Wednesday, January 17

Today is Wednesday of Week 1. If you did not finish the Tuesday assignments, there is a grace period this morning until noon, and here is a link to the Week 1 Orientation. For Wednesday's assignment, you will be browsing student projects from past semesters so that you can start thinking about what kind of project you might want to do. Enjoy!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Success Tips: Announcements by Email. Yesterday I recommended reading the class announcements each day, and one way to do that is to subscribe by email; if you would like to receive the announcements by email, you can use the subscription form in the blog sidebar or click this subscription link.

Blog network. Thanks to everybody who got their blogs started yesterday! The blog stream is very lively now, full of new posts. There's a "blog stream" link in the Canvas left-hand navigation menu, so you can take a look and see what people are posting. Then, starting in Week 2, you'll be commenting on each other's blog posts too.

My comments. My goal this week is to comment on all the favorite places posts, and also to comment on as many of the Introduction posts as I can. I really enjoy getting to know everybody, and I hope these Orientation week posts will help you feel confident about blogging and ready for next week's assignments.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. From the class blog stream, here is a "favorite place" post that actually turned into a story of its own; you can learn all about the Giant's Causeway from Erica's blog post. The giant in question is Finn McCool, a.k.a. Fionn mac Cumhaill, who was quite the trickster, as well as being the builder of this bridge of stones:

Words from India. I'm really interested in the origins of words, especially English words that come from India. One of those words is "avatar" (it's a Sanskrit word) which is a "descent" of a divine being into an earthly form, which might be an animal or a human, or something in-between. The word avatar is very important for the Ramayana epic because the hero, Rama, is an avatar of the god Vishnu. Find out more here: AVATAR.

India Video: Yesterday I shared an introductory Crash Course Mythology video, and I wanted to follow up on that with a Crash Course video about Indian mythology: Indian Pantheons.

Proverb of the Day: Today's proverb is: A serpent, unless it devours a serpent, will not become a dragon. Find out more at the Proverb Laboratory. This is originally a Latin proverb: Serpens, ni edat serpentem, draco non fiet.

Writing: And for another take on dragons, here's a Tom Robbins graphic from the Writing Laboratory: We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.

H.E.A.R.T.: As a follow-up to yesterday's video about Art in Bizzell, here are some more fun facts about the OU Libraries: 10 Things You Didn't Know about OU Libraries.

Video: As you ponder the creative dimensions of this class, I thought you might enjoy this video by a teacher I very much admire, John Spencer: A Bigger Definition of Creativity.

Event on Campus: Do you have artwork you would like to show? Check out this opportunity to share your work in the WGS Art Gallery; they are accepting submissions through Friday (submission form). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

January 17: #MuseumSelfieDay. This is one of my favorite Twitter events! Check out the Twitter stream today as people post pictures of themselves posing with art in museums around the world. Maybe you will want to drop by one of the museums at OU and take a selfie to share! Find out more at @MuseumSelfieDay. Here's a fun pose from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston:

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