Class Procedures and Reminders:
IMPORTANT: D2L SUNDAY MORNING OUTAGE. Remember the D2L outage that was postponed a couple of weeks ago? It's scheduled now for Sunday, November 3, but it should only last from 6AM-noon. With this new schedule, I don't think it should affect anyone in class adversely since very few people are doing schoolwork on Sunday morning. But if you are on a tight schedule, be warned: D2L will not be available on Sunday morning. Hopefully you can complete the work today or on Saturday, or on Sunday afternoon or evening (and there will be the Monday morning grace period as usual also).
Storybook Stack. I'm still working my way through the stack of Storybook assignments that people have turned in this week. If you turned something in before 11AM on Monday, you should have comments back now. If you want to check to make sure your assignment is in the stack, you can see the contents of the stack here. I hope to get through the stack on Friday, but if you turned in a late Week 10 assignment, I might not have comments back to you until Saturday morning.
Mix and match points. (repeat announcement) Now that there are fewer than five weeks remaining (rest of Week 11, plus Weeks 12-13-14-15), you might want to plan to do some "mix and match" in terms of just which assignments you want to complete this semester to get the points you need for the grade you want to get. So, based on the assignments you enjoy most/least in the class, you can certainly skip some assignments, provided that you end up with the points you need at the end. My only recommendation is that you do this cautiously. You don't want to skip so many assignments that you end up not getting the points you need for your desired grade.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Featured Tech Tip: Wikipedia in Many Languages. You have probably used Wikipedia in English, but there are versions of Wikipedia in many languages - even Latin!
FREE Kindle eBook: Italian Popular Tales by Thomas Frederick Crane. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. There are so many marvelous stories in here; one of my favorites is "The Story of Catherine and Her Fate."
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Heroism consists in hanging on one minute longer (a Norwegian proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. I'm sure we have all had that feeling, heroes or not!
Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Balarama and Krishna. Krishna's name means "black" or "dark." Balarama is Krishna's brother.
Friday Event on Campus: The International Advisory Committee's International Bazaar will take place from 9AM - 3PM on the South Oval (details at Facebook and in the OUDaily). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
All Saints Day - All Souls Eve. The reason Halloween was celebrated yesterday, on October 31, is that it was the "Eve of All Hallows" (Hallow-Evening), i.e. the Eve of All Saints, which is celebrated today, November 1. Today is also the eve of All Souls Day which is celebrated on November 2. The holiday of All Saints celebrates all those who have died and attained blessedness in heaven, while All Souls celebrates all those who have died but who have not yet achieved heaven. In many countries, November 1 is a holiday during which people visit graveyards, bringing flowers to the graves of the dead. For example, November 1 is an important national holiday in Poland, where it is called Wszystkich Świętych, which means "All Saints" (image source):
Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.
