Class Procedures and Reminders:
Storybook Stack. If you turned in an assignment by 5PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me and points recorded in the Gradebook. If you turned in your assignment later on Sunday or on Monday or Tuesday, it may still be in the stack. You can always check the stack to make sure I have your assignment. Meanwhile, if you want comments back sooner, don't wait until Sunday to turn in your end-of-week assignments. I respond to the assignments in the order received, which means you will have to wait longer if you turn in your work along with fifty other people on Sunday evening.
You really can call me Laura! Some of you still seem to feel like you need to call me Professor or Dr. or something like that. No need for that, really! (Plus, I am just an instructor and not a professor, so I don't want to get in trouble with the professor police, ha ha.) Anyway, since I'm on a first-name basis with all of you, please do the same and just call me Laura.
Announcements. You can sign up for the announcements by email in the sidebar of this blog, and you can also find links to past announcements in the sidebar. Likewise, at the bottom of each post there is an "older post" link that allows you to page back through any announcements you might have missed.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Featured Resource: Kyle Wiens on Grammar in the Business World. I thought this might be a good follow-up to the results of the proofreading results that I shared in yesterday's announcements. One of the many reasons why I want to help people so that they will feel comfortable and confident in their writing is because being able to write well could be an important asset in your job search and future career.
Featured Storybook: The Diary of Karma. This ingenious Storybook combines one of the most popular storytelling styles, the diary, with an investigation of the force of karma in the lives of characters from the Indian epics. Karma is a universal force that can be discerned in the events of every day, so the diary is a perfect format in which to explore that force. (The image on the cover is the OM mantra.)
FREE Kindle eBook: Egyptian Literature, edited by Epiphanius Wilson. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book, which includes the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Perhaps of interest to those of you doing the Egypt unit in Myth-Folklore this week!
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Better to go around the manure than to move it (a Polish proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. For those of you interested in Slavic languages, Polish gówno is a bit more explicit than just "manure." :-)
Wednesday Event on Campus: I like to include OU events on campus, especially cultural events that connect to the topics of these classes, but the general campus calendar sure has very slim pickings right now. For any of you who are involved in student groups, please make sure you publicize your events through the general Campus Calendar! It could be a great resource for OU, but right now it is very little used.
August 28: Birthday of Goethe. Today, August 28, marks the birthday in 1749 of the great German writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. His contributions to German literature are enormous, and he is probably most famous for his play Faust, the story of a scholar who makes a bargain with the devil in exchange for knowledge. The story of Faust was an old German legend which Goethe adapted for his own purposes, just as you will be adapting old legends and stories for your own Storybooks. You can read more about Goethe in this detailed Wikipedia article. Goethe was very interested in botany; below you can see a poem Goethe wrote about the Gingko plant (here's an English translation), and he illustrated the poem with pressed leaves from the plant!
Remember, you can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.
