Wednesday, November 3

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 11 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 10 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit. Wednesday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Tuesday.

Week 11 Internet: Visiting the other classes. (repeat announcement) For the Week 11 Internet assignment, you will see that the instructions are VERY different from previous weeks: you will be visiting the Storybooks in the other classes. So, please make sure you read the instructions for the Week 11 Internet assignment before you start reading the Storybooks for your Week 11 Internet assignment. There is also an extra credit option for Week 11 so that you can read some more stories in the Storybooks if you want!

Grading and the end of the semester. (repeat announcement) Please make sure you read Monday's announcements, if you have not done so already - you will find important information there about grading in this class, along with information about the end of the semester and also about "mixing and matching" to choose the assignments you want to do as you finish the semester.

Storybook Stack. There are still a lot of Storybook assignments in the stack and I am making my way through them in the order that they were turned in. If you turned something in before 10PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in later on Sunday or on Monday or Tuesday, it is probably still in the stack. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

November 3: Dog in space. The dog Laika ("Barker") became the first animal in outer space on this day in 1957. Laika traveled aboard the Soviet spaceship Sputnik 2. You can read more about this cosmonaut dog in the Wikipedia article. While the Soviets launched dogs into space, the United States space program launched chimps instead (Ham the chimp, the first hominid in space, flew a Project Mercury flight in 1961). Laika proved that it was possible for an animal to sustain a weightless state in outer space, although she did not return to earth (she died during the mission from heat stroke when a heating unit in the space capsule malfunctioned). A monument was unveiled this year in honor of Laika; click on the image to view a Russian news video about the dedication of the monument (yes, the news video is in Russian, but it's still fun to watch even if you don't speak Russian):