Friday, Jan. 20 - Sunday, Jan. 22

HAPPY WEEKEND! You have reached the end of Week 1! The Week 1 Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now, and all remaining Week 1 assignments are due on Friday or on Saturday or Sunday (based on what is most convenient for you) - please make sure you get started on those assignments soon. Also, Friday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Thursday.

Daily Announcements. If you did not keep up with the Announcements this week, check the Announcements blog to review the information covered in all the announcements this week.

Read and Respond Blog Comments. Now that everybody has had a chance to finish their blog posts for the week, the Read and Respond assignment for Week 1 is available! I've put everybody into "blog groups" so that you can start getting to know some other people in the class. To find out just what you need to do for this assignment and to see who is in your group, visit the Read and Respond assignment page.

Proofreading/Storybook Assignments. I will read and reply to as many of the Proofreading and early Storybook assignments as I can on Friday. To make sure that I received your assignment in the email, you can check the stack which lists all the email assignments I have received but not yet replied to. What I do not finish on Friday, I will finish on Monday, based on the order in which the assignments were turned in.

Get ahead this weekend! This weekend is the absolute best time to get ahead in this class, before things really get busy in your other classes. If you can do all the Week 2 assignments this weekend, that will give you a cushion of extra time that will make the whole semester much easier for you in this class. The Early Bird extra credit is the easiest extra credit you can get. To take these extra credit points, you don't have to do any extra work - you just have to be on your own schedule, one week (or more) ahead of the class deadlines. Believe me: you will enjoy this class so much more if you set your own schedule, based on what is truly convenient for you, rather than waiting for the deadlines.

My weekend schedule. I check email occasionally over the weekend, and I will do my best to respond promptly to any urgent problems or questions that come up. In general, though, any email that you send to me over the weekend will wait until Monday morning, when I get back to work. So, please be patient: if you do not get an answer from me during the weekend, I will get back to you promptly on Monday.

Friday Events on Campus. The Opening Reception for the 98th Annual Student Art Exhibition will be happening in the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Sandy Bell Gallery, 7PM-10PM (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Friday and over the weekend at the Campus Calendar online.

Sunday, January 22: The "1984" Macintosh commercial. Today, January 22, is a fun technology anniversary! On this day in 1984 -- almost 30 years ago! -- the Macintosh personal computer made its debut in a television advertisement during Superbowl XVIII. There is an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to this advertisement which marked a real changing point in the history of personal computing, as well as being a landmark in advertising, too. You can watch the advertisement at YouTube - and if you haven't ever seen it, it's definitely worth taking a look. It's a great example of storytelling, told with images, all in just 60 seconds.


I also really liked this quite new and extremely funny Apple-inspired video by Instructure, a software company that markets a program called "Canvas" which is a competitor to "Desire2Learn," the learning management system we use here at OU. Very funny - and it shows that the memory of the old Apple ad lives on even now:

Thursday, January 19

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!

Ning FAQs and Tips. I want to call your attention to the list of Ning FAQs and Tips at the class wiki. You will find information there about managing your Ning blog and also about your profile page. If there is something you want to find out which is not answered there already, please let me know and I'll add to the list of tips!

Grace period. Some of you are getting in the habit of treating the Grace period as if it were the "real" due date for your assignments. Here's the problem: if you treat the Grace period as the deadline, then you won't have any Grace period left for an emergency. 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. If something is due on Thursday, it really is due ON THURSDAY - which means you should 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!

2 classes = 1 Ning. As you have noticed, both 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 prefer to pay just once, instead of having to pay for multiple Nings. The other reason is that later on in the semester you will be looking at the Storybooks for the students in the other class, so you need a shared space where you can interact. Starting tomorrow, Friday, you'll be able to do the Read & Respond assignment, reading and responding to the blog posts of people in your class (more about that in tomorrow's announcements) - in the meantime, feel free to leave comments on anything at the Ning that happens to get your attention!

Thursday Events on Campus. There will be an "iRock" concert as part of Winter Welcome Week in the Union, 8PM-10:30PM (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Thursday at the Campus Calendar online.

January 19: Edgar Allan Poe. Today, January 19, marks the anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe in the year 1809, just over 200 years ago. You can read more about Poe's remarkable and tragic life in this detailed Wikipedia article. Below is an image of the cover designed by the famous illustrator Gustave Dore for Poe's famous poem, The Raven:

Wednesday, January 18

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 1 of class. Wednesday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Tuesday. Please make sure you finish all the Tuesday assignments during the grace period. The Orientation Week assignments are REQUIRED if you want to remain in the class.

Class announcements. You should be reading the class announcements every day. If you did not read the Tuesday announcements, please make sure you do that now: Tuesday announcements. There was important information in the Tuesday announcements that will be helpful as you complete your various assignments for this week.

Wednesday assignments. You have assignments due today, Wednesday, that will get you ready for the creative kinds of story re-telling you will be doing in this class. Please make sure you complete today's assignments; these first week assignments are mandatory and must be completed if you want to remain in the class.

Wednesday Events on Campus. As part of Campus Activities Council "Winter Welcome," there will be Puppies on the South Oval (weather permitting) from 1PM to 3PM (time/location/details). Find out more about this event and other events happening on Wednesday at the Campus Calendar online.

Your announcements for the class. If any of you are involved in campus activities that you want me to publicize, please let me know. I'll be glad to include them here in the class announcements. Send me specific information about day-time-location, and also a link to a webpage or any additional online information you have about the group or activity.

Wikipedia SOPA/PIPA Blackout. On Wednesday, Wikipedia is participating in an Internet blackout to protest the proposed SOPA and PIPA legislation. I would rate Wikipedia as the single most valuable website on the Internet, and I support their efforts to fight both SOPA and PIPA by means of this protest. You can learn more about why Wikipedia is fighting SOPA and PIPA here. For those of you working ahead on your Storybook project, you may want to find a different class assignment to work on during the Wikipedia blackout, and I will not be able to reply to any Storybook assignments you have turned in while the blackout is in effect. Yes, it is disruptive - which is actually the point, helping us to be aware of the serious threat posed by SOPA and PIPA. As someone who publishes all my teaching materials online on the open Internet, I am very concerned that this legislation will put my own efforts as an educator at risk. So, I hope that the blackout by Wikipedia will help everyone realize just how important it is that we have an open Internet to protect and promote the public good. Meanwhile, Wikipedia should be back online on Thursday, ready to provide valuable reference materials for those of you already working ahead on your Storybooks!

Tuesday, January 17: Spring 2012 begins!

Hello, everybody, and welcome to SPRING SEMESTER 2012. I hope you had a great winter break and that you will have an exciting semester ahead! In this online course, you have a week of orientation activities to help you get acquainted with the tools and resources you will be using this semester. Please get started on the activities TODAY, since you have some assignments that are already DUE ON TUESDAY. Here is how to get started:

Course websites. You will find all the information you need about the course assignments at the website for the class you are enrolled in. Just click on the website for your course and then click on the Week 1 Orientation link to see this week's assignments:

• MLLL-3043: Mythology-Folklore
• MLLL-4993: Indian Epics

You will see all fifteen weeks of the semester listed on the homepage of each course website, and you are welcome to work as far ahead as you want. So, if you have some free time now, before your other classes really get busy, you could get a good head start on the class. A few students are already working ahead on Week 3! GO SOONERS!

Assignment Stack. Each week there will be something you turn in to me via email that I will then read and comment on. In the first week, for example, you will turn in a Proofreading Practice assignment. As you turn those assignments in, I list them in the Stack. You can always check the stack to make sure I have received your assignment. I work through the stack in the order that the items were turned in. If you have turned something in and do not see it listed in the stack, please contact me so that we can track down the missing email!

Questions...? The first week's Orientation activities are designed to introduce you to all the class activities and procedures, so don't worry: everything will become a lot more clear as you work your way through the Orientation assignments. Meanwhile, feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the class that are not answered at the course website.