Class Procedures and Reminders
Blog commenting available. I hope you will enjoy looking at other people's storytelling and introduction posts! Some people already got started on the commenting when I made that available on Thursday afternoon, so you may already have comments on your blog.
My participation at the blogs. Last week, I was able to comment on all the blog posts, but this week has been really busy, and I have not been able to comment on very many posts... but you should start getting comments from other students now. I also hope to have some time on Friday to read some of the blog posts also; I will get comments to everyone about their Introduction posts either on Friday or early next week!
Martin Luther King holiday. Monday is a holiday in honor of Martin Luther King, and the OU campus is closed. Normally you would be finishing up Week 1 on Friday or over the weekend, and Week 2 would begin on Monday. Because of the holiday, the Reading Diary that would be your Week 2 Monday assignment is not due until Tuesday, and Tuesday morning (not Monday morning) will be the grace period for finishing up the Week 1 Friday/weekend assignments. Of course I recommend working ahead: so, if possible, do the reading for Week 2 over the weekend. If you can get even just a day or two ahead of schedule, you will find the class so much easier to manage!
Design your own schedule. Starting in Week 2, you will have the same assignments every week. I hope you will create a schedule for the class so that you won't be doing all your work based on the deadlines. Instead, you can design your own schedule: a MWF schedule, a Tuesday-Thursday schedule, a weekend-only schedule — whatever will work best for you. Here is how that works: Designing Your Own Schedule.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Reading: The Rights of the Reader. I hope that the "Rights of the Reader" by Daniel Pennac (here illustrated by Quentin Blake) can inspire some great reading adventures in this class!
Indian Words in English: Today's Indian word in English is PUNDIT, which comes to English via Hindi payndit. For details, see this blog post.
Featured Storybook: Lifelong Devotion: Tales of Love at Karva Chauth. Karva Chauth is an Indian holiday in which women honor the power of love in their lives. In this Storybook, you will spend the holiday with Sita, Ahalya and Radha as they reflect on the dramatic ways in which each woman's loving devotion was put to the test.
FREE eBook: The Song Celestial, or, The Bhagavad-Gita by Edwin Arnold. This blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book. This is the first edition of the Bhagavad-Gita that Gandhi read!
Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience (Ralph Waldo Emerson). Details at the Proverb Lab. Good advice for the beginning of the semester: the snail will get there in the end!
Ramayana Image: Today's Ramayana image is Ravana. The ten-headed Ravana, king of the rakshasas, abducted Rama's wife, Sita, thus leading to a war between Ravana and Rama.
Friday Event on Campus: There will be an Honors College Reading Group Open House from 4:30PM to 6:00PM in DLBH 180; you can see the books that have been chosen for this semester and meet the moderators (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.
January 16: Don Quixote. On this day in 1605 Cervantes published the first volume of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha). The first English translation appeared already in 1612. You can read more about this storytelling masterpiece at Wikipedia. The image below is a sculpture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Madrid:
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.
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