Friday, January 27

HAPPY FRIDAY! You have reached the end of Week 2! The blog commenting assignment for this week is available now, and I hope you will have fun meeting some new people in class this week and reading their stories. Here is a link to the class calendar; maybe you will want to start in on the Week 3 assignments today too.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Week 2 Blog Comments. This assignment is now available, with new groups, and this time they are random! (Last time I tried where possible to group people by majors.) If you enjoy reading the blogs and doing comments, you might want to do more comments for extra credit; that option will be available every week.

Project Stack. Today and over the weekend, a lot of people will be turning in project assignments. As those come in, I'll update the stack, and you can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Learning. Aquote from Ezra Bayda, a Zen teacher: When you really pay attention, everything is your teacher.

Spelling. We need all the humor about spelling we can get: Spelling with Werewolves.

Word from India. This is one of my favorite English words from India: JUGGERNAUT.

Featured Storybook. This is one of my all-time favorite project from the Indian Epics class: Rate My Rishi. If you've ever used the website RateMyProfessors.com, you'll feel right at home at Rate My Rishi, where the rishis' students, fans, and enemies sing their praises and dish the mythological dirt, too.

Free Book Online: Today's free book is Stories from Virgil by Alfred Church. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents. For those of you who read the Iliad this past week, this is the same author retelling the story of the great Roman Epic, the Aeneid, by Vergil:

Words of Wisdom: Today's saying is When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman? (an English proverb). Find out more at the Proverb Lab. This proverb was famously invoked by the radical English priest John Ball, a leader of the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

Video: The video for today is another TEDxOU talk, this time by Professor Jennifer Barnes: Imaginary friends and real-world consequences: parasocial relationships. Find out more at TEDxSpotlight.

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is pondering the implications of neuroplasticity: You are the architect of your brain. You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Event on Campus: It's TEDxOU today, so best wishes to Rijutha on her presentation, which is about how Bollywood contributes to the patriarchal society in India (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

January 27: Holocaust Remembrance Day. January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, has been designated by the United Nations as a day in remembrance of those who died in the Nazi Holocaust of World War II. The person I hold in my special remembrance for this day is Janusz Korczak, director of the Jewish orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto (you can read more at Wikipedia). In 1942, the Nazis raided Korczak's orphanage and sent the children to the Treblinka death camp; Korczak insisted on going with the children, and so he died together with them at Treblinka. This image below shows the Yad Vashem Memorial for Korczak and his children:

Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.