Class Procedures and Reminders:
My Friday Schedule. This Friday I will be out of the office for most of the day, so not as quick to respond to emails as usual. I will be trying to clear out the Storybook stack on Thursday, so if you want comments back from me before the weekend, you need to get your assignment turned in by noon on Thursday. (I cannot promise that I will be able to reply before the weekend to Storybook assignments turned in later than that, but I will try to.)
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; find out more about Good Feedback: Details, Details, Details!
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 in an assignment on Monday, 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.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Featured Tech Tip: D2L Profile Page. Although we don't use D2L discussion boards in this class, you might be using them in your other classes. By filling out your D2L profile, you can have an image to go with your name, instead of being just a grey-head. (As you can see, I use Fox-in-Socks there at D2L just as I do at the Ning.)
Featured Storybook: Rakshasa Stone: The Best Demon Music Review. Sana has a great project going in Indian Epics this semester: it's Rakshasa Stone magazine, with the stories of demons retold through music reviews. The "monthly editor's note" (i.e. introduction) gives an overview of the reviews to come!
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is If you climb up a tree, you must climb down the same tree (a proverb from Sierra Leone). Details at the Proverb Lab. Call it the karma of tree-climbing!
Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image shows Hanuman and the sea-demon Sinhika; you can see him entering through her mouth and, once inside, he crushes her heart and then escapes through her ear.
Thursday Event on Campus: There will be a Wii Mario Kart event in the Union's first floor lobby, 11:30AM - 12:30PM (details). Find out more about this and other events 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!
Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.
