Friday, September 30 - Sunday, October 2

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 6! The Week 6 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and so is the Week 6 Internet assignment (Storybook commenting), along with the remaining Week 6 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.

Commenting on Storybooks. (repeat announcement) Every week from now through Week 12 of the semester, you will be commenting on people's writing at their Storybooks. During these weeks as you comment on people's Storybooks, please provide as much detailed, specific feedback as possible! It's nice to get compliments, but it is also really good to get feedback about what things could be improved, especially now, early in the semester. So, do not hesitate to say when something is confusing, or when something seems repetitious, or if you think something important is missing. Every semester, students tell me that they wish they had received more detailed feedback on their Storybooks, rather than just generic compliments. So, try to be a really careful and attentive reader of each Storybook you visit, providing detailed, useful feedback in your comments, describing your own specific, personal experience as you read the Storybook.

The Ning Comment Wall. (repeat announcement) As you saw last week, people will now be leaving comments about your Storybook at the Ning Comment Wall which is part of your Ning Profile page. It would be great if you make the latest activity and blog activity invisible, so that way there will be more room on your Profile page for the Comment Wall. There is a Technology Tip for cleaning up your Ning Profile in order to get things all spiffed up and ready for visitors.

Storybook Stack. If you turned in a Week 5 Storybook assignment on time, you should now have comments back from me. There are still some late Week 5 and early Week 6-7-8-etc. Storybook assignments in the stack as of Friday morning. My goal is always to get every Storybook returned before the weekend that is turned in before noon on Friday. If you turn something in after noon on Friday, it will go to the top of the stack on Monday morning. For those of you who would like to get comments back sooner rather than later on your Storybook assignment, turn it in on Friday or on Saturday - don't wait until Sunday!

Weekend Events on Campus. Katlin, in Myth-Folklore, asked me to share an announcement: On Saturday my sorority, Alpha Sigma Kappa, is going to be having a bake sale at Kirkpatrick Manor at the corner of Cruce and Lahoma. We are going to donate the money raised to the Joplin Disaster Relief. We will start on Saturday at 2PM and go until 6PM. (for more information, contact Katlin via her Ning page). Find out more about this event and other events happening over the weekend at the Campus Calendar online.

Sunday, October 2: Birthday of Gandhi. The great Indian spiritual and political leader, Mohandas Gandhi, was born on October 2, 1869, over 140 years ago. On January 30 in 1948, after having led the fight for India's independence from the British Empire, Gandhi was assassinated. The image below shows the memorial in New Delhi where Gandhi's body was cremated. Written on the stone you can see what were reportedly Gandhi's last words: "Hey Ram" (Oh Rama!) - his invocation of the god Rama will definitely mean something to the students in the Indian Epics class. Although it is a matter of some controversy as to whether those were Gandhi's last words, here is something he wrote in December 1947, just weeks before his assassination: "In the end it will be as Rama commands me. Thus I dance as He pulls the strings. I am in His hands and so I am experiencing ineffable peace." If you look closely at the photograph, you will see the words "Hey Ram" written in Devanagari script, gold letters on the black stone, just behind the burning stick of incense:

Thursday, September 29

Today is Thursday of WEEK 6 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 5 Storybook assignment yet, you may turn that in on Thursday morning for partial credit. Thursday morning, until noon, is also the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday.

Commenting on Storybooks. Every week from now through Week 12 of the semester, you will be commenting on people's writing at their Storybooks. During these weeks as you comment on people's Storybooks, please provide as much detailed, specific feedback as possible! It's nice to get compliments, but it is also really good to get feedback about what things could be improved, especially now, early in the semester. So, do not hesitate to say when something is confusing, or when something seems repetitious, or if you think something is important is missing. Every semester, students tell me that they wish they had received more detailed feedback on their Storybooks, rather than just generic compliments. So, try to be a really careful and attentive reader of each Storybook you visit, providing detailed, useful feedback in your comments, describing your own specific, personal experience as you read the Storybook.

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 an assignment in on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, your assignment 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. Friday at noon is the deadline if you want to get comments back from me about your Storybook before the weekend.

Thursday Events on Campus. Tonight and over the weekend, there will be one more round of University Theater performances of William McNulty's dramatic adaption of Bram Stoker's Dracula; for more information, see the article in the OU Daily (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Thursday at the Campus Calendar online.

September 29 2011: Rosh Hashanah. Today is the first day of the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah (which means "Head-of-the-Year" or "Top-of-the-Year"). Like many religious holidays, this one is based on the lunar calendar, so it falls on a different day each year, depending on the cycle of moon. According to Jewish tradition, this is the day of the year on which God created Adam, and it is also the day of the year on which the Last Judgment will take place. One of the rituals on Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the shofar, the ram's horn, to awaken the faithful before that coming judgment. You can read more about the holiday at Wikipedia, and below you can see the blowing of the shofar as shown here in an illuminated Hebrew manuscript:

Wednesday, September 28

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 6 of the class. If you have not turned in your Week 5 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.

Yahoo Email Users. For those of you who have your OU email forwarded to a Yahoo address, you may not be receiving your emails. For more information, see this post by our D2L administrator. It's fine with me if you want to have your OU email forwarded and I will always reply to whatever email address you write to me from - but you should be aware that sometimes Yahoo and Hotmail do block OU emails; I've never heard of this problem with other email addresses, but it does sometimes happen with Yahoo and Hotmail.

