Friday, September 16 - Sunday, September 18

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!

RESPONDING GROUPS. This week I did a big reshuffling of the blog responding groups. The groups are random, but hopefully you will have at least one new person in your group. I sometimes adjust the groups from week to week, but every few weeks I do a big reshuffle like this. If somehow I've accidentally left anybody off the list, please let me know right away!

Storybook Stack. On Friday morning, I still had a few Storybooks left in the stack. 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, 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.

Writing Center and Grammar Review. (repeat announcement) 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 grammar, 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. For hours and services, see the Writing Center website. You can also work on specific problem areas by using the Proofreading Practice stories online, with answer keys. Not sure if you need practice? Look back at your Stonecutter story results from Week 1 - if you had trouble with that proofreading exercise, make sure you do some review before you turn in the Week 4 Storybook Introduction.

Week 4 Internet: Coverpages. (repeat announcement) For your Internet assignment this week, you will be publishing a Coverpage for your Storybook. If you are using Google Sites, 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 in Myth-Folklore and in Indian Epics, and you can also take a look at this semester's new projects: Myth-Folklore Storybooks and Indian Epics Storybooks.

Friday Events. Lee Green, from OU's Religious Studies program, will present a public lecture - From Pacifist to Warrior-Christ: Jesus in Medieval Imagination - at the Norman Public Library (225 N. Webster), on Friday at 6:30PM (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Friday at the Campus Calendar online.

Photographs from Kenya. A student in the Myth-Folklore class, Kendall Brown, has her photographs from Kenya on display at the Norman Firehouse Art Center (444 S. Flood Ave.). You can drop by and see the exhibit through October 29; the gallery is open to the public M-F 9:30AM-5:30PM and Saturday 10AM-4PM. If you want to get in touch with Kendall, you can contact her via her Ning profile page for the class or at the Firehouse's Recourse for Discourse Facebook page. Here is one of her photographs: Ere kama aluwo kadhi Polo kaa ka? How do I get to Heaven from here?

Thursday, September 15

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, 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!

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 grammar, 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. For hours and services, see the Writing Center website. You can also work on specific problem areas by using the Proofreading Practice stories online, with answer keys. Not sure if you need practice? Look back at your Stonecutter story results from Week 1 - if you had trouble with that proofreading exercise, make sure you do some review before you turn in the Week 4 Storybook Introduction.

Week 4 Internet: Coverpages. (repeat announcement) For your Internet assignment this week, you will be publishing a Coverpage for your Storybook. If you are using Google Sites, 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 in Myth-Folklore and in Indian Epics, and you can also take a look at this semester's new projects: Myth-Folklore Storybooks and Indian Epics Storybooks.

Thursday Events on Campus. There is a Student Success seminar that might be of real interest to everybody with a lot of reading to do this semester: Improving Reading Speed with Adequate Comprehension, Wagner Hall 245, Thursday, 5PM-6PM (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Thursday at the Campus Calendar online.

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:

Wednesday, September 14

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; in addition to comments at the top of the email, there are comments marked with ==> in the body of the email. Please read through all the comments in the email and if you have any questions, ask! 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 Storybook 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 10PM, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in after 10PM 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, try to turn your Storybook in before Sunday; each time you turn in a Storybook assignment, you will need to wait on comments back from me before you go on to the next Storybook assignment.

Week 4 Internet: Coverpages. (repeat announcement) For your Internet assignment this week, you will be publishing a Coverpage for your Storybook. If you are using Google Sites, 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 in Myth-Folklore and in Indian Epics, and you can also take a look at this semester's new projects: Myth-Folklore Storybooks and Indian Epics Storybooks.

Wednesday Events on Campus. Dr. Zoe Sherinian will be presenting her documentary film This Is A Music: Reclaiming An Untouchable Drum, which is about a group of outcaste (untouchable) drummers from rural India. See the film at 5PM on Wednesday in Pitman Recital Hall, Catlett Music Center (time/location/details). Below is a trailer for the movie from YouTube!

Tuesday, September 13

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 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 noon, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in after noon 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 Google Sites, 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 in Myth-Folklore and in Indian Epics, 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): Myth-Folklore Storybooks and Indian Epics Storybooks. 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.

Tech Tip Emails. I finally got a chance to reply to the big pile of Tech Tip emails that had accumulated over the past week, so if you sent me a Tech Tip email, you should now have gotten a reply. It often takes me a week or two to get around to replying to those emails, but please don't let that hold you back - you can keep on doing Tech Tips for Week 4 and 5 and 6 and all the way through Week 15 if you want; you don't need to wait for a reply from me before going on to do another tip.

Tuesday Events on Campus. There will be a Blood Drive on Tuesday from 1:30PM to 6PM in the Gothic Hall of Catlett Music Center. Donors will receive an OU Bedlam blood donor T-shirt and a free health screening (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Tuesday at the Campus Calendar online.

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 listing 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:

Monday, September 12

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 Week 4 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, September 19.

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 9AM 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. So, if you were not able to turn your Storybook in over the weekend, the sooner you can turn that in late, the better.

Monday Events on Campus. Dr. Nicole Campbell will present a workshop on "The Psychology of Student Success" on Monday, 4PM-5PM in Wagner Hall 245 (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Monday at the Campus Calendar online.

September 12: Lascaux caves. September 12 marks the anniversary of the discovery in 1940 of the amazing prehistoric cave paintings found at Lascaux in France. The cave walls were decorated with upwards of two thousand images, including hundreds of animals. You can read more about the Lascaux cave paintings in this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for the image shown below. The paintings are estimated to date to approximately 16,000 years ago, during what used to be called the "Stone Age" (Upper Paleolithic, a period of human culture that lasted from around 40,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE). As you can see, the paintings are truly beautiful and very dramatic... although, without recorded language, we will never know just what stories the paintings commemorate.