Monday, January 22

Today is Monday. Week 1 is now over... and Week 2 has begun! You will have actual reading assignments this week: a reading overview to introduce you to the different reading options for the rest of the semester, and then a short anthology of stories so that you can find a story you want to retell in your own way. You can find the week's assignments at the Class Calendar.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Success Tips: Start...by looking back. You have those handy labels in the sidebar of your blog now; that means you can click on each week's label and see all the posts from that week together on one page. So, click on your "Week 1" label (you can also see that label at the bottom of each Week 1 post also), and review all the work you did last week. Pretty impressive!

Extra Credit. You don't need to wait until the end of Week 2 to try out those extra credit options; if there is something you want to try, you can do some extra credit at the beginning of the week. Any time is a good time to explore and try new things. Here are the Week 2 extra credit options.

Project Stack. (repeat announcement) Some of you are already turning in Week 2 project assignments, which is great! While you are waiting on comments back from me about your Project assignment, you can check the stack to make sure I received your email.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. Everybody will be writing stories this week, so I wanted to share a Week 2 story here from Trey's blog (he is working ahead): The Ungrateful Student. Adapting stories to a college setting is a great choice because it lets you bring your own personal insight and details from your own life into the story you tell:

India Item. Here is something for the science majors: there is a beautiful statue of the god Shiva, Cosmic Dancer, on the grounds of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Find out more here: Shiva at CERN.

Myth Video: Here's another one of those Crash Course videos; this one might help you as you think about mythological storytelling: The Hero's Journey. Find out more at Wikipedia: Hero's Journey.

Proverb of the Day: I am a big fan of animal proverbs, so I wanted to share this proverb from India: It is vain to look for yesterday’s fish in the house of the otter. As you can tell, that little proverb actually implies a story... and it is not a happy story for the fish! Find out more at the Proverb Laboratory.

Writing: Here's a cartoon to help inspire you in your storytelling efforts: The Creative Process.

Reading: And here's a quote from George R. R. Martin (Game of Thrones) to inspire you in your reading: A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat knows why blogging is useful; with your blog you can learn, and then share what you learned. Find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Video: Jennifer Lynn Barnes is a fiction writer who is also a professor of psychology here at OU, and this is a talk she gave at TEDxOU: Imaginary Friends and Real-World Consequences. Find out more at Wikipedia: Parasocial Interaction.

Event on Campus: At 7PM in the Oklahoma History Center there will be a Kilgen Organ Performance by Jelani Eddington (details). Here is Eddington playing a Star Wars Symphonic Suite:

January 22: Vasant Panchami. The 2018 celebration of the holiday of Vasant Panchami takes place today, January 22. This is a festival in honor of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge, art, and music. You can find out more about the holiday at Wikipedia, and the image below shows the goddess Saraswati. There will be lots of beautiful Saraswati images if you check the #VasantPanchami hashtag at Twitter today!

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