Friday drop deadline. Repeat announcement. This Friday, October 1, is the last day to drop the class with an automatic grade of W on your transcript. For more information, see Monday's announcements.
Friday noon: Storybook Titles. For anybody who wants to make a change to your Storybook title listing at the class list, please let me know about that by Friday noon at the latest. I can update the class list at any time, but I update the "randomizer" script just once a week, on Friday afternoon. So, if you want me to make a change to your title, please let me know about that by Friday at noon!
Commenting on Storybooks. Every week from now through Week 12 of the semester, you will be commenting on people's writing at their Storybooks. During these weeks as you comment on people's Storybooks, please provide as much detailed, specific feedback as possible. People will be writing and re-writing their Storybook pages all semester long, so specific feedback is really valuable. It's nice to get compliments, but it is also really good to get feedback about what things could be improved. So, do not hesitate to say when something is confusing, or obvious, or repetitious, or if you think something is important is missing. Every semester, students tell me that they wish they had received more detailed feedback on their Storybooks, rather than just generic compliments. So definitely give compliments about things you like, but please also try to provide detailed feedback both about the writing and about the webpage design. Sharing your specific, detailed impressions is an important part of the process of helping everyone to create a great Storybook this semester!
Storybook Stack. On Wednesday, I finished responding to every Week 5 Storybook that was turned in on time. On Thursday, I will start replying to the late Week 5 Storybooks and to the early Week 6 and Week 7 Storybooks people have turned in this week. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. Thursday at noon is the deadline for late Week 5 assignments. Friday at noon is the deadline if you want to get comments back from me about your Storybook assignment before the weekend.
Tech Tip emails. As I've announced before, in the long list of things that I work on each week for these classes, the Tech Tip emails come last - sometimes I don't manage to get to those for a week or two, depending on how busy things are. Please don't let that hold you back, though - you can go ahead and complete other tips. You definitely don't need to hear back from me about your Tech Tip emails before you go ahead and do more tips if you want! I'll be taking advantage of the slow day this Friday to get caught up on the current stack of Tech Tips.
October 3: Gore Vidal. Sunday, October 3, marks the birthday in the year 1925 of the great American author, Gore Vidal. You can read more about Gore Vidal in this Wikipedia article. My favorite of his novels is without doubt his amazing historical novel Julian, about the 4th-century emperor Julian, nicknamed "Julian the Apostate," the last of the pagan emperors of Rome (although I am also a big fan of another of his historical novels, Creation, too). Here is the cover of a recent edition of Julian - and Happy Birthday, Gore Vidal!
