Tuesday, October 14

Today is Tuesday of WEEK 9, and I've re-arranged the Declarations area in Desire2Learn so the new week is on top. Also, the Internet assignment for this week is now available! If you have not turned in your Week 8 Storybook/Portfolio assignment yet, you may still do that for partial credit, and Tuesday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you did not finish the Reading Diary that was due on Monday.

Class Procedures and Reminders

New Extra Credit: Back-Up/Check-Up. After the Google weirdness this weekend, I've made a new extra credit assignment that is available each week so that you can back up your work, just in case, and also check on your progress in D2L. You'll see this in the weekly assignments list now with the other end-of-week extra credit options: Back-Up / Check-Up Extra Credit.

Storybook Stack. As usual at the beginning of the week, there are still LOTS of Storybook assignments in the stack. If you turned something in on Friday, you should have comments back from me now. If you turned something in over the weekend or on Monday, it is probably still in the stack. You can check the contents of the stack to to make sure I received your email.

Grading. With the beginning of Week 9, that means there are a total of seven more weeks of the semester (Weeks 9-10-11-12-13-14-15), which means 210 points of regular assignments available, plus extra credit. You may want to start planning now how you want to finish up the class. For a chart that shows you week by week point totals and other information about the grading system, you can consult this Grading Chart page. Many people take these classes just to get the Gen. Ed. credit, so it's fine with me if you want to finish the class with a grade of "C" when you get 320 points or "B" when you get 360 points (for an "A" you need 410 points). When you have reached the the points required for the grade you want to take, just let me know. As soon as you get the points you need, you are done - you do not need to do any more of the class assignments. 

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Writing Humor: Snoopy the Writer. Some thoughts on writing and revision from Charles Schulz's Snoopy:

Words to Watch: Today's words to watch out for are DEFINITELY and DEFIANTLY. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: HGTV: Homer and Garden Television. Join Persephone as she redecorates both in heaven and in the underworld, while Zeus and Hera squabble on camera, and Odysseus goes house-hunting together with his loving wife Penelope — all part of the HGTV line-up for this season.

FREE Kindle eBook: Shakuntala and Other Works by Kalidasa translated by Arthur Ryder. 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 in Myth-Folklore may know Arthur Ryder already from his translations of the Panchatantra and Twenty-Two Goblins.

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is The fuller the cup, the sooner the spill (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. Those of you with very full class schedules will appreciate the metaphorical implications here!

Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Surya, God of the Sun. Surya is the father of Karna, one of the Kaurava heroes in the Mahabharata.

Tuesday Event on Campus: There will be a screening of "The Whistleblower" at 7PM in 148 Hester Hall (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

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.