Thursday, April 20

Today is Thursday of WEEK 13. There is nothing due today, which makes it the perfect day to get ahead and/or do some extra credit, especially if you want to finish up next week in order to have a Dead Week in this class. Here is a link to this week's assignments.

Update: The Week 13 blog groups are available now! :-)

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. If you turned in something by 9PM on Sunday, you should have comments back, and I plan to finish the Sunday assignments today. Meanwhile, you can check the stack to make sure I received your email.

Dead Week. As I mentioned above, it's up to you if you want to finish up in Week 14 (so you have a total Dead Week in this class), or if you want to keep working through Week 15. Either way is good! To see how that works, you can use this Progress Chart.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Stories. Even Rock, Paper, Scissors can be interpreted as a story!

Life. Wise words from the novelist Louisa May Alcott: I am not afraid of storms for I am learning to sail my ship. 

Word Mix-Ups. This is a typo the spellchecker will not fix for you: DAIRY v. DIARY.

Featured Storybook. This project is from the Indian Epics class: Vpress.com: Blogging for Bad Guys. Even bad guys and gals — Kaikeyi, Ravana, Duryodhana and Karna — need to be part of a community, and so they use VPress to share their lives' ups and downs in their blogs.

Free Book Online: Today's free book is The Aberdeen Bestiary. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents. The book is in Latin with gorgeous illustrations, plus an English translation.

Words of Wisdom: Today's saying is People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones (an English proverb). Find out more at the Proverb Lab. This is one of the old proverbs that is still going strong in the 21st century.

Video: The video for today is The Mahabharata ("Abracadabra" by the Steve Miller Band). Find out more at Amy Burvall's YouTube Channel.

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cats are ignoring distractions: Stay focused and pay attention. You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Event on Campus: It's an Earth Day Coloring party in Bizzell from 6PM to 8PM (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

April 20: Odilon Redon. Today marks the birthday of the French symbolist painter Odilon Redon in 1840. If you have never seen his paintings, take a look: they are marvelous! You can see a gallery at Wikipedia. Here is his painting called The Cyclops:

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