Sunday, October 4

Today is Sunday of Week 6. 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

Week 6 Project. By now everybody is on their own schedule (doing Storybook or Portfolio, adding or revising, etc.), so if you have not turned in your Week 6 Project assignment yet, make sure you check the D2L Gradebook "Project Progress" item to see what you have due today, and if you have any questions about that, just let me know. I'll try to keep an eye on my email so that I can respond to any questions today. I'll also update the Project Stack periodically, and you can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

Growth Mindset. I am having such a good time reading people's growth mindset blog posts and seeing just which challenges people are choosing. I've written up some notes about that here: Fall 2015 - Growth Mindset. If you need to make up any work you might have missed in the past couple of weeks, I'd really recommend the growth mindset extra credit post, along with the "Famous Last Words" post. Both of these extra credit options are really good for pausing and pondering how the semester is going and what to do next.

Designing Your Class Schedule(repeat announcement) I've drawn up some sample class schedules that show exactly how you can arrange this class like a M-W-F- class OR like a T-Th class OR a weekend class. There are other possibilities, too, of course — the options are really unlimited. The weekend is a great time to start your new schedule! If you can get started on the Week 7 reading today, you will find the coming week much easier to manage.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

What Causes Creativity?. I hope this class can help you with all these ways to discover your creative powers!


Indian Words in English: Today's word from India in English is NIRVANA, which is a Sanskrit word. For details, see this blog post.


Featured Storybook: Ghost Tales of a Traveller. Japan is a country haunted by many ghosts, and as our fearless traveler goes from town to town, there is a ghost in every place, each with its own story to tell.


Free Book Online: Chinese Fairy Book by Richard Wilhelm. This blog post provides additional information about this book, which is the source I used for the Chinese fairy tales unit in the UnTextbook, although I could only include a few of the many wonderful stories in this book!


India Comic Book: Mahabharata: The Great Epic of India. This blog post provides additional information about the comic book which is on Reserve in Bizzell Library. Believe it or not, this single comic book provides an overview of the entire epic!


Words of Wisdom: Today's proverb poster is All the buds upon a bush do not blossom (a proverb from India). Details at the Proverb Lab. This is a saying of the Kashmiri people.


Today's Video: Shiva's Secret Part 2. This is the second part of the video from yesterday's announcements (Part 1).


Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is deciding what to learn next: Stop for a moment and just think. Details at the blog.


Event on Campus: The OU Lab Theater in Old Science Hall will feature a Sunday matinee performance of "Stepping Out" at 3:00 PM (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

October 4: Sukkot. Today marks the last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot (it began at sundown on Sunday, September 27, one week ago). This festival is usually known as "Feast of the Booths" or "Feast of the Tabernacles" in English. During the festival, people build special huts in which to celebrate the holiday. You can read more about the Festival of Sukkot at the BBC website and at Wikipedia, which is also the source for the image of a festival booth below:



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.