Thursday, November 13

Today is Thursday of WEEK 13. If you have not turned in your Week 12 Storybook/Portfolio assignment yet, you have until noon today to turn that in for partial credit, and Thursday morning until noon is also the grace period if you did not finish the Storytelling that was due on Wednesday — and if you missed them yesterday, here's a link to Wednesday's announcements.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Storybook/Portfolio Stack. There are still quite a few items in the stack. If you turned something in on Sunday, you should have comments back from me; if you turned something in on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday, it is probably still in the stack. You can check to make sure your assignment is in the stack here.

Finishing the class early. When you finish up with the class, I record a "FINAL GRADE" in the D2L Gradebook so you can be sure you are done. So, just let me know when you have completed the number of points you need: 410 for an A, 360 for a B, 320 for a C. It's entirely up to you what grade you want to finish with in the class; whatever grade you decide to stop with is fine with me. The whole idea behind this points-based grading system is to let you know exactly where you stand and to allow you to choose to be finished with the class when you have the points you need. Just let me know when you are done!

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Yodify Your Language. Everything you need to know about the grammar and style of Yoda!

Indian Words in English: Today's Indian word in English is baksheesh, which comes to English from Persian and Sanskrit. For details, see this blog post.

Featured Storybook: The Afterlife: A Dog's Tale. Rufus is a black Lab, middle-aged, and having a mid-life crisis. When he wanders away from his home, he finds him in the underworld, with Virgil, a Golden Retriever, as his guide.

FREE Kindle eBook: Household Tales by the Brothers Grimm translated by Margaret Hunt. Here is a link to the book at Amazon, and this blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. If you have enjoyed the Grimm stories in Myth-Folklore this week, you can find 200 of them in this book!

Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Teachers open the door; you enter by yourself (a Chinese proverb). Details at the Proverb Lab. Meanwhile, being a teacher and opening the door is a lot of fun too! :-)

Mahabharata Image: Today's Mahabharata image is Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana. You can see that King Dhritarashtra's eyes are closed, a reminder that he is blind.

Thursday Event on Campus: There will be a screening of the film And Your Love Too starring Armin Mueller-Stahl at 7PM in Meacham Auditorium as part of the series of events commemorating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (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.