Ning blogs and comments. One of your Tuesday assignments is to post an Introduction about yourself in your blog at the class Ning. You'll be doing two more posts at the Ning later this week... and then, after the posting assignments for the week are done, you'll have a "Read and Respond" assignment where you'll be assigned some specific blogs of other people in class to read and comment on. Although you do the other assignments for class early (and I strongly encourage you to do so), the "Read and Respond" assignment is something you cannot do early, since you need to wait until everybody has had a chance to finish their blog posting assignments for the week, which will not be until the end of the day on Thursday. As a result, the "Read and Respond" assignment will be available starting on Friday - I'll let you know more about that later in the week.
Early Storybook assignments. As those of you who are working ahead turn in your Storybook assignments, I will get those back to you either that same day or the next day at the latest. You can check at this webpage to make sure I have received your assignment: Storybook stack. The Storybook assignments are the only assignments each week where I record the points you in the Gradebook; there is no Declaration.
You can call me Laura. As you've probably seen, I sign all my emails to you as "Laura," which is definitely what you can call me. I'm actually not a professor (just an instructor) - and since I'm going to be calling you all by your first names, it makes sense that you just call me by my first name also. :-)
August 24 2010: Raksha Bandhan. Those of you in the Indian Epics class may be interested to know that today, August 24, is the Hindu festival of Raksha Bandan, which is observed on the the full moon in the month of Sravana, which this year coincides with August 24 (many of the world's religious holidays are based on the lunar calendar, such as Hanukkah or Easter or Ramadan, so the date changes from year to year). You can learn more about Raksha Bandan at the BBC website and at Wikipedia; the name of the holiday comes from a ceremonial red and golden woven bracelet which sisters tie around their brothers' wrist to symbolize their relationship of trust and protection (the word bandan is related to the English words band, bind, bond - and bandage). Here is a Raksha Bandan greeting card:
