Sunday, September 20

Today is Sunday of Week 4. Make sure you finish the end-of-week assignments today, and you might want to do some extra credit assignments also!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Growth Mindset. As I mentioned yesterday, my participation at the blogs is very sporadic, but I do try to respond to the growth mindset posts, and I also wrote up a summary of the growth mindset challenges that people did in Week 2 and Week 3 — I got so many good ideas from reading these blog posts! I hope the rest of you might consider doing a growth mindset challenge; it's very open-ended, with all kinds of ways to see how the growth mindset could be useful to you.

Storybook or Portfolio. (repeat announcement) There are two types of projects for this class: a Storybook or a Portfolio. I hope this page will give you the information you need to make your choice: Storybook or Portfolio. If you have questions not answered there, please let me know; I'll try to check my email more often this weekend just in case you have any questions about that. If you choose the Storybook option, you'll be creating your website this weekend for the Week 4 Project assignment; if you choose the Portfolio, you will choose your first story to put in the Portfolio and set that up in your blog.

Assignment Stack. (repeat announcement) As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your Project assignment; I'll be updating the stack periodically over the weekend. I replied to all the project assignments turned in before Friday, and on Monday I'll start responding to the assignments in the order they were turned in, starting with the ones from Friday. To get comments back sooner rather than later, turn in your assignment this afternoon — if you wait until Sunday evening to do that, you'll have a longer wait for comments back from me.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Mythical Lake Monsters. This map even features Norman's own Lake Thunderbird and its Giant Octopus! Find out more at Atlas Obscura website.


Indian Words in English: Today's word from India in English is SWASTIKA from the Sanskrit su-astika. For details, see this blog post. The modern use of the word "swastika" is notoriously associated with the Nazis, but the symbol which they adopted has also been used since ancient times as a symbol of good fortune in Hinduism as well as in Buddhism and Jainism.


Featured Storybook: Sky Warrior: A Tournament of Champions. The brave warrior Pyppa does battle with the flying creatures of the gods' arena as each round threatens death in a new form — Medean dragons, the bloodthirsty flying goddesses called Keres, and more. What will she do in order to survive the ordeal?


Free Book Online: The Arabian Nights by Andrew Lang. This blog post provides additional information about this book, which is the source for the Arabian Nights unit in the UnTextbook.


India Comic Book: Gandhari: A Mother Blinded by Love. This blog post provides a detailed reading guide for this comic book. It tells the story of one the most important women characters in the Mahabharata: Queen Gandhari, with of King Dhritarashtra.


Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on (a proverb from India). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is a proverb of the Kashmiri people.


Today's Video: Google Search: Reunion. This video was produced by Google in honor of peace between India and Pakistan, and it tells the story of two friends separated during the 1947 Partition who are reunited with some help from Google Search.


Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat sets his own goals: I drive my own learning. Details at the blog.


Event on Campus: It's Family Day at the Fred Jones Art Museum: Experience centuries of Roman history in Immortales: The Hall of Emperors of the Capitoline Museums, Rome (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

September 20: Heinrich Hoffmann. Today is the anniversary of the death of Heinrich Hoffmann in 1894 (he was born in 1809). Hoffmann was a German psychiatrist who is best known today for his book Der Struwwelpeter, a collection of stories about badly behaved children, among other topics. You can read the book online in English, and for more about Der Struwwelpeter, see this Wikipedia article, which is also the source for this illustration from a 1917 edition of the book:




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.