*** OU CAMPUS CLOSED JANUARY 20:
See the OU Webpage for more info. ***
See the OU Webpage for more info. ***
Today is Thursday of WEEK 1 of class. Thursday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday. You must complete the Week 1 Wednesday assignments if you want to remain in this class, so please make sure you finish up all your Wednesday assignments by noon today at the latest!
Grace period WARNING. Some of you are getting in the habit of treating the Grace period as if it were the "real" due date for your assignments. Please don't do that - if you treat the Grace period as the deadline, then you do not have any Grace period left. The Grace period is there for REAL emergencies, totally random things that happen which unexpectedly prevent you from finishing your work on the day that it is due. So, if the weekly assignment list says that an assignment is due on Thursday, that means it really IS DUE ON THURSDAY, and you need to finish that assignment on Thursday. Or even better, finish the assignments several days before they are due, so you are not having to stress about the deadline at all!
Thursday assignments. If you have not completed the Orientation Week assignments for Thursday, please make sure you do that today! First, you will be visiting some of the previous Storybook projects that students have done, which is the first step in figuring out what kind of Storybook you will want to do. Then you will spend a little time pondering the online life and sharing some of your thoughts about that. (For those of you who have taken a course with me previously, this one is a new assignment and I hope you will enjoy it. I have really enjoyed reading the blog posts people have published for this assignment so far.)
My Thursday schedule. I try to schedule any appointments or out-of-office commitments during the week on Thursday which means I am usually away from my desk for at least part of the day on Thursday. If I am slower than usual to respond to an email, that is why - but don't worry: if you write me with a question or problem on Thursday, I will definitely get back to you by the end of the day. I just might be a little slower about that than usual.
3 classes = 1 Ning. As you have noticed, all three of the online courses I teach are combined into one Ning. There are a couple reasons why I did that. One reason is very practical: I am paying out of my pocket to have the Ning be ad-free, so I preferred to pay just once, instead of having to pay for three Nings. The other reason is that it can be fun to see the posts pop up from all the classes, since you might see something - an image, a title - that gets your attention and provokes your curiosity. Starting on Friday, you'll be able to do the official Read & Respond assignment, reading and responding to the blogs of people in your blog group (more about that in tomorrow's announcements), but feel free to leave comments on anything at the Ning that happens to get your attention!
*** I will let you know if/when this event is rescheduled! ***
January 20: World Literature Today Book Club. I am sharing this announcement from Katlin which might be of general interest: The next WLT Book Club selection is The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. The first meeting of the year is scheduled for THURSDAY JANUARY 20th at 12:30 pm in the WLT Conference Room (105 Monnet Hall, 630 Parrington Oval). Lunch will be provided. For more information, check with Katlin at the Ning. For more about this great book, here is the Wikipedia article.
