Class Procedures and Reminders:
D2L Upgrade. As some of you may have seen at the D2L homepage, there will be a D2L maintenance/upgrade outage this coming Sunday, and I'll have more to say about that later in the week. I know that Sunday is always a busy day for this class, so I'll be setting up a Google Form to use instead; the schedule for class will not change.
Storybook Stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the Storybook stack waiting for me to look at. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. So, after 9AM or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment. During a "new story" week, it takes me quite a while to get through the stack, so I would urge everybody to check the stack to make sure your assignment is there.
Alternate Storybook Schedule. (repeat announcement) There are all kinds of reasons why people might miss a week for the Storybook, and it is not a problem. You can even miss two or three weeks and still end up with a total of three stories in your Storybook, which is just fine! For those of you who were out of town this weekend and unable to finish your second story for Week 8, don't worry - you can turn in the second story for Week 9 (and the third story in Week 11 and a fourth story in Week 13). For more information about how the alternate schedules work, see this page: Storybook Schedule FAQ.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Featured Tech Tip: Google Docs Webpages. Some of you are already using GoogleDocs as a convenient way to access your documents from any computer; you can also use GoogleDocs to publish webpages online. It's the simplest possible way to create a webpage!
Featured Storybook: Living in the Past: Tales of Ancient Vietnam. This wonderful Storybook from last year gives you a chance to explore some mythological stories from Vietnam.
FREE Kindle eBook: Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion by Beatrice Clay. 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 adventures of Arthur and his most famous knights, as well as the quest for the Holy Grail.
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Arthur himself had but his time (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. The proverb is a kind of "memento mori," warning us that even as great a man as King Arthur has but his time on the earth, but no more.
Mahabharata Image: Now that we are in the second half of semester, there will be a Mahabharata image each day; no more Ramayana - although see the Dussehra image below! Today's Mahabharata image is Ganga Pursued by Shantanu. Yes, this is the river goddess Ganga, and you will learn at the beginning of the Mahabharata just why she has taken on this human form.
Monday Event on Campus: The OU School of Music presents a FREE concert at 8PM in the Pitman Recital Hall: Verdi and Wagner, A Bi-Centennial Celebration (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
October 13-14: Dussehra. The Hindu holiday of Dussehra (known also as Vijaya Dashami, Dasara, or Dashain) celebrates the victory of Rama over Ravana, good over evil - a story that is now very familiar to everybody in the Indian Epics class! You can read more about the festivities at Wikipedia; because of an astrological oddity this year, the holiday is being celebrated on October 13 in some places and on October 14 in others. (The Hindu religious calendar is a lunar calendar, so the holidays change from year to year, like the movable date of Easter in the Christian calendar.) The multi-headed demon Ravana is often burned in effigy as part of the Dussehra celebration as you can see in the image below!
Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.
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