Thursday, April 13

Today is Thursday of WEEK 12. I'm back from my trip (see below), and getting caught up on the stack! If you are working ahead and/or doing extra credit to finish up early, that's great: here is a link to this week's assignments.

Update: The Week 12 blog comment groups are ready to go!

Class Procedures and Reminders

The Stack. So, the stack is still full of assignments, but I am hoping to get through a good part of it today! You can check the stack to make sure I received your email.

Out of town... at Canvas. So, the reason I was out of town was to attend an event at Canvas-Instructure headquarters in Salt Lake City! They invited some geeky teachers to brainstorm with software engineers to plan improvements over the next 18 months. It was seriously cool to be talking with actual Canvas engineers! The group I was in focused on a SEARCH feature in Canvas. It's weird that there's no search, right? Well... there will be, and you heard it here first! :-)

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Mix-and-Match Shakespeare. And yet another genius storytelling cartoon from Tom Gauld.

More Shakespeare. And here's another fun one: Shakespearean insult generator; click the link to generate your own random Shakespearean insult!

GrammarCatz. The poker cat is struggling with YOUR v. YOU'RE.

Featured Storybook. This project is from the Myth-Folklore class: The Fairy Godmother Union Strike. The fairy godmothers are tired of being taken for granted and have gone on strike. King Edward is infuriated at their behavior, but the fairies use their magic powers to show him how badly things would have gone without the fairies arranging for those "happily-ever-after" endings.

Free Book Online: Today's free book is Village Folktales of Ceylon by H. Parker. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents. Ceylon is the old name for Sri Lanka; the name changed in 1972 when Sri Lanka became a republic independent of British rule.

Words of Wisdom: Today's saying is Appearances are deceiving (an English proverb). Find out more at the Proverb Lab. Optical illusions are a good reminder that you need to take a hard look at things!

Video: The video for today is King Arthur ("Nature Boy" by Eden Ahbez). This is another one of Amy Burvall's History Teachers videos.

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is looking for inspiration, and she knows you can find inspiration in the success of others.. You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Event on Campus: There will be an event for international students at 3:30PM in Gaylord Hall 2500: "Know Your Rights and Responsibilities" (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

April 13: Alfred  Butts. On this day in 1899 Alfred Mosher Butts was born, the man who invented Scrabble in 1938. So, if you have ever enjoyed a good game of Scrabble, think a happy thought for Mr. Butts today. You can read more about Mr. Butts at Wikipedia. I think I'd like to get one of these giant outdoor Scrabble games: doesn't that look like fun?

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