Friday, March 4 - Sunday, March 6

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 7! The Week 7 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and so is the Week 7 Internet assignment (Storybook commenting), along with the remaining Week 7 assignments that are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon. Friday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Thursday.

Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. I've read and replied to all the Week 6 assignments turned in on time, but if you turned in a late Week 6 assignment, or an early assignment for Week 7 or 8, it may still be in the stack. My goal is to get comments back to everyone by the end of the day Friday for assignments turned in before Friday at noon. If you want to check and make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

New Responding groups. (repeat announcement) The blog responding groups have been shuffled around this week. Let me repeat the instructions for that assignment just as a reminder: You need to comment on TWO posts at each blog. Read the ESSAY post and STORYTELLING post. If - and only if - one or both of those posts are missing, choose any two posts in the person's blog you have not read yet. For more details, see the instructions here.

Week 7 Internet assignment. (repeat announcement) For the Week 7 Internet assignment, you will be reading Storybook Introductions AND a story from each Storybook. Since you have more reading to do this time (a story and, possibly, the Introduction too), you will have just THREE Storybooks that you comment on - and you need to make sure there is a story to read at each of those Storybooks. If the Storybook does not have a first story published yet, please skip it and go to another one instead. You can definitely do the assignment now; everybody should have a story by now - and you do NOT have to wait on someone who is running late with their first story. If the Storybook that comes up for you randomly doesn't have a story yet, just refresh the page to get another Storybook at random.

Midterm Grade Reports. (repeat announcement) Since I was not sure how/when you are able to view the midterm grades in Ozone, I checked with the people in Buchanan Hall, and learned that you are able to view those midterm grades as soon as an instructor submits them. So, you will be able to see the grades for my class now, and for your other classes it depends on when the instructor submits them; the deadline we were given for entering the midterm grades is this Friday, March 4.

Spring Break. (repeat announcement) For Spring Break, you will have the entire week off - that will happen during Week 8, as you can see on the Semester Calendar here. You will have your regular Week 8 assignments due next week on Tuesday-Thursday. Then, I would encourage everybody to finish up the final Week 8 assignments on Friday, March 11 - but if you want to wait and do them on the weekend after Spring Break, you can do that, too. The grace period for wrapping up Week 8 will be on Monday morning, March 21, after Spring Break.

SUNDAY March 6: Decameron film showing. There is going to be a series of films and lectures on medieval topics in conjunction with the Medieval Fair this year. The first film will be on Sunday, March 6, at 5PM - there will be a free showing of Pasolini's Decameron (warning: he prefers the raunchy side of Boccaccio's stories!) in Meacham Auditorium. There is a World Lit. unit on the Decameron coming up in Week 10. You can read about Pasolini's film in this Wikipedia article. The image below is an excerpt from the big poster announcing all the events; click here to see the complete poster with all the films and lectures listed.

Thursday, March 3

Today is Thursday of WEEK 7 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 6 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit; please make sure you get it turned in by noon today at the latest. 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 before 10AM on Monday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in later on Monday or on Tuesday or Wednesday, your assignment is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

New Responding groups. The blog responding groups have been shuffled around again this week so TOMORROW, Friday, that assignment will be available with new people in the groups. Let me repeat the instructions for that assignment just as a reminder: You need to comment on TWO posts at each blog. Read the ESSAY post and STORYTELLING post. If - and only if - one or both of those posts are missing, choose any two posts in the person's blog you have not read yet.

Week 7 Internet assignment. If you did not read yesterday's announcements, please make sure you take a look at that; the instructions for the Internet assignment this week are somewhat different from last week since you will be reading the Introduction AND a story at the Storybooks you comment on this week.

Midterm Grade Reports. Since I was not sure how/when you are able to view the midterm grades in Ozone, I checked with the people in Buchanan Hall, and learned that you are able to view those midterm grades as soon as an instructor submits them. So, you will be able to see the grades for my class now, and for your other classes it depends on when the instructor submits them; the deadline we were given is this Friday, March 4.

March 3: Maha Shivratri. Today is the holiday of Maha Shivratri, in the Hindu calendar, a holiday celebrating the god Shiva. The festival began last night (Shivratri means "Shiva Night") and continues today; you can read about the special holiday rituals of Maha Shivratri in this article at about.com. The festival is especially associated with Shiva in his role as the cosmic dancer, as he performs the Tandava Nritya which accomplishes the creation, maintenance, destruction and renewal of the world. For this, Shiva receives the title Nata-Raja, Lord of the Dance:

Wednesday, March 2

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 7 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 6 Storybook assignment yet (adding your first story), 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.

Midterm Grade Reports. You should have received an email from me yesterday with the midterm grade report that I filed in Ozone as required by the university. I send out those emails since I have no idea when you can log on to Ozone and check all your midterm grades. The grade was calculated based on Weeks 1-6; for those of you who are working ahead and want to check on your grade currently, see the Grading Chart here.

