FALL SEMESTER: ready to start early if you want

Welcome to the FALL SEMESTER, everybody! Classes begin officially on Monday, August 21 — and if you want a head start on the semester, I've got my online classes are up and running. It will probably make your other classes easier to manage next week if you can finish up the first week of work in this class now, although it's also fine if you wait until August 21. That's the great thing about online courses: there is so much freedom in the schedule, so the choice is yours!

Getting Started. To begin, click this ORIENTATION link where you will find the list of assignments introducing you to the tools and websites you will be using for this online class. I teach two different classes — Myth-Folklore and Indian Epics — and the Orientation week is the same for both.

Questions? If you run into any problems or have questions, let me know: laura-gibbs@ou.edu. I've made a lot of changes to the classes over the summer, so there might be some gaps, broken links, etc. I appreciate your feedback about anything you find that I need to fix! Over the weekend, I don't check email as often as during the week, but especially this weekend I'll try to keep an eye on the email so that I'll be able to answer any questions you might have.

Canvas. When you log on to Canvas.ou.edu, you should see the course card for the class you are in: for Myth-Folklore 995, you'll see the Greek hero Perseus; Myth-Folklore 996 has a trickster rabbit from the Panchatantra; and for Indian Epics, it's the churning of the ocean. If your other instructors haven't created Canvas cards for their courses, tell them about it; the image cards make it easy to recognize each course at a quick glance. Plus, Canvas fixed the Dashboard this summer so that you can turn off the ugly color overlay now; here's how:


Daily Announcements. Starting on August 21, I'll be updating these announcements every day, and you will see this announcements blog as the Canvas homepage the course. If you want to subscribe by email, use the "subscribe" box in the sidebar of this blog. Type in the email address you prefer and follow the instructions to confirm your subscription. 

Twitter. Although there won't be new daily announcements until the semester officially starts on August 21, I'll be tweeting @OnlineMythIndia. I really enjoy Twitter for connecting with writers, storytellers, and musicians, along with museums and libraries, and you can see my latest Twitter items in the sidebar of this blog.

Howdy Week. Thanks to Sonali for sending me this nice graphic about all the fun activities that are starting on Monday (full-size here):


Finally, just for fun, here are two music videos, each taking their own perspective on the passage of time, moment by moment and season by season, and I hope you had a wonderful summer with lots of good energy for the semester to come!