Monday, November 10

Today is Monday. Week 12 is now over... and Week 13 has begun. Monday morning, until noon, is the grace period if you did not finish any of the Week 12 assignments. This week's topic in the Myth-Folklore class is Europe, and in Indian Epics you have the choice of Buck's Mahabharata or more Indian units from the UnTextbook. I hope you will enjoy the readings!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Storybook/Portfolio stack. As always on Monday, I will have a huge bunch of assignments in the stack that were turned in over the weekend. The first thing I will do on Monday morning when I get to work is to update the list of items in the Storybook stack. So, after 9AM or so on Monday, you will be able to check the contents of the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

Week 12 UnTextbook Report. (repeat announcement) Thanks as always to the people who filled out the Google Form with your comments and feedback about the British Isles. I've written up the results here: Week 12 UnTextbook Report. I am curious to see which units people will be choosing this week!

Finishing up the class. (repeat announcement) There are now just three more weeks of school: Weeks 13-14-15. It's important to make a plan now for finishing up the class, i.e. choosing what assignments you want to work on, deciding on how many stories you want to include in your Portfolio or Storybook, etc. If you have questions about any of that, let me know!

THANK YOU. As some of you may already know, I'm taking an online course myself this semester; it's called Connected Courses, and the course topic is how teachers can create interconnected learning experiences for their students by using websites, blogs, and other online spaces. For my class assignment this weekend, I wrote up a blog post about the wonderful job you all are doing as you leave comments on each other's blogs and Storybooks. So, I owe you all a big THANK YOU both for all your good work and for helping me to do my homework for that class! :-)

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Every Book is a TARDIS. I know I am not the only fan of Doctor Who in this class... and I know I'm not the only bookworm! :-)

Mythology Words in English: Today's mythology word in English is Herculean, from the Roman hero Hercules (Greek Heracles). For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: Battle of the Heroes. The heroes Siegfried, Perseus, and Yamato have been transported to an unknown place and an unknown time, forced to engage in gladiatorial combat... unless, that is, they are able to escape!

FREE Kindle eBook: Kalevala, The Land of the Heroes translated by W. F. Kirby. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. There is a Kalevala unit coming up in Myth-Folklore, and some of you may already know the Kalevala from Chase's Storybook project!

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is A picture is worth a thousand words (an English proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. One of the things I like best about blogging is how easy it is to include images in the posts!

Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Yudhishthira. This is a shadow puppet from the Javanese "wayang" puppet theater tradition. As you can see, the stories of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana are famous throughout south Asia, not just in India!

Monday Event on Campus: Slave Women of ISIS: Matthew Barber will be giving a brown-bag lecture at 12PM in Hester Hall 145 (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.