Friday, October 18

HAPPY FRIDAY! You have reached the end of Week 9! The Read and Respond assignment (blog commenting) is available now. Friday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Thursday.

Class Procedures and Reminders:

IMPORTANT: D2L UPDATE. You can disregard the previous message; the Desire2Learn upgrade for Sunday has been postponed due to the problems with D2L this week. So, no worries for those of you who will be wanting to use Desire2Learn on Sunday.
This Sunday Desire2Learn will be down for part of the day, possibly all day. It would be great if you could complete your Week 9 assignments today or on Saturday to avoid this problem, but I know many of you choose to do the work on Sunday. For those of you who are unable to access D2L on Sunday, I have created a Google Form for Week 9 Declarations. You can use that form on Sunday to let me know which assignments you completed so that I can record those points for you manually when D2L comes back online (take a look at the form and you'll see how it works). Please do not send me an email; instead, use the form. Given the very large number of people who do their work on Sunday, it will really help if I can get everyone to record the information this way. Thanks in advance for your help!

Storybook Stack. I've still got a lot of Storybooks in the stack, but by the end of the day on Friday I hope to get comments back to anything turned in before Friday; if not, I'll finish up on Saturday morning (those of you who turned in a late assignment may not get comments until Saturday). You can check to make sure I have received your assignment here: Storybook stack contents of the stack.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Featured Resource: Edit Ruthlessly. This blog post contains some tips for those of you who want to learn how to edit your work to make it shorter - and better!

Featured Storybook: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Missing River. In this amazing Storybook from last year, you will see Sherlock Holmes (and Watson too, of course) in India on the trail of a murderer whose crimes are strangely linked to the events of the Ramayana.

FREE Kindle eBook: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. Of the many Robin Hood books available online, this one by Howard Pyle is one of the best!

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Bees gather honey from every flower (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is like the saying "Variety is the spice of life," but from the bees' perspective.

Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Arjuna at Draupadi's Swayamvara. The painting is from Kolkata (Calcutta), circa 1885, and it is done in the Kalighat style.

Friday Event on Campus: The University Theatre Halloween Costume Sale will take place on Friday afternoon, 1PM-5PM, on the front porch of the Fine Arts Center on Elm (details at the OU Daily). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

October 18: Veerappan. Today marks the death in 2004 of Veerappan, the famous Indian bandit and smuggler whose outlaw exploits made him a kind of modern-day "Robin Hood." You can read more about his life and outlaw career in this Wikipedia article. Veerappan was famous for his dramatic moustache as you can see in this sand sculpture created by Sudarsan Patnaik, an internationally famous sand artist:



Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.