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 before 8PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in later on Sunday or on Monday or Tuesday, your assignment is probably still in the stack, waiting for me to get to it. You can check to make sure your assignment is in the stack; here are the contents of the stack.

Week 6 Internet assignment. If you did not read yesterday's announcement about the Week 6 Internet assignment (reading and commenting on Storybook Introductions), please make sure to take a look at that - the assignment is available now!

Wednesday Events on Campus. There will be a noon-time "Celebrity Read" with stories and poems from the NSK Neustadt prize-winning children's books as read by James Tyree, Mike Hosty, Molly Griffis, Marilyn Hudson, Clarke Stroud, and Kellie Coffey - join an audience of 200 fourth and fifth grade kids in the Union Courtyard from 11:30AM-1PM (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Wednesday at the Campus Calendar online.

September 28: Confucius. September 28 is a day traditionally assigned to the birthday of the Chinese philosopher Confucius in the year 551 BCE. You can read about Confucius in this Wikipedia article, and also in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online. Confucius's philosophy was already famous in Europe in the 17th century, as you can see from this Latin edition of his works published in 1687 (click here for a larger view; if you are a student of Latin, you might see how much of the text you can understand). Happy birthday, Confucius!

Tuesday, September 27

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 6 of the class, and I've re-arranged the Quiz area in Desire2Learn so Week 6 is on top. This week's topic is the Middle East in Myth-Folklore, and in Indian Epics, Hanuman is on his way to Lanka! If you have not turned in your Week 5 Storybook assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit.

Week 6 Internet assignment available NOW. Now that Week 6 has begun, the Week 6 Internet assignment is also available. You will be reading and commenting on four different Introductions this week. You'll find detailed instructions at the Internet assignment page - that assignment is ready to go now, and will be available all week.

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 before 10AM, you should have comments back from me already. If you turned something in later on Saturday or on Sunday or 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. It is really important that you check to make sure your assignment is in the stack. Every week, it seems that at least one email is mysteriously gobbled up by the OU email system - and the sooner you can let me know about that, the better!

D2L Quiz Problems. Around noon on Monday, D2L had the same quiz problems as before, where the quiz did not display and there was only an error message. My apologies for this: we have never had these kinds of problems with D2L before; I can just hope it does not happen again. Thanks to the folks who wrote in about this! A big part of the problem is that the folks in IT do not know there is a problem until someone reports it. The problem has been fixed now, but if it happens again, please let me know!

Tuesday Events. This year's Neustadt Festival of International Literature opens with a public poetry reading by Oklahoma poets Dorothy Alexander, Joey Brown, Nathan Brown, Ken Hada, Carol Hamilton, and Ben Myers. Festivities begin at 7:30PM at the Norman Train Depot, 200 S. Jones Street. Wine and snacks will be served - plus a champagne toast for those who arrive at 7:30PM to open the Festival! (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Tuesday at the Campus Calendar online.

September 27: Rosetta Stone. On this day in the year 1822, Jean-François Champollion announced that he had deciphered the Rosetta stone, a crucial step in the interpretation of the ancient Egyptian writing system which was based on hieroglyphs. So, if you keep seeing ads for "Rosetta Stone" language-learning software, you might be interested in reading about the history of the real Rosetta Stone itself! You can find out more in this Wikipedia article, and below you can see a picture of the actual Rosetta Stone itself in the British Museum:

Monday, September 26

Today is Monday, and Week 5 of the class is now over - and that means you have completed one-third of the semester. Wow! Week 6 will begin tomorrow - and those assignments are available now if you want to get started. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Friday/Saturday/Sunday.\

D2L QUIZ PROBLEMS. Around noon on Monday (of course!), D2L had the same quiz problems as before, where you the quiz will not display and you get an error message. As before, it is not clear how many quizzes were affected or how many people got the error - I've been assured they are in the process of fixing it right now (Monday afternoon), but if you run into quiz problems that prevent you from completing an assignment on time, let me know and I'll record the points manually. My apologies for all this: we have never had these kinds of problems with D2L before, but we are running a new version this Fall - hence the bugs. Thanks to the folks who wrote in about this; a big part of the problem is that they do not know there is a problem until someone reports 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 9 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 replying to the assignments in the order they were turned in, beginning with the assignments turned in on Friday afternoon or on Saturday. You need to wait on my comments to any Storybook assignment you have in the stack before going on to the next assignment - so, if you want comments earlier rather than later, turn your assignment in on Friday or Saturday instead of waiting until Sunday. Usually around 60 people or so turn their assignments in on Sunday, so it takes me a while to get through them all!

Tech Tip Emails. This week I should have time to reply to the big pile of Tech Tip emails that has accumulated over the past two weeks. 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 6 and 7 and 8 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.

Monday Events on Campus. A free Flute Recital by DuoSolo - Michael & Mary Kirkendoll - at 8PM in the Pitman Recital Hall, Catlett Music Center (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Monday at the Campus Calendar online.

September 26: Vladimir Voinovich. Today is the birthday of one of my favorite Soviet-era writers, Vladimir Voinovich, who was born in 1932. His satirical novel, The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin, is kind of like a Soviet Catch-22, but even sharper and funnier, in my opinion. You can read about the book in this Wikipedia article - and yes, the book is available in English translation, too!

(image source)