Friday, September 2 - Monday, September 5

HAPPY HOLIDAY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 2. The Week 2 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and the remaining Week 2 assignments are due now also, on Friday - or over the weekend if you prefer, on Saturday or Sunday (with the usual Monday morning grace period).

LABOR DAY. Because Monday is a holiday, there will be no new announcements on Monday. The next announcements will be on Tuesday, September 6. Because you do not have any assignments due on Monday, there is no change in the class schedule for this holiday. If you are planning to take off for the three-day weekend, make sure you finish all the Week 2 assignments today, Friday! If you choose not to finish those assignments on Friday, you can finish them over the weekend, on Saturday or Sunday; the grace period on Monday still applies as usual.

Week 2 Read and Respond (blog comment) assignment. The Week 2 blog commenting assignment is available now! Make sure you check your groups; most of you are in the same group as last time, but I have made a few changes based on add/drops. You can complete that assignment today, Friday, or on Saturday or Sunday if you prefer; the usual Monday morning grace period applies.

Storybook assignments. If you want to receive comments from me about a Storybook assignment before the weekend, please turn it in before noon on Friday. I always do my best to read and reply on Friday afternoon to all the assignments turned in before noon. If you turn in an assignment after noon Friday or over the holiday weekend, I'll be updating the list again on TUESDAY, after the Monday holiday. So, on Tuesday morning, you can check the list of assignments in the Stack and you'll be able to make sure I received your assignment; I'll then start reading through the assignments in the order received to send you back comments. Please do NOT go on to the next Storybook assignment until you get comments back from me about the assignment you have turned in. I reply to the Storybooks in the order they are turned in, so the earlier you turn in your assignment, the sooner you will get back comments and be able to move on to the next Storybook assignment!

Refund reminder: Friday is the last day for a refund. For those of you who are still deciding whether or not you want to stay in the class, Friday, September 2, is when you need to make that decision. You can still drop on Friday and get a full refund. After Friday, you can drop the class with an automatic W on your transcript, but the university will be keeping your money.

Friday Events on Campus. Free showing of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides in the Union, Governors Room, at 6:30PM, and then at 9PM and then at midnight (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Friday at the Campus Calendar online.

Friday, September 2: Death of J. R. R. Tolkien. Today, September 2, marks the death in 1973 of the great English author, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who is best known for creating the marvelous fantasy world of Middle Earth, in which he set his novel The Hobbit and the trilogy known as Lord of the Rings. I first encountered Tolkien when my fourth-grade teacher read The Hobbit to us in class, and I spent all of junior high reading and re-reading The Lord of the Rings. You can read about Tolkien's life and career in this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for this drawing that shows Tolkien's own design for the covers of The Lord of the Rings trilogy:

Thursday, September 1

Today is Thursday of WEEK 2 of the class. For those of you in Myth-Folklore, Thursday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday.

Week 2 Read and Respond assignment. The Week 2 blog commenting assignment is NOT available yet; it will be available starting on Friday. The blog commenting assignment is the only assignment you cannot complete early, because people will still be adding posts to their blog today, Thursday. So, after midnight tonight, that is, at 12:01AM on FRIDAY, you can do that Read and Respond assignment; you have Friday, Saturday and Sunday to finish the blog responding since it is one of those Friday/weekend assignments.

Storybook Stack. If you turned in a Storybook assignment before Tuesday, you should have comments back from me; if you turned something in on Tuesday or Wednesday, it is probably still be in the stack (you can check the contents of the stack here). Meanwhile, if you want Storybook comments from me this week, make sure you get your assignment turned in today or on Friday morning. I do my very best every week to read and reply to every assignment that is turned in before noon on Friday; assignments turned in after noon on Friday go into the stack for Monday.

Friday, September 2: Final day to drop with refund. Friday, September 2, will be the final day to drop a class and get a full refund. So, if you are finding out that this class does not fit into your schedule after all, or that the workload is too demanding, you can still drop the class and get a refund. The Week 2 assignments should be giving you a sense of what the regular weekly assignments will be like for the rest of the semester, so you will have a good basis on which to make your decision. If you have any questions about the class you'd like to ask before you make your decision, let me know!

Thursday Events on Campus. FREE CONCERT: Union Sound Lounge featuring Aranda, East Lawn of the Union, 8PM-10PM (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Thursday at the Campus Calendar online.

September 1: Edgar Rice Burroughs. Today marks the birthday in 1875 of the American author Edgar Rice Burroughs, who is best known for having invented the story of Tarzan. You can read more about Burroughs's life and career in this Wikipedia article, and you can read many of his books online as they are in the public domain. Here is an inventory of Burroughs books online, including the Tarzan books - over 20 of them! There are even Tarzan audiobooks available for free download from LibriVox. So, get in touch with your inner ape and spend some time today with Tarzan if you are so inclined! The following image is for the LibriVox edition of Tarzan of the Apes:

Wednesday, August 31

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 2 of the class. Wednesday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Tuesday.

Storybook Stack. I'm still making my way through the stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in an assignment on Sunday before 10PM, you should have comments back from me. If you turned in an assignment later on Sunday or on Monday or Tuesday, it is probably still in the stack. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here.

Storybook Emails. Please remember to save the emails I send you back about your Storybook assignments. My comments are marked with ==> in the body of the email, and you will need those comments when you go on to the next Storybook assignment. I promise to reply to everybody by the end of the week - but when you turn in an assignment on Sunday or later, the stack is very big, and it takes me all week sometimes to get through it... especially when Desire2Learn is being cranky! See next announcement.

D2L QUIZ ERRORS: FIXED. Supposedly the problems that started happening again mid-day on Tuesday have been fixed. So, you should not be running into any problems... but if you do, I definitely need to know since D2L apparently does not keep records of these errors - they depend on us to report it. So, if you get an error message when you take a quiz, please let me know WHICH quiz (or declaration) and what the error message is. Sending a screenshot is great (here's how to do screenshots). Thanks for your help! I hope very much that this is the last time we will have this problem.

Wednesday Events on Campus. Student Success Series: Connecting on Campus - a presentation by Quy Nguyen, Student Life - in Wagner Hall 245, 3PM-4PM (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Wednesday at the Campus Calendar online - plus, you can see the whole Student Success calendar of events online, too!

August 31: Kinetoscope Patent. On this day in 1897, the American inventor Thomas Edison was issued a patent for the Kinetoscope, an early motion picture device. The word Kinetoscope is formed from the Greek root meaning "motion" - hence "motion pictures," and also the word "cinema" (formed from the same Greek root as Kinetoscope). The image below shows an advertisement from the early 1900s promoting the use of a projecting version of the Kinetoscope for home viewing. We've come a long way in the past one hundred years, with technology like the DVD making movies as familiar in the home as books on a bookshelf! You can read more about the history of the Kinetoscope in this Wikipedia article. (Click here for a a larger view of the image.)

Tuesday, August 30

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 2 of the class. I've moved the Week 2 Quizzes and Declarations to the TOP of the Desire2Learn area now. This week in Indian Epics you are starting Narayan's Ramayana, while it's Ancient Near East week in Myth-Folklore. I really hope you will enjoy the readings!

D2L QUIZ ERRORS: FIXED. Supposedly the problems with D2L quizzes have been fixed. So, you should not be running into any problems... but if you do, I definitely need to know since D2L apparently does not keep records of these errors - they depend on us to report it. So, if you get an error message when you take a quiz, please let me know WHICH quiz (or declaration) and what the error message is. Sending a screenshot is great (here's how to do screenshots). Thanks for your help! I hope very much that this is the last time we will have this problem.

Storybook Stack. A very large number of Storybook assignments came in over the weekend and on Monday, and I've been reading through those in the order that they came in. If you turned in a Myth-Folklore Bibliography assignment before noon on Sunday, you should have comments back from me, with points recorded for you in the Gradebook (check and make sure!). If you turned something in later 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. If you want comments back sooner on your Storybook, turn it in on Friday or Saturday instead of waiting until Sunday. If you wait until Sunday (or later), there is a huge stack of assignments and it takes me a while to reply to them all.

Storybook Comments via email. When I send back Storybook comments to you via email, you will see that my comments are inserted into your email, and are marked with ==> to make them easy to find. PLEASE READ THESE COMMENTS. The comments for each week should help you when you do your assignment for the next week, and possibly in future weeks, too, so make sure you save the emails that I send back to you about your Storybook assignment so that you can consult them later as needed.

Tuesday Events on Campus. Many of you are seniors, so you might be interested in this workshop at Career Services, Tuesday 2:30 PM in the OMU Traditions Room: Creating a Winning Resume (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Tuesday at the Campus Calendar online.

August 30: Birthday of Mary Shelley. August 30, marks the birthday in 1797 of the famous English writer, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (she is the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman). Mary Shelley is best known for her novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus, published in 1818. I'm sure you are all familiar with Frankenstein and his monster; Prometheus, meanwhile, was the Greek Titan who created human beings out of clay (he is also famous for having stolen fire to give it as a gift to humanity). You can read more about Mary Shelley in this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for this portrait of Shelley painted in 1840 by Richard Rothwell:

Monday, August 29

Today is Monday, and Week 1 of the class is now over. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the Week 1 assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday. If you want to remain in the class you MUST complete all the Week 1 assignments!

Monday: Time to work ahead. You do not have any assignments due on Monday, which makes it the PERFECT chance to work ahead on the Week 2 assignments. Believe me: if you put off the assignments in this class until the day that they are due, you are going to be under a lot of stress. If you can work at your own pace just a day or two ahead of the deadlines, you will find the class much easier to manage!

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 Week 1 Storybook assignments from Myth-Folklore, plus early Week 2 and Week 3 Storybook assignments from both classes. The first thing I will do on Monday morning 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. For those of you who are working ahead: you will need my comments on the assignment before you can move on to the next Storybook assignment - but you can keep working ahead on other assignments, and I will get the Storybook assignments returned as quickly as I can.

Myth-Folklore: Gilgamesh OR Egypt. Those of you who are in the Myth-Folklore class will have a choice of readings each week. In Week 2, the choice is between Gilgamesh OR Egypt. You will do only one set of readings, and take the background quiz and reading quiz based on your choice of Gilgamesh OR Egypt. You will end up with some blank items in the Gradebook; that is just because Desire2Learn, expensive software though it may be, cannot even conceive of a world in which students have a choice of what to do (sad, isn't it?). Your goal is to get 30 points per week, and if you do the quizzes for just one of the reading selections, you will end up with the points you need. Please do not do both sets of quizzes; just do the quizzes for the reading option you have chosen.

Monday Events on Campus. This week is the last chance to see the exhibition by visiting artist visiting artist Sara Schneckloth in the Fred Jones Jr. Art Center; the exhibit runs through September 2 (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on campus at the Campus Calendar online.

August 29: Ingres. Today marks the birthday in the year 1780 of the great French Neoclassical painter, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. You can read more about Ingres' life and career in this Wikipedia article. He painted many mythological subjects; one of his most famous paintings is this depiction of Oedipus and the Sphinx; you can read about the Oedipus legend here.