Grading. I've gotten numerous emails recently as people are checking up on their grades, so I thought I should make a general announcement about that, especialy now that the semester is almost half-over. Each week there are 30 points of required work, so to get an A in the class, you need to be getting around 27-30 points per week. There is extra credit every week, too - some people use extra credit to make up for missed work, but you can also use extra credit to get ahead in class, earning more than 30 points per week. For a chart that shows you week by week point totals and other information about the grading system, you might want to look again at this Grading Information page - you saw this page back in the first week of the semester, but now you will be able to make better sense of the information, watching your total points adding up week by week. Let me know if you have any questions that are not answered on that page.
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.
Spring Break. Spring break is next week! That means the assignments for Week 8 are spread out. You have the usual Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday assignments this week, March 9-11. Then, the weekend assignments are not due until at the end of spring break, with the grace period on Monday after Spring Break, March 22. I won't be doing any Storybook grading over the Spring Break, so if you want to get ahead and receive comments back from me before the Spring Break begins, please get your early assignments turned in by this Friday, March 12 at noon. If you can get a Storybook assignment turned in by Friday at noon, I will get comments back to you before Spring Break; otherwise, if you turn something in after noon on Friday or during Spring Break, it will go into the stack for Monday, March 22, when classes resume.
Sita Sings the Blues. The folks in Indian Epics have now finished up the Ramayana (Week 8 is a Ramayana review week), and then will be moving on to the Mahabharata. There are many different versions of the Ramayana, of course, in many languages and styles, in addition to the two books we read in class - including a recent new film by Nina Paley, called Sita Sings the Blues! You can see a trailer for the film at YouTube (click on the image below), or you can visit the Sita Sings the Blues website - you can even view the movie online!
