NEW RESPONDING GROUPS. The blog responding groups have been shuffled around, so you should find some new people to read and respond to this week (the groups are random, so you may have one person the same, but thanks to the power of randomness you should have at least one new person and probably two). I'll be shuffling the blog groups like this every three or four weeks during the semester. If somehow I've accidentally left anybody off the list, please let me know right away! With these new groups, if someone has not done the blog posts for the current week, you will certainly be able to find other posts in their blog from previous weeks that you can comment on.
Storybook Stack. On Friday morning, what I had left in the stack were either late Week 3 assignments or early Week 4 and Week 5 assignments. I will do my very best to finish reading and responding to every Storybook assignment in the stack that gets turned in before Friday at noon (contents of the stack). 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 order. If you want to get comments sooner from me next week rather than later, turn in your assignment earlier - the huge majority of people turn in their assignments on Sunday, and it sometimes takes me several days to reply to all of those. If you want comments back sooner, turn your assignment in on Friday or Saturday, not on Sunday or Monday.
Storybook comments. (repeat announcement) Please make sure you look for my comments in the emails I send back to you; my comments are marked with ==> which should make them easy to see as you scan down the text of the email. So, in addition to the top part of the email, there are also comments inserted into the email below. You will need all these comments when you work on the next Storybook assignment, so you should save these emails. Plus, since you will be working on the Storybook all semester, you might need to look back at a previous email to get some information to help you with a later assignment.
Week 4 Internet: Coverpages. (repeat announcement) For your Internet assignment in Week 4, you will be publishing a Coverpage for your Storybook. If you are using GoogleSites, this means you will create a NEW SITE, and the homepage for that new site will be your Coverpage. I hope you will enjoy creating a website for your Storybook. To get some ideas, you can visit these previous Storybooks that were created with GoogleSites last year or look at this semester's growing list of coverpages in Indian Epics, Myth-Folklore and World Lit.
Writing Center and Grammar Review. (repeat announcement) As you start working on your Storybook Introduction, and for all your future Storybook assignments, you are expected to turn in a formal piece of writing, with correct English usage, spelling, and punctuation. If you would like some extra help with that, make a visit to the Writing Center where you can get free assistance. Whether you need a refresher course on English punctuation or some help in learning how to proofread your own work, the Writing Center is the place to go! For hours and services, visit the Writing Center website. You can also work on specific problem areas (commas, apostrophes, and run-on sentences are the most common problems people have) by reviewing these topics and then taking some extra credit Grammar Quizzes.
September 17: Visvakarman. Friday, September 17, is a festival of the Visvakarman, the divine architect of the gods in the Hindu tradition. As those of you in the Indian Epics class have learned, it is not easy to put Sanskrit names into Roman letters, so you can read about this god in two different Wikipedia articles based on different spellings of the name in English: Viswakarma and Vishvakarman (which is the source of the image shown below). The Visvakarman Puja holiday is celebrated by architects and also by engineers and all kinds of technicians and craftspeople, especially in eastern India. Happy Visvakarman Day!
