Friday, February 5 - Sunday, February 7

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.

New Ning Editor. As I mentioned in an email that I sent around Thursday night, Ning.com unexpectedly started using a new HTML editor for creating posts - I think you will like it better than the old one, since it is a "What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get" type of editor, but I know it's confusing to have things change on you all of a sudden. I've revised the Ning instructions based on the new editor - if I missed something important, let me know!

• How to format a Ning blog post
• How to add links to a Ning blog post
• How to add images to a Ning blog post

Week 3 blog posts. For the Responding assignment, you should be looking for the Week 3 essay and story - which means you may need to scroll down, because some people are working ahead. So, if you do not find somebody's Week 3 blog posts at the top of their blog, just scroll on down till you find what you are looking for. Also, one person - Kevin - is enrolled in more than one of these classes this semester, so if you are reading his blog make sure you find the posts for the class that you are in together with him.

Storybook Stack. On Friday, I should finish reading and responding to every Storybook assignment in the stack that is turned in before Friday at noon (contents of the stack); as of Thursday evening, I had gotten the stack down to just 10 Storybooks or so, which means I can definitely finish up the stack on Friday. So, 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 the order received. If you want comments back next week sooner rather than later, don't wait until Sunday to turn in your assignment!

Famous Last Words. Some 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 and what you are expecting around the corner next week... while getting extra credit for it, too!

February 7: Laura Ingalls Wilder. Sunday, 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):