Sunday, August 30

Today is Sunday of Week 1. Make sure you finish the end-of-week assignments today for Orientation Week, and you might want to do some extra credit assignments too!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Moving on to Week 2. I hope the Orientation Week was helpful in introducing you to blogging and the kinds of writing you will be doing for this class. As you start doing the Week 2 assignments, they will set the pattern for the rest of the semester, with the same type of assignments each week: Myth-Folklore Weekly Assignments - Indian Epics Weekly Assignments. If you have any questions about that as you get started, let me know, and you can see the overall calendar here: Fall Semester Calendar.

Plan your own schedule. (repeat announcement) For those of you who found yourselves scrambling to meet the deadlines during the past week, please take a look back at this important information about Due Dates in this class and this advice about how to Design Your Class Schedule.

Blog Posts. (repeat announcement) Blog posts are very different from printed documents that you write with a word processor like Word. So, please check on these items as you write your posts, and if there is anything you are not sure about, just ask: Formatting Blogger Posts. Pay special attention to the information there about making clickable links.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Map of the Internet. You can read more here from the artist Jay Simons about how he created the map, and you can also see different versions of the map: Map of the Internet.



Words to Watch: Today's words to watch out for are ALTAR and ALTER. For details, see this blog post. You find altars in a church, while altering something is a change, an alteration.


Featured Storybook: Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Missing River. Sherlock Holmes and his faithful companion Dr. Watson have come to India for some rest and relaxation, but when they find a murdered woman in their rented room, they have no choice but to pursue the mystery.


Free Book Online: My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales by Edric Vredenburg. This blog post provides additional information about the contents of the book, which has beautiful illustrations by Jennie Harbour.


India Comic Book: Hanuman to the Rescue: Hanuman Brings the Sanjeevani. This blog post has a detailed reading guide about this comic book which is on Reserve in Bizzell Library. Hanuman the monkey god is one of my favorite characters from the Ramayana!


Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is A clever bird builds its nest with other birds’ feathers (a proverb from Zimbabwe). Details at the Proverb Lab. You can think of this proverb as being a metaphor for the way you will be telling stories each week in this class!


Today's Video: Howard Rheingold at Google. Some of you may have already the TED talk by Howard Rheingold as part of the Week 1 Orientation: Curation assignment. Here's a much more recent video with Howard giving a talk at Google in April 2012, speaking about information networks in general, social networks, and what he sees of value both now and in the future (there's a transcript at the blog post):


Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is a cat with questions: Question everything. Details at the blog.


Event on Campus: The Turkish Students Association's annual welcoming picnic will take place today, Sunday, in Reaves Park from 5:30PM to 7:30PM. The picnic is open to all OU people and their families, and tickets are $5 (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online — and thanks to Justin for letting me know about this one!



Note: You can page back through the 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.