazantzakis. Today marks the birthday of the Greek poet and novelist, Nikos Kazantzakis, who was born in 1883. You may know him as the author of the book The Last Temptation of Christ - but his special significance for those of you in the Myth-Folklore or World Literature classes is that he wrote a continuation of the Odyssey, a modern epic poem picking up where Homer left off - The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. You can read more about his life and career in this Wikipedia article. Here is a photograph of the inscription on Kazantzakis's tomb: Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα. Δε φοβάμαι τίποτα. Είμαι λεύτερος (I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.)

Tuesday, February 17

DESIRE2LEARN OUTAGE. Because of the Desire2Learn outage on Tuesday afternoon, the Tuesday deadlines have been extended until Wednesday. You will see the new dates reflected in the quizzes and declarations there in Desire2Learn. I hope you will do the Tuesday assignments tonight, but the deadline has been extended until Wednesday, just in case the outage caused any problems for people trying to do the work on Tuesday afternoon. Thank you for your patience with the technical glitch!

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 5 of the class. The Week 5 Internet assignment is available starting today! For those of you who are working ahead, Weeks 6 and 7 are also available. If you have not turned in your Week 4 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Week 5 Internet assignment available NOW. For the next eight weeks (Week 5 through Week 12), your Internet assignment will consist of reading people's Storybooks and leaving comments for them. This is an assignment that you cannot do early - but on the first day of each week, the Internet assignment becomes available, and you have the rest of the week to complete it. So, today, Tuesday, is the first day of Week 5, and the Internet assignment for Week 5 is available. I hope you will enjoy looking at other people's coverpages and giving them some feedback! Please take a look at the Week 5 Internet assignment page now to make sure your coverpage link and the link to your Comment Wall is correct (you should see yourself listed once in each column). Once I get this set up, it runs pretty smoothly, but it is rather complicated to get set up the first time around, so please let me know if you run into any problems at all as you do this assignment - THANK YOU.

The Ning Comment Wall. People will be leaving comments about your Storybook at the Ning Comment Wall which is part of your Profile page. In order to get your Profile page ready, I would strongly suggest that you make the latest activity and blog activity invisible, so that there will be more room on your Profile page for the Comment Wall. I have created a Technology Tip so you can get extra credit for cleaning up your Ning Profile in order to make room for all the activity that will now start happening at your Comment Wall! :-)

Storybook Stack. This week is probably the single biggest week for me in terms of the Storybook stack, and there is still a very large number of assignments waiting in the stack. If you turned in an assignment on Friday afternoon or early Saturday morning, you should have comments back from me now. Otherwise, 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.

February 17: Loreena McKennit. Today marks the birthday in 1957 of the Canadian musician Loreena McKennit. Happy birthday, Loreena! In the spirit of myth and folklore, Loreena has done wonderful work with traditional ballads and melodies from Celtic and Middle Eastern traditions and has created a distinctive wonderful style all her own. You can read about her work and career in this Wikipedia article, and you can listen to her MARVELOUS rendition of the traditional ballad, The Highwayman, here at YouTube.com.

Monday, February 16

Today is Monday. Week 4 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 5 will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started. The Week 6 assignments are also available now, too! (Week 7 will be available tomorrow, on Tuesday.)

You really can call me Laura! Although I sign my emails to you all as Laura, some of you still feel like you need to call me Professor or Dr. or something fancy. No need for that at all, really! Since I'm on a first-name basis with all of you, please feel free to just call me Laura. :-)

Storybook Coverpages. I'll be updating the list of Storybook Coverpages for Myth-Folklore, World Literature and Indian Epics on Monday afternoon. You can continue to experiment with your Coverpage design all semester long, and you will be updating your Coverpage each time you add a new story. Here is the only requirement: DO NOT CHANGE THE ADDRESS of your Coverpage! You can make all the changes you want to the design and contents of the page, but it is vital that the name of the file, and thus the webpage address, remain the same as the address you are giving me now. The link on the class webpage needs to remain good for the rest of the semester - and I'll send around a note later today when I am done updating the list of Coverpages so that you can all check to make sure I have linked to your coverpage correctly.

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. This is especially true today, since so few people turned in the Week 4 Storybook early. 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 be reading and reply to the assignments in the order they were turned in, beginning with the assignments turned in on Friday or Saturday.

Presidents' Day 2009. Today, February 16, is the holiday now called Presidents' Day. As a holiday, it has an interesting history. America's first president, George Washington, was born on February 22 in 1732, and his birthday was an unofficial celebration even during the years of his presidency; it was made a nationwide federal holiday in 1885. In 1971, the Uniform Monday Holiday Act re-assigned Washington's Birthday to "the third Monday of February," which is why it falls on February 16 in 2009. Oddly enough, this means that the Washington's Birthday holiday will NEVER happen on Washington's birthday, since February 22 can never be the third Monday in the month. Abraham Lincoln, meanwhile, was born on February 12 in 1809, and the first unofficial public celebration of his birthday as a holiday took place in 1874, but it was never recognized as an independent federal holiday as Washington's Birthday was. So, the holiday formerly called Washington's Birthday (which could never actually fall on the day of Washington's birth) is now usually called Presidents' Day, honoring both Washington and Lincoln as having been born in the month of February.

(image source)