Friday, September 18 - Sunday, September 20

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 4! The Week 4 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and the remaining Week 4 assignments are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon!

IMPORTANT NOTE: Sunday IT Maintenance. On the third Sunday of every month, IT does maintenance on its servers. There will be a maintenance window this Sunday, September 20. 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. 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.

Font size in Composer. Many of you will be working on your Storybook coverpage this weekend. As you do that, please be careful with font size and read these Instructions for Larger Fonts in Composer. The best way to change the font to something larger is by designating it as a Heading. That way, you can be sure that you will get good results on every browser. Other methods of changing the font size can vary enormously from browser to browser and may not lead to the results you want. So, make sure if you want to make something a larger font size, you choose Heading 1 or Heading 2 or Heading 3 - depending on how large you want it to be.

Storybook comments. (repeat announcement) Please make sure you look for my comments in the emails I send back to you; my comments are marked with ==> which should make them easy to see as you scan down the text of the email. So, in addition to the top part of the email, the main comments are inserted into your assignment below. You should save these emails, too, since you will be working on the Storybook all semester and you might need to look back at a past email to get some information to help you with a later assignment.

Storybook Introduction ideas. I'm still working my way through the Storybook stack, and I hope to get comments back to you before the weekend for any assignment turned in before noon on Friday. For some ideas and inspiration about writing your Storybook Introduction (the Week 4 assignment), you can take a look at these Introductions that people have already published online: Celtic Chronicles: Inside Ireland,--- Where the Kosalas Roam: An Okie's Tour of Ramayana's and Mahabharata's India --- English Fairy Tales: What Jack Has To Say About It! --- Birth Stories: The Party of the Century and Where Are They Now? Classic Fairy Tale Villains. Congratulations to all of you who are working ahead on your Storybook like this - it's really exciting to see them starting to appear online!

September 18: Witkacy. Today, September 18, marks the date on which the Polish artist and writer, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz ("Witkacy"), committed suicide, following the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland in 1939. For those of you who are anthropology majors, you might recognize the name of one of Witkacy's closest friends and colleagues, Bronisław Malinowski. Witkacy's life was marked by brilliant achievements in both his painting and in his writing, as well as by tragedy and absurdity, all of which you can read about in this Wikipedia article. The image below is a self-portrait which Witkacy painted on August 11, about one month before his death.


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Thursday, September 17

Today is Thursday of WEEK 4 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 3 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 the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday.

IMPORTANT - Friday morning: Desire2Learn OUTAGE. On Friday morning, there will be a Desire2Learn outage from 9AM until 10:30AM in order to install a software update that will fix the problems with Internet Explorer. So, for those of you who have gotten in the habit of relying on the Friday morning grace period, be aware of this outage. You will not be able to access D2L for that 90-minute period on Friday morning. Since your assignments are due on Thursday, I will not be making any adjustments to the schedule. You still have the grace period on Friday morning, but you need to be aware of this scheduled Desire2Learn outage time.

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 10PM, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in after 10PM on Sunday or during the week this week, 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 should be able to get through the remaining items in the stack by the end of the week. If you want comments back from me on a Storybook assignment, please turn that in by Friday at noon. If you turn something in before noon on Friday, I should be able to get comments back to you before the weekend!

Coverpage color schemes. One of the best things you can do with your coverpage is to find a background color to complement the image that you have chosen. Make sure you choose Text, Link, and Visited Link Text colors to go with your Background Color choice! You can find out more about that here: Background Colors in Composer. Here are some examples of Coverpages with a background color that complements the main image; click on the link to visit the actual coverpage:





September 17: Visvakarman. Today, September 17, is a festival of the Visvakarman, the divine architect of the gods in the Hindu tradition. As those of you in the Indian Epics class have learned, it is not easy to put Sanskrit names into Roman letters, so you can read about this god in two different Wikipedia articles based on different spellings of the name in English: Viswakarma and Vishvakarman (which is the source of the image shown below). The Visvakarman Puja holiday is celebrated by architects and also by engineers and all kinds of technicians and craftspeople, especially in eastern India. Happy Visvakarman Day!
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Wednesday, September 16

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 4 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 3 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 comments. Please make sure you look for my comments in the emails I send back to you; my comments are marked with ==> which should make them easy to see as you scan down the text of the email. So, in addition to the top part of the email, the main comments are inserted into your assignment below. You should save these emails, too, since you will be working on the Storybook all semester and you might need to look back at a past email to get some information to help you with a later 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 7PM, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in after 7PM on Sunday 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. I reply to the assignments in the order that they are turned in, so if you want comments back earlier in the week, try to turn your Storybook in before Sunday. The Storybook stack is very much a first-come first-served process. :-)

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.

Coverpage samples. Carrying on from yesterday's announcements, here are some more examples of different kinds of coverpage layouts that people have used in the past. Today I've picked out some of the Storybooks that use a table layout so that you can have an image and text side by side, with the story links lifted to the right of the main image. Using a table is an easy way to arrange images and text side by side - and if you set the table borders to zero, they will be invisible if you want. Click on the link to see the actual Storybook:




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Tuesday, September 15

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 4 of the class. That means ancient Greece in Myth-Folklore, Sufi stories in World Literature, and a new version of the Ramayana in Indian Epics. If you have not turned in your Week 3 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

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 after noon 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.

Coverpage samples. For the Week 4 Internet assignment, you will be publishing a coverpage for your Storybook. It needs to contain at least one image, or you may decide to use more images - that's up to you. As you design the coverpage you need to think about how to display the title, and the image(s), along with some good navigation to help people find their way to your Introduction online and, later, to each of your stories. This week I'll be posting some examples of different layouts people have used for their Storybook coverpages; click on the link for each Storybook to see the actual page:





September 15: Marco Polo. Today, September 15, marks the birthday of the great Italian explorer Marco Polo in the year 1254. Marco Polo together with his father and his uncle were among the first Europeans to travel and live in China (Marco spent almost 20 years in China). After he returned to Europe in 1295, Marco Polo wrote a marvelous account of his travels, part fact and part fiction, which is known in English as The Travels of Marco Polo (Il Milione in Italian). You can read more about Marco Polo in the detailed article at Wikipedia, which is also the source for this image, showing an illuminated manuscript of Marco Polo's famous account of his travels:

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Monday, September 14

Today is Monday, and Week 3 of the class is now over. That means the semester is 20% over already - wow! Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. For those of you who are working ahead, you will note that the Week 5 Internet assignment is not available yet; you'll need to wait on those until everybody has gotten their Storybook coverpages published online. :-)

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 4 Storybook assignment until you get Week 3 comments back from me (and the same is true for those of you who have turned in Week 4 assignments - please do not go on to the Week 5 Storybook assignment until you get my Week 4 comments).

Late Storybook assignments. 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. A Storybook assignment turned in on Monday after noon can receive up to 9 points credit; if it is turned in on Tuesday, you can get up to 8 points of credit, up to 7 points on Wednesday and up to 6 points on Thursday. The absolute deadline for turning your Storybook assignment for partial credit is noon on Friday, when you can get up to 5 points of partial credit.

Working ahead. Monday is a great day to work ahead! You do not have any assignments due on Monday, which means you can use this as a chance to get a head start on the assignments that will be due later this week. You can work ahead on all of the assignments except for the Read and Respond assignment, since for that one you need to wait until people have had a chance to finish their blog posts for the week. In addition, the assignments for future weeks are available to you now, too. For some of you, midterms will be starting in your classes next week or the week after - so, if you get ahead in this class now, you can take a week off here when the midterms arrive in your other classes.

September 14: Typewriter ribbon. Today marks the anniversary of the day in 1886 when George Anderson of Memphis, Tennessee patented the typewriter ribbon. Now, I'm not sure how many of you (... any of you...?) may have typed on a typewriter with a ribbon, much less changed a typewriter ribbon - but I learned to type in 1973 on my mother's ancient Royal typewriter, complete with a typewriter ribbon. Typing has sure come a long way in our lifetimes! You can read an article about the history of the typewriter here at Wikipedia. Here is an old Hermes typewriter - and why was it called Hermes do you think? It was probably because Hermes was a speedy messenger... or perhaps because he was the god often credited with the invention of the alphabet!
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