Class Procedures and Reminders:
Storybook Stack. If you turned in a Storybook assignment on Saturday, you should have comments back from me and points recorded in the Gradebook. If you turned in your assignment on Sunday or on Monday or Tuesday, it may still be in the stack. You can always check the stack to make sure I have your assignment. I will get through the stack by Friday at the latest; hopefully I can get through all the items that are in there now by the end of the day on Thursday.
You really can call me Laura! (repeat announcement) As I mentioned last week, you really can call me Laura. No need to be formal and call me Dr. Gibbs, and since I'm not a professor, that title is actually not correct (more about that here). In any case, since I'm on a first-name basis with all of you, please do the same and just call me Laura.
Announcements. (repeat announcement) You can sign up for the announcements by email in the sidebar of this blog, and you can also find links to past announcements in the sidebar. Likewise, at the bottom of each post there is an "older post" link that allows you to page back through any announcements you might have missed. There's important information about the class at the top of the announcements each day, along with fun stuff to explore down below. And remember: if you have any campus or other local event you want me to include in the announcements, please let me know!
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Writing Resource: Edit Ruthlessly. Some of you are already discovering that writing something short can actually be much harder than writing something long; you can hit that 1000-word limit before you even realize it! So, learning how to edit ruthlessly is an incredibly valuable skill to have, and this blog post provides links to some articles online that offer helpful advice about pruning your prose.
Foreign Words in English: Today's foreign word in English is bangle, which comes to us from Hindi. For details, see this blog post.
Featured Storybook: The Fairy Godmother Union Strike. The fairy godmothers are tired of being taken for granted and have gone on strike. The king is infuriated, but the fairies use their magic powers to show him how badly things would have gone if the fairies had not been there to make things turn out "happily ever after" in his kingdom.
FREE Kindle eBook: Egyptian Literature by Epiphanius Wilson. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. Those of you doing the Egypt unit in Myth-Folklore this week will recognize some of the stories included in this book!
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Better to go around the manure than to move it (a Polish proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is good advice for all manure, both literal and metaphorical!
Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is Rama fighting a she-demon. This is an adventure from Rama's youth now familiar to those of you in the Indian Epics class from your reading this week!
Search Tip: This infographic provides some great tips about how to Google Like a Boss. I use the site:query search feature a lot!
International Events on Campus: Instead of sharing a specific event today, I wanted to share a great online resource for finding out about international events online; it's the College of International Studies Newsletter, a weekly bulletin full of useful information. Plus, because it's an email newsletter, you can also subscribe if you want. See the bottom of the newsletter for more information.
January 22: Macintosh. Today, January 22, is a fun technology anniversary! On this day in 1984 -- 30 years ago! -- the Macintosh personal computer made its debut in a television advertisement during Superbowl XVIII; I was a sophomore in college then, but I didn't own a television, so I didn't see the commercial when it aired. There is now an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to this advertisement, and you can watch the ad at YouTube.
Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed.
