Read and Respond blog comments. Now that everybody has had a chance to finish their blog posts for the week, the Read and Respond assignment for Week 1 is now available! I've put everybody into "blog groups." Each week you will be responding to two people at random your blog group (I'll change the groups every few weeks). To find out just what you will do for this assignment and to see which group you are in, visit the Read and Respond assignment page.
Get ahead this weekend! This weekend is the absolute best time to get ahead in this class, before things really get busy in your other classes. If you can do all the Week 2 assignments this weekend, that will give you a cushion of extra time that will make the whole semester much easier for you in this class. So please, if you can, do all the Week 2 assignments over the weekend so that you can start the semester off one week ahead. Believe me: it is the single best thing you can do to guarantee your success in this class. If you don't believe me, read these comments from previous students - working ahead is the #1 piece of advice they offer!
Early Bird extra credit. The Early Bird extra credit is the easiest extra credit you can get. To take these extra credit points, you don't have to do any extra work - you just have to be one week ahead of schedule. So if you finish the reading and blogging assignments for Week 2 this weekend, you get extra credit! If you can finish the Week 2 Storybook assignment this weekend, you get extra credit! Think about: extra credit FOR NO EXTRA WORK - just for working ahead. I don't think you will get a better deal than that! :-)
My weekend schedule. I check email occasionally over the weekend, and I will do my best to respond promptly to any urgent problems or questions that come up. In general, though, any email that you send to me over the weekend will wait until Monday morning, when I get back to work. So, please be patient: if you do not get an answer from me during the weekend, I will get back to you promptly on Monday, I promise!
Myth-Folklore: Week 2 Reading. This is an announcement that applies to the Myth-Folklore course only. Each week, you have a CHOICE of two reading units. You choose only one, and you do your storytelling and essay posts based on that unit. So, in Week 2, you do Egypt OR Gilgamesh. It means you will have blank spaces in the Gradebook for the quizzes about the other unit you did not choose, but that's okay. Desire2Learn doesn't understand the idea of students choosing things (sad, huh?), but since your grade is based on your total accumulated points, those blanks don't make any difference in your total.
First Storybooks of the semester! Claire, in the Indian Epics class, and Sara P., in the Myth-Follklore class, have both published the coverpage and introduction for their Storybooks. If you want to take a look at these first Storybooks of the semester, here they are: The Six-Fold Evils ... and ... Not a Fairy Godmother. Congratulations to Claire and Sara!
Friday, January 22: The "1984" Macintosh commercial. Friday, January 22, is a fun technology anniversary! On this day in 1984 -- over 25 years ago! -- the Macintosh personal computer made its debut in a television advertisement during Superbowl XVIII. There is an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to this advertisement which marked a real changing point in the history of personal computing, as well as being a landmark in advertising, too. You can watch the advertisement at YouTube - and if you haven't ever seen it, it's definitely worth taking a look, and I don't just say that because I am a Mac user...! It's a great example of storytelling, told with images, all in just 60 seconds.
