Thursday, October 10

Today is Thursday of WEEK 8. If you have not turned in your Week 7 Storybook assignment yet, you have until noon today to turn that in for partial credit. Thursday morning, until noon, is also the grace period if you forgot to do any of the assignments that were due on Wednesday.

Class Procedures and Reminders:

OU-Texas Weekend. Since you do not have anything that is specifically due on Friday, there is no change to the schedule this week, and the Monday morning grace period will be available as usual. I would urge those of you who are going to the game (GO SOONERS!) to finish up your work before you go instead of hoping to do it when you get back.

Storybook Stack. If you turned in a Week 7 assignment by 8PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now; if you turned something in later on Sunday or during the week, it is probably still in the stack. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. If you want comments back on a Storybook assignment before the weekend, make sure to get that assignment turned in today, Thursday. If you turn something in on Thursday, I should be able to get comments back to you on Friday before the weekend (I'm not taking OU-Texas Day off... but I'd like to finish up a little early maybe!).

Spring Enrollment. (repeat announcement) Enrollment will be starting soon for Spring classes, and the online classes fill up really quickly. If any of you would like to enroll in MLLL-3043 Myth-Folklore or MLLL-4993 Indian Epics for Spring, please let me know TODAY so I can reserve you a space.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Featured Tech Tip: Google Forms. One of the most powerful tools in GoogleDocs is the "Form," which allows you to quickly create an online survey that collects user responses in a GoogleDocs spreadsheet. Pretty amazing! To see how it works, you can create a simple survey for this Tech Tip.

Featured Storybook: Indian Horror Story: Tales of the Lingering Souls. People have done haunted houses in the Myth-Folklore class before, but Hoang's haunted house for Indian Epics this semester is a first for that class... and it is a VERY haunted house!

FREE Kindle eBook: Tales of the Punjab by Flora Annie Steel. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. Some of the stories here will be familiar to those of you who read the Indian tales last week in Myth-Folklore!

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Without curiosity, there is no wisdom (a Polish proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. The Polish proverb rhymes: ciekawości - mądrości.

Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is The Battle of Lanka. This is a stone carving from Angkor in Cambodia (the Ramayana is famous throughout South Asia, not just in India).

Thursday Event on Campus: You can play Guess the Score! in the Union first floor lobby from 11:30AM-12:30PM ... you might even win a Kindle Fire! (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

October 10: R. K. Narayan. Today, October 10, is the birthday of the Indian novelist R. K. Narayan, who was born in 1906 (he died in 2001). This name is familiar to those of you in the Indian Epics class, since you are reading Narayan's versions of both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Narayan was one of the most famous Indian novelists who wrote in English, and he was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize in Literature more than once although he did not win the award. You can find out more about Narayan's life and work in this Wikipedia article. The image montage below is from an article celebrating the centenary of Narayan's birth: 100 years of RK Narayan, The Master Storyteller.



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