Wednesday, January 25

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 2. If you have not written a story for this week yet, that means today is Storytelling Day. I hope you will have fun with that! Here is a link to this week's assignments. For some storytelling style ideas, check out the Rap Battle video or the Bedtime Storybook that you will see below.

Class Procedures and Reminders

My schedule today. I'll be out of the office for a big part of the day today, which means I will be slower to respond to any emails you might send. So, write me if any questions come up, and I'll get back to you by the end of the day. Thank you for your patience with that today!

Project Stack. As people turn in the Week 2 project assignments, I'll put them in the stack, and you can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment while you're waiting for my reply.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Creativity. Here's a great quote from Maya Angelou to think about while you are writing your stories for this class: You can't use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

Punctuation. As you work on your writing this semester, you will get a chance to review and practice all of these punctuation marks; here's a full-sized view of the infographic. The two punctuation marks people have the most trouble with are the apostrophe and comma, and this chart helps to explain why: we use those two punctuation marks for a lot of different purposes!

Words from India. Since I shared videos by the great sitar player Ravi Shankar and his daughter Anoushka Shankar earlier this week, today I want to share the word SITAR, another English word that comes from India:

Featured Storybook. This project is from the Indian Epics class, and it's a nice example of a fun style to use that works for all kinds of stories: bedtime storytelling style! Sweet Dreams Are Made of These: Karmic Bedtime Stories: Four brothers and sisters each get their own special Ramayana bedtime story with a lesson to learn and an adventure to enjoy before they fall asleep each night.

Free Book Online: Today's free book is Legends of Saints and Birds by Agnes A. Hilton. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents. The lovely illustrations are by the author:

Words of Wisdom: Today's saying is Bacchus has drowned more people than Neptune (an English proverb). Find out more at the Proverb Lab. In this proverb, Bacchus stands for wine (Greek Dionysus), while Neptune is the god of the sea (Greek Poseidon).

Video: The video for today is Zeus vs Thor. Epic Rap Battle. Maybe this will inspire you to do a rap-based story sometime this semester. There is an incredible amount of mythological detail here, along with some awesome rhymes:

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is ready to learn: Study something new. You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Event on Campus: Here is something exciting: Rijutha from the Indian Epics class will be presenting at TEDxOU this Friday, January 27! You can find out more at the TEDxOU website.

January 25: Burns Night. Every year on January 25 the Scottish poet Robert Burns is celebrated by people all over the world who gather together to read Burns's poetry. You can find out more about "Burns Night"at Wikipedia, Do you know the Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men? That title comes from a Robert Burns poem which you can read and listen to in this video: To a Mouse.

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