Friday, March 6 - Sunday, March 8

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 7! The Week 7 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and so is the Week 7 Internet assignment (Storybook commenting), along with the remaining Week 7 assignments that are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon. Friday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Thursday.

Writing Center. For those of you who are finding it difficult to proofread your own writing, the Writing Center is the place to go for help. Whether you are struggling with the overall organization of your writing (finding a focus, working with paragraphs), or whether you have questions about writing mechanics (especially punctuation), the tutors at the Writing Center can help. For hours and services, visit the Writing Center website. You can even schedule an appointment online! The Writing Center is there to help with the writing assignments you have in this class, as well as any writing assignments you will have in your other classes, too.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. I've read and replied to all the Week 6 assignments turned in on time, but if you turned in a late Week 6 assignment, or an early assignment for Week 7, 8 or 9, it may still be in the stack. My goal is to get comments back to everyone by the end of the day Friday for assignments turned in before Friday at noon. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

Week 7 Internet assignment. (Repeat announcement.) For the Week 7 Internet assignment, which is available now, you will be reading Storybook Introductions AND a story from each Storybook. Since you have more reading to do this time, you will have just THREE Storybooks that you comment on - two which are assigned, and one which is your choice. As I've mentioned before, people will be writing and re-writing their Storybook pages all semester long, so specific feedback is really valuable. It's nice to get compliments, but it is also really good to get feedback about what things need to be fixed. Every semester, students tell me that they wish they had received more actual feedback on their Storybooks, rather than just compliments. So definitely give compliments about things you like, but please try to provide detailed feedback about the actual writing, too. All writing can be improved - bad writing can become good, and good writing can become excellent - but writers need detailed, specific feedback from their readers to do that!

The Life of Aesop. In addition to the famous fables of Aesop, there is also an ancient novel which contains legends of the life of Aesop, dating back to around the year 200. If you are curious to learn about these old legends, I've written a little article for an online journal, Journey to the Sea, which is edited and published by a student, Randy Hoyt, who took the Myth-Folklore class back in 2003. He's now a webmaster for Blockbuster, but with an abiding interest in mythology and I've enjoyed the chance to write some articles for the journal. Here's the article - Life of Aesop: The Wise Fool and the Philosopher.

Thursday, March 5

Today is Thursday of WEEK 7 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 6 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit; please make sure you get it turned in by noon today at the latest. For those of you in Myth-Folklore or World Lit, Thursday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday.

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 Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, your assignment is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. To do the Week 7 Storybook assignment, you need to wait until you get my comments back on your Week 6 assignment - but if you want to work again, go ahead and add the next story to your Storybook and turn in the Week 8 assignment early. For those of you who turn in early Week 7 or Week 8 Storybook assignments by noon on Friday, I will do my best to get comments back to you before the weekend.

My Thursday schedule. Today, Thursday, is the day this week when I have some out-of-office appointments. As a result, I may be more slow to answer your emails, but if you have a question about anything, send me an email, and I will get an answer to you by the end of the day on Thursday at the latest.

March 5: Howard Pyle. Today, March 5, marks the birthday in the year 1853 of the American illustrator and author, Howard Pyle. You can read about Howard Pyle's life and career in this Wikipedia article, and you can find a listing of all his books that are online at his Online Books page. Some of you in the Myth-Folklore or the World Literature class may be familiar with Howard Pyle's work, since he is the author of a collection of stories about famous pirates, as well as books about legendary heroes such as Robin Hood and King Arthur. The image below shows one of Howard Pyle's paintings, The Mermaid:

Wednesday, March 4

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 7 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 6 Storybook assignment yet (adding your first story), 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 on or before 9PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in late Sunday evening or on Monday or Tuesday, your assignment is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

Week 7 Internet assignment. (Repeat announcement.) For the Week 7 Internet assignment, which is available now, you will be reading Storybook Introductions AND a story from each Storybook. Since you have more reading to do this time, you will have just THREE Storybooks that you comment on - two which are assigned, and one which is your choice. As I've mentioned before, people will be writing and re-writing their Storybook pages all semester long, so specific feedback is really valuable. It's nice to get compliments, but it is also really good to get feedback about what things need to be fixed. Every semester, students tell me that they wish they had received more actual feedback on their Storybooks, rather than just compliments. So definitely give compliments about things you like, but please try to provide detailed feedback about the actual writing, too. All writing can be improved - bad writing can become good, and good writing can become excellent - but writers need detailed, specific feedback from their readers to do that!

March 4: Khaled Hosseini. Today, March 4, marks the birthday in 1965 of the writer Khaled Hosseini who was born in Afghanistan and then emigrated to the United States in 1980, seeking political asylum. Although he is a medical doctor, Hosseini is best known for this first novel, The Kite Runner, and also for a second novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns. You can read more about his life and career in this Wikipedia article and at his official website. For those of you who are aspiring writers, you can watch a video at the website where Hosseini discusses about what it takes to become a writer. Happy birthday, Mr. Hosseini!

Tuesday, March 3

Today is Tuesday, the first day of WEEK 7 of the class. For those of you who are working ahead, Weeks 8 and 9 are also available! If you have not turned in your Week 6 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Week 7 Internet assignment. For the Week 7 Internet assignment, which is available now, you will be reading Storybook Introductions AND a story from each Storybook. Since you have more reading to do this time, you will have just THREE Storybooks that you comment on - two which are assigned, and one which is your choice. As I've mentioned before, people will be writing and re-writing their Storybook pages all semester long, so specific feedback is really valuable. It's nice to get compliments, but it is also really good to get feedback about what things need to be fixed. Every semester, students tell me that they wish they had received more actual feedback on their Storybooks, rather than just compliments. So definitely give compliments about things you like, but please try to provide detailed feedback about the actual writing, too. All writing can be improved - bad writing can become good, and good writing can become excellent - but writers need detailed, specific feedback from their readers to do that!

Storybook Stack. As usual at the beginning of the week, there are still LOTS of Storybook assignments in the stack. If you turned something in on Saturday, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in later on Sunday or Monday, 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. Also, because of the Desire2Learn outage on Monday evening, I had to record the points separately from returning comments on the assignments; I think I have gotten all the points recorded now, but if you got back comments and do not have points in the Gradebook, please let me know.

Desire2Learn outage: Monday. While IT was doing maintenance on Desire2Learn on Monday evening, it was not available. I am hoping that since there was not an actual deadline on Monday evening, this was not a big inconvenience for people. If it did interfere with your ability to complete a Week 7 assignment on time because of the constraints of your schedule, please let me know. I hope this will be the last of the Desire2Learn outages that we experience this semester... fingers crossed!

March 3: Hinamatsuri. Today, March 3, is the Hinamatsuri holiday in Japan, the "Doll Festival," which is a festival of good luck for young girls. You can read more about the holiday in this Wikipedia article, or in this article at About.com. There are special dolls which are displayed for the festival, often decorated with peach blossoms. This image shows a Hinamatsuri doll displayed at the festival in 2005 in the city of Kounos, near Tokyo:

Monday, March 2

Today is Monday, and Week 6 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 7 will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started. The Week 8 assignments are also available now, too! (Week 9 will be available starting tomorrow, Tuesday.)

Desire2Learn outage: MONDAY MAINTENANCE 4PM-8PM. Because IT was unable to repair the hardware problem on Sunday, they have scheduled a four-hour window today, Monday, from 4PM until 8PM, to attempt to fix the problem again. Since there is nothing due on Monday, I hope this will not cause any problems with your work for this class, but you do have a specific scheduling problem that prevents you from completing some assignment for the class because of the D2L downtime today, please let me know. During this downtime, I will not be able to record Storybook points for you, but I will continue to read and reply to the assignments, sending you my comments. Then, when the system comes back online later tonight, I'll be recording the points. You should be able to find updates about their progress with this maintenance window at the alerts.ou.edu website.

Desire2Learn outage: Sunday evening. There was another unexpected Desire2Learn outage on Sunday evening. According to the information at alerts.ou.edu, it was a serious hardware failure. The hardware has not yet been fully replaced, so you may experience "intermittent slowness" when using Desire2Learn. Online instructors are encouraged to rely on Desire2Learn as their exclusive online resource but I prefer to use several systems: course website, Ning, students websites, and Desire2Learn. That way, if one system goes down, there is a good chance the other systems will still be working. Meanwhile, I will keep you posted about further scheduled maintenance on Desire2Learn this week. If the Desire2Learn outage prevented you from making a Declaration on Sunday evening and you are not able to complete the Declaration this morning, send me an email with the text of the Declaration and I will record that for you manually.

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 be reading and reply to the assignments in the order they were turned in.

Storybook: Working ahead. In order to do the Week 7 Storybook assignment, you will need to wait for comments back on your Week 6 assignment. Depending on just when you turned in your Week 6 assignment, you may have to wait until later in the week, even as late as Thursday or Friday, in order to get comments back from me. If you want to work ahead on your Storybook, though, you can do that - just move right ahead to the Week 8 assignment, adding the second story to your Storybook. You can turn in your Week 8 Storybook assignment without waiting on my comments back on your Week 6 assignment.

March 2: Dr. Seuss. Today, March 2, marks the birthday in 1904 of the genius author Dr. Seuss, whose real name was Theodore Geisel. You are probably familiar with Dr. Seuss's marvelous books - my own favorite is Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose. If you want to find out more about his life, his goals as a writer - even detailed information about the poetic meters he used! - take a look at this long and detailed Wikipedia article. Dr. Seuss's books have been translated into many languages of the world - even Latin. Below is the book cover for The Cat in the Hat in Latin, Cattus Petasatus.