Friday, September 17 - Sunday, September 19

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 4! The Week 4 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and the remaining Week 4 assignments are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon!

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!

Thursday, September 16

Today is Thursday of WEEK 4 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 3 Storybook assignment yet, you have UNTIL NOON TODAY to turn that in for partial credit. For those of you in Myth-Folklore or World Lit, Thursday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment on or before Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, it is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. I should be able to get through the remaining items in the stack by the end of the week. If you want comments back from me on a Storybook assignment, make sure you turn that in by Friday at noon. If you turn something in before noon on Friday, I will do my best to get comments back to you before the weekend!

My Thursday schedule. I do most of my work during regular business hours on Monday-Tuesday and Friday, while scheduling my out-of-office commitments each week, usually on Wednesday or Thursday. This week, I am going to be out of the office for part of the day on Thursday. That means I may be a bit more slow to respond to your emails today than on the other days of the week - but if you send me an email during the day today, I'll definitely get back to you by the end of the day.

Writing Center and Grammar Review. As you start working on your Storybook Introduction this week, 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.

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.

September 16: Hildegard of Bingen. September 16 marks the birthday in the year 1098 of the remarkable woman, Hildegard of Bingen (she died on September 17, 1179). Hildegard wrote numerous books in Latin on theological and scientific topics, as well as devotional songs and plays. She was also a musical composer, and many of her musical compositions have survived. Probably most remarkable are the three books she wrote about the series of mystical visions that she experienced during her lifetime. These books were accompanied by beautiful illustrations; here is one example (the web source for this image also includes some of Hildegard's Latin poems with English translations):

Wednesday, September 15

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 4 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 3 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.

Storybook comments. 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, the main comments are inserted into your assignment below. You should save these emails, too, since you will be working on the Storybook all semester and you might need to look back at a past email to get some information to help you with a later assignment.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment on or before Sunday at 9PM, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in after 9PM on Sunday or on Monday or on Tuesday, it is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. I reply to the assignments in the order that they are turned in, so if you want comments back earlier in the week, try to turn your Storybook in before Sunday. The Storybook stack is very much a first-come first-served process!

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.

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 as much as a week, 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!

September 15: Marco Polo. Today, September 15, marks the birthday of the great Italian explorer Marco Polo in the year 1254. Marco Polo together with his father and his uncle were among the first Europeans to travel and live in China (Marco spent almost 20 years in China). After he returned to Europe in 1295, Marco Polo wrote a marvelous account of his travels, part fact and part fiction, which is known in English as The Travels of Marco Polo (Il Milione in Italian). You can read more about Marco Polo in the detailed article at Wikipedia, which is also the source for this image, showing an illuminated manuscript of Marco Polo's famous account of his travels:

Tuesday, September 14

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 4 of the class, and I've re-arranged the Quiz area in Desire2Learn so Week 4 is on top. This week's topic is ancient Greece in Myth-Folklore, Sufi stories in World Literature, and a new version of the Ramayana in Indian Epics. If you have not turned in your Week 3 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment on or before Sunday at 3PM, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in after 3PM on Sunday or on Monday, it is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

Week 4 Internet: Coverpages. 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, and you can also take a look at this semester's new projects (see next announcement).

Storybook Coverpages published! There are already some people who have published their Storybook Coverpages - please feel free to take a look! (those of you who have published your coverpages, you can let me know if the title I have listed here looks good to you, or if you prefer something different): World Literature, Myth-Folklore, and Indian Epics. Congratulations to the people who are ahead of schedule on their Storybooks! This list was updated at noon on Monday; I'll keep adding new Storybooks to the list as people turn in their Week 4 Internet assignments.

September 14: Typewriter ribbon. Today marks the anniversary of the day in 1886 when George Anderson of Memphis, Tennessee patented the typewriter ribbon. Now, I'm not sure how many of you (... any of you...?) may have typed on a typewriter with a ribbon, much less changed a typewriter ribbon - but I learned to type in 1973 on a manual Royal typewriter, complete with a typewriter ribbon. In high school, I had an electric typewriter that used a film cartridge (no more typewriter ribbon!), and in my sophomore year of college in 1983 I started using a computer (does anybody remember WordStar?). You can read an article about the history of the typewriter here at Wikipedia. Here is an old Hermes typewriter - and why was it called Hermes do you think? It was probably because Hermes was a speedy messenger... or perhaps because he was the Greek god credited with the invention of the alphabet!

Monday, September 13

Today is Monday, and Week 3 of the class is now over. That means the semester is 20% over already - wow! Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday.

Working ahead. Monday is a great day to work ahead! You do not have any assignments due on Monday, which means you can use this as a chance to get a head start on the assignments that will be due later this week. In addition, the assignments for future weeks are available to you now, too. For some of you, midterms will be starting in your classes next week or the week after - so, if you get ahead in this class now, you can take a week off here when the midterms arrive in your other classes.

Week 5 Internet assignment. For those of you who are working ahead, you will note that the Week 5 Internet assignment is not available yet; you'll need to wait on that assignment until everybody has gotten their Storybook coverpages published online, which will be happening later this week! During Weeks 5-12, the Internet assignment will be available on the first day of each week (Tuesday) and you will have all week to complete it. I'll make more information available about all that next Monday.

Storybook stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the Storybook stack that were turned in over the weekend or on Monday morning. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. So, after 8 a.m. or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. I will then start reading the assignments in the order they were turned in. Please DO NOT go on to the Week 4 Storybook assignment until you get Week 3 comments back from me (and the same is true for those of you who have turned in Week 4 assignments already - please do not go on to the Week 5 Storybook assignment until you get my Week 4 comments).

Late Storybook assignments. Each week, the Storybook assignment is the only assignment that can be turned in late for partial credit. Since I cannot get all the Storybooks graded and returned immediately, it is fine with me if you turn in the Storybook late. A Storybook assignment turned in on Monday after noon can receive up to 8 points credit; if it is turned in on Tuesday, you can get up to 7 points of credit; on Wednesday, 6 points of credit; the absolute deadline for turning in your Storybook assignment for partial credit is noon on Thursday, when you can get up to 5 points of partial credit.

September 13: The Ides of September. In the Roman calendar, September 13 marked the Ides of September. You can read about the fascinating Roman calendar system in this Wikipedia article; you can even get a Google Calendar with the Roman day of the month listed each day if you are into that kind of thing! On the Ides of September, Roman tradition tells us that the Roman temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill was dedicated in the year 506 B.C.E. The temple has long since been destroyed, but those of you who have been to Rome have probably been to the Capitoline Hill, the Piazza del Campidoglio, designed by Michelangelo: