Gradebook Declarations. Some of you are under a lot of pressure at the end of the semester with projects and tests in your other classes. So please, if you do not have time to fully complete one of the assignments for this class, just skip it, and make up the points later. Read each Declaration carefully and do NOT make the Declaration if you have not completed the work. You need to check your word count and other requirements BEFORE you do the Declaration. The penalties for making false Gradebook Declarations are serious; if you are not clear about this, please check the Honor Code for this class. Your Gradebook Declarations need to be accurate and honest; the whole grading system in this class depends on it.
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. You can check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. I will be reading and replying to the assignments in the order they were turned in - if the points you will be getting for the Storybook assignment(s) you have turned in will give you the points you need for your final grade in the class, let me know and I'll check on the points total for you! :-)
Overview of Week 12 and Week 13 Internet assignments. Week 12 will begin tomorrow, on Tuesday, and you will be commenting on other people's Storybooks. Then, for the Week 13 assignment (available a week from Tuesday, on April 20), you will be voting on your favorite Storybooks for the semester. After you turn in your nominations, I'll set up a ballot so everybody can vote for the best Storybooks - it's not for a grade or anything, it's just for fun, and it gives the folks who have done really excellent work on their Storybooks a chance to get some well deserved recognition.
Katyń: April 10 2010. On Saturday (April 10, 2010), a plane crash took the life of the President of Poland Lech Kaczynski, along with many other important Polish officials who were on their way to the site of the Katyń massacre for a memorial service. Katyń is the name of a forest near Smolensk in western Russia, one of the locations in western Russia where over 20,000 Polish military officers and other Polish prisoners of war were executed by the NKVD, the Soviet internal security police, in the spring of 1940, seventy years ago. Saturday's plane crash is a tragic postscript to this grim event from Polish history. If you are interested in learning more about Katyń, there is a brilliant film by the great Polish film director, Andrzej Wajda, about the Katyń massacre and its cover-up by the Soviets. I highly recommend it; you can read a review I wrote of the film here.
