Class Procedures and Reminders:
Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the large stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in. If you turned in a Storybook assignment on Sunday, you should have comments back from me. If you turned in something on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, it is probably still in the stack (contents of the stack). Please check to make sure!
My Ning participation. After the first week of Introduction posts when I read and respond to everybody, my participation at the Ning is random. Some weeks are less busy and I can spend more time at the Ning - but in a busy week like this one (just four days to get everything done), I am scrambling just to keep up with the Storybooks. You should be getting one or two comments every week on your posts from other students in the class - and if something happens so that you do not get any comments on your story and essay for the week (the commenting assignment is always a bit chaotic given that not all students do all the assignments every week), please let me know and I will be sure to comment!
Week 3 Read and Respond assignment. The Week 3 blog commenting assignment is not available yet; it will be available starting on Friday. The blog commenting assignment is the only assignment you cannot complete early because people will still be adding posts to their blog today, Thursday. So please wait until midnight tonight when people should have finished their Week 3 blog posts, and then on Friday (starting tonight at midnight if you want), you can do the Read and Respond assignment. It's available all day Friday, and also over the weekend (with the usual grace period on Monday morning).
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Featured Tech Tip: Poster-Maker. This Tech Tip introduces you to the "Automotivator" tool for creating motivational (or demotivational) posters like the ones I use for the proverbs here in the announcements. It's a great way to combine image and text to use in your blog posts and webpages. Plus, if you start with a high-res image, you can create printed posters with this tool also.
Featured Storybook: Nature Tales of the Cherokee. This lovely Storybook contains a tale that is especially suited to Fall semester: Falling Leaves - and why they fall.
FREE Kindle eBook: The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts by Abbie Farwell Brown. 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 lives of saints who had a special connection to the animal world - Saint Giles, Saint Cuthbert, Saint Prisca, and more.
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Without people even paradise gets boring (a Polish proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. The Polish original rhymes! Bez LUDZI i raj się ZNUDZI.
Thursday Event on Campus: There will be a workshop on "A Study Skills System" from 4PM - 5PM in Wagner Hall 245 (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
Rosh Hashanah. Wednesday evening at sunset marked the start of the Jewish holiday of the New Year, Rosh Hashanah ("Head-of-the-Year"). The holiday occupies two days, so it will end at nightfall on Friday, September 6. Like many religious holidays, Rosh Hashanah is based on a 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 man, 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 the 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:
Remember, you can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.
