Class Procedures and Reminders
Outages. As some of you discovered, there was an unexpected D2L outage on Tuesday morning. I'm grateful to the students who wrote me about that, and soon after I heard from you guys, I saw an outage alert at alerts.ou.edu, along with information from OU D2L at Twitter. At that point, I updated the Announcements and also the class Twitter feed. For those of you who are in the habit of getting to the class Announcements by logging in to D2L, please make sure you bookmark the Announcements so you can get to them even if D2L is down!
Technology in general. There are bound to be outages and glitches during the semester, and the main thing to remember is (in the immortal words of Douglas Adams): don't panic! Since we use so many different tools in this class, it's likely that you can keep on doing work for class even if one particular tool happens to not be working. If you can get a day or two ahead of schedule, that can also be a big help too, since you can wait for the computer problem to be resolved. And definitely let me know if you run into problems. I've been teaching these classes for over 10 years, and I've never met a problem we couldn't solve somehow or other. :-)
The Stack. I'm still making my way through the stack of proofreading and early Storybook assignments people have turned in, while also reading Introductions in everybody's blogs (slowly but surely!). For more information, see previous announcements. You can check the stack to make sure I have your assignment.
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. 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:
Story-as-Image: Star Wars Posters. Star Wars is a global phenomenon, with movie posters from all over the world, like this Hungarian movie poster from 1979. Check out this blog post for more.
Indian Words in English: Today's Indian word in English is BANGLE, from Hindi bangri. For details, see this blog post.
Featured Storybook: VPress.com: Blogging for Bad Guys. Even bad guys and gals — Kaikeyi, Ravana, Duryodhana and Karna — need to be part of a community, so they use VPress to share their life's ups and downs in their blogs.
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, which is one of the sources I used for the Raja Rasalu unit coming up in the Myth-Folklore class.
Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is Rama Battling Tataka. And check out the close-up of Tataka: intense!
Wednesday Event on Campus: As part of the Intramural Sports Showcase, there will be wiffle ball from 3PM-6PM in the Walker-Adams Mall (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
August 27: Leon Theremin. Today marks the birthday of Leon Theremin, who was born in 1896; he died in 1993. He was the inventor of the Theremin, a remarkable electronic musical instrument. You can read about Leon Theremin at Wikipedia, and if you ever get a chance to see this documentary about Theremin's truly bizarre life, I highly recommend it: Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey. This YouTube video shows Theremin playing his instrument. Even if you have never heard about Theremin the person, I"m sure you will recognize the distinctive sound of Theremin the musical instrument.
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.
