Desire2Learn. There was a D2L outage on Tuesday at around 11AM, although it seems to be working fine now (Tuesday afternoon). You can always check OUD2L Twitter for updates, and I would urge you to bookmark the page for the Class Announcements so that you can get to them even if D2L goes down. I'll always try to keep this page updated, while sharing Twitter updates as well. If you run into a problem like that, always check these Announcements first, and if you do not find some information about the outage, send me an email. IT often learns about outages from users since they don't always have good monitoring systems in place to be aware of just when an outage happens.
Lots of Diaries. As expected, people are taking all kinds of approaches to the reading diaries, based on their own interests, their reading styles, etc. I've tagged some different examples from each class just to give you a sense of that variety: Myth-Folklore and Indian Epics. As you develop your own diary style in the coming weeks, you might get some ideas from looking at what other students are doing with their diaries. Right now, everybody is exploring and trying out new approaches, and I would urge you to experiment to find the diary style that will work best for you! The key thing is that you don't need to do plot summary; instead, find a way to capture your own ideas, thoughts, feelings, questions, etc. as you read.
The Stack. If you turned something in on Friday, you should have comments back from me now. Assignments turned in over the weekend are probably still in the stack, but I should be making good progress on that today; I was out of the office for a big chunk of Monday, but Tuesday should be back to normal! Meanwhile you can check to make sure I received your assignment here: The Stack.
Blog Responding. Everybody should have received at least one comment, and hopefully two, on their Introduction and storytelling post from last week, although in the chaos of add/drop during the first week, that may or may not have happened for everybody. Things should settle down this week, and I'll have the new blog groups ready on Friday. Meanwhile, I'm continuing to make my way through the Introductions, leaving comments of my own too. I should be able to get to everybody's Introduction by the end of the week!
Twitter Stream. (repeat announcement) I just wanted to call everybody's attention to the Twitter stream for this class: OnlineMythIndia. You can see the latest items from this stream in the sidebar of the announcements, and you can also visit the Twitter page directly. I'm a big fan of Twitter for sharing news, links, and images. Since I'm online 9 to 5 every day for my job, I'm always finding things to share online, and you might find something of interest to you! If you want to tweet something to share, use the hashtag #OU3043 for Myth-Folklore or #OU4993 for Indian Epics!
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Writing Resource: The Periodic Table of Storytelling. Be sure to visit the interactive version of the chart for links to the amazing TV Tropes website.
Words to Watch: Today's words to watch out for are HEROIN and HEROINE. For details, see this blog post.
Featured Storybook: Hotel California. In this eerie Storybook, Daphne and Felix Cross check into the Hotel California and — just as you would expect — they can check out any time they like, but they can never leave . . .
FREE Kindle eBook: Stories from the Greek Tragedians by Alfred Church. 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 most beautiful Greek myths are found in the tragedies, such as the stories of Alcestis and Antigone.
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is A stitch in time saves nine (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is one of my all-time favorite proverbs!
Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image shows Visvamitra with Rama and Lakshmana. The image is from a 16th-century manuscript of the Ramayana in Persian, lavishly illustrated as you can see.
Tuesday Event on Campus: There will be free root beer floats in the Union first floor lobby from 11:30AM - 12:30PM (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
August 26: The 19th Amendment. On this day in 1920, the 19th Amendment went into effect, so women could no longer be denied the right to vote. Prior to this time, some states (mostly in the western U.S.) did offer women full suffrage, but some states offered only limited suffrage, while other states offered no suffrage at all. You can read more about the amendment in Wikipedia. Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton had drafted this amendment all the way back in 1878, and it took over 40 years for the amendment to become part of the Constitution. The image below shows Stanton and Anthony circa 1900; Stanton died in 1902 and Anthony died in 1906, so neither of them lived to see the 19th Amendment ratified.
Note: You can page back through older blog posts to see any announcements you might have missed, and you can check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day.