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 Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in on Monday or Tuesday, your assignment is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

Week 7 Internet assignment. (repeat announcement) For the Week 7 Internet assignment, which is available now, you will be reading Storybook Introductions AND a story from each Storybook. Since you have more reading to do this time (a story and, possibly, the Introduction too), you will have just THREE Storybooks that you comment on - and you need to make sure there is a story to read at each of those Storybooks. If the Storybook does not have a first story published yet, please skip it and go to another one instead. You can definitely do the assignment now; everybody should have a story by now - and you do NOT have to wait on someone who is running late with their first story. If the Storybook that comes up for you randomly doesn't have a story yet, just refresh the page to get another Storybook at random.

March 2: Dr. Seuss. Today, March 2, marks the birthday in 1904 of the genius author Dr. Seuss, whose real name was Theodore Geisel. You are probably familiar with Dr. Seuss's marvelous books - my own favorite is Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose. If you want to find out more about his life, his goals as a writer - even detailed information about the poetic meters he used! - take a look at this long and detailed Wikipedia article. Dr. Seuss's books have been translated into many languages of the world - even Latin. Below is the book cover for The Cat in the Hat in Latin, Cattus Petasatus.

Tuesday, March 1

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 7 of the class, and I've re-arranged the Quiz area in Desire2Learn so Week 7 is on top. This week's topic is India or Japan in Myth-Folklore, while in World Literature you are taking a trip to the underworld. In Indian Epics, you are finishing up Buck's Ramayana. If you have not turned in your Week 6 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Week 7 Internet assignment. For the Week 7 Internet assignment, which is available now, you will be reading Storybook Introductions AND a story from each Storybook. Since you have more reading to do this time (a story and, possibly, the Introduction too), you will have just THREE Storybooks that you comment on - and you need to make sure there is a story to read at each of those Storybooks. If the Storybook does not have a first story published yet, please skip it and go to another one instead. You can definitely do the assignment now; everybody should have a story by now - and you do NOT have to wait on someone who is running late with their first story. If the Storybook that comes up for you randomly doesn't have a story yet, just refresh the page to get another Storybook at random.

Storybook Stack. As usual at the beginning of the week, there are still LOTS of Storybook assignments in the stack. If you turned something in on Friday or Saturday by noon, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in after noon on Saturday or on Sunday or on Monday, 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. PLEASE DO CHECK: especially since there was apparently some kind of OU email snafu over the weekend, you need to make sure I received your assignment.

Spring Break. (repeat announcement) For Spring Break, you will have the entire week off - that will happen during Week 8, as you can see on the Semester Calendar here. You will have your regular Week 8 assignments due next week on Tuesday-Thursday. Then, I would encourage everybody to finish up the final Week 8 assignments on Friday, March 11 - but if you want to wait and do them on the weekend after Spring Break, you can do that, too. The grace period for wrapping up Week 8 will be on Monday morning, March 21, after Spring Break.

March 1: Saint David's Day. Today is the feast day of Saint David (Dewi Sant in Welsh), the patron saint of Wales. You can learn more about Saint David and the Saint's David celebrations in this BBC article. Here is a depiction of Saint David in the stained glass windows of the Jesus College Chapel in Oxford, England.

Monday, February 28

*** It looks there may (?) have been some trouble with OU email on Sunday night. I'll be updating the stack on Monday morning; check the contents of the stack and make sure I got your email. If not, please send it again. Thanks! ***

Today is Monday, and Week 6 of the class is now over. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. Week 7 will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started (all except for the Week 7 Internet assignment, which will be available Tuesday, and the Week 7 Responding assignment, which will be available Friday, as usual).

Grading. Now that we have finished Week 6 of the semester, there have been 180 points of required work. You can consult this chart to get an indication of how you are doing in the class overall: if you have around 165 points (155 points if your Storybook has not been graded yet), you are headed for an A; if you have around 145 points (135 points), you are headed for a B; if you have around 125 points (115 points), you are headed for a C; with less than 125, you are in danger of failing the class. There are still 9 weeks left in the semester, which gives you plenty of time to improve your grade: just make sure you budget time to do more of the assigned work and, if you do miss an assignment, make sure you complete some extra credit points to make up for it.

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 be reading and reply to the assignments in the order they were turned in.

Storybook: Working ahead. In order to do the Week 7 Revision assignment, you will need to wait for comments back on your Week 6 Story assignment. Depending on just when you turned in your Week 6 assignment, you may have to wait until later in the week, even as late as Friday, in order to get comments back from me. If you want to work ahead on your Storybook, though, and everything is going well, with your Introduction in good shape and your storytelling plan clearly laid out - just move right ahead to the Week 8 assignment, adding the second story to your Storybook!

February 28: John Tenniel. Today, February 28, marks the birthday in the year 1820 of the great English illustrator, John Tenniel, who is most famous for his illustrations to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. You can read about Tenniel's life and career in this Wikipedia article. You can see many of his illustrations to the Alice books in the Wonderland unit for the Myth-Folklore class and the Looking-Glass unit for the World Literature class. Here, for example, is the illustration of Humpty-Dumpty the egg who sat on the wall ... just before he has his great fall! Ouch!