Wednesday, February 20

Today is Wednesday of Week 6. Here is a link to the Week 6 assignments. For some of you this is a reading day, and some of you might also be doing your story assignment already. Have fun with that — and yes, there's a Story Lab option again this week!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. If you turned in something before 7PM on Saturday, you should have comments back from me now. I'll finish the Saturday assignments today, and then I'll get started on the Sunday assignments. As always, you can check the stack anytime to make sure I received your email — and if you want comments back sooner rather than later, try to turn in