Friday, December 3 - Sunday, December 5

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 14! The Week 14 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and the remaining Week 14 assignments are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon. I would also strongly - STRONGLY - encourage you to finish your Week 15 assignments this weekend, since it is the LAST WEEKEND you will have to do work for this class. See the important "Schedule Note" below for more information.

IMPORTANT SCHEDULE NOTE. For those of you who will still be doing classwork during Week 15 (dead week), please be aware that it is on a different schedule: All final Week 15 assignments are due by Friday, December 10, at noon. In addition, unlike previous weeks, you do not have the option to turn in your Week 14 Storybook assignment late. Instead, your Week 14 Storybook assignment must be turned in on time - that is, during the Week 14 grace period Monday morning, December 6, at the very latest. No late Week 14 Storybook assignments will be accepted. You have to get the Week 14 assignment turned in on time so that I can get comments back to you in time to complete your Week 15 assignment by Friday at noon!

Storybook stack. As of Friday morning, there were a few Storybooks still in the stack; you can see here the contents of the stack. If you want to turn in a Storybook to get comments and points before the weekend, make sure you turn that in by noon on Friday!

Course evaluation at eval.ou.edu. (repeat announcement) You all should have received an email from the College of Arts & Sciences about the course evaluations for all your courses available now at the eval.ou.edu website. I hope you will take a few minutes to complete the evaluation - your feedback is incredibly helpful to me in making improvements to these courses, and it is also a big help to the College in general as they continue to develop the online course program. The online course program exists because students find it valuable to be able to take courses online, and any ideas you have for how the program can be improved will be very useful to the College as they continue (hopefully!) to offer these online courses.

Final Grades. As you reach the points you need for your final grade in this class - 410 points for an A, 360 points for a B, 320 points for a C - let me know, and I'll record the letter grade for you there in the Desire2Learn Gradebook. You can mix and match whatever assignments you prefer to get the final points you need - but be careful as you make your choices, so that you don't accidentally come up short of the points you will need.

Storybook ballot results! Thanks to all of you who took the time to cast your ballot, and congratulations to the winners, to all the nominees, and to EVERYBODY who learned how to make your own website this semester: I hope that is a skill that will turn out to be useful to you in the future! :-)

MYTH-FOLKLORE

Best Overall Storybook
Justyn - The Diary of Alex, Frankly
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Best Storybook Topic
Ben - Werewolves on Campus
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Best Written Storybook
Ben - Fairy Tales: The Other Side
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Most Creative Storytelling
Courtney - Salon 205: An Underwater Mermaid Beauty Salon
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Best Design Overall
Jeff - Memoirs of a Cursed Man


INDIAN EPICS

Best Overall Storybook
Jasmyn - Player One vs. MAYA
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Best Written Storybook
Jess - Stories about Karma from the Office of a Guidance Counselor
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Most Creative Storytelling
Rosa - Women of Epic Proportions
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Best Design Overall
Lisa - My Mystical Travels in India


WORLD LITERATURE

Best Overall Storybook
Sara - F. Child Case Files
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Best Written Storybook
Katie - How the Greek Gods Need Family Therapy Really Badly
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Most Creative Storytelling
Will - Creatures in Brazil

*** CONGRATULATIONS ***

Saturday, December 4: Omar Khayyam. This Saturday marks the anniversary of the death in the year 1122 of the great Persian poet and scholar, Omar Khayyam. He is best known today for his collection of poems called the "Rubaiyat" (quatrains), but in his day he was renowned as a mathematician and also as an astronomer. Here is one of the quatrains in the famous translation by Edward FitzGerald:

With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand labour'd it to grow:
And this was all the Harvest that I reap'd -
"I came like Water, and like Wind I go."

You can read more about Omar Khayyam's remarkable life and career in this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for this image of Omar Khayam's tomb in Neishapur, Iran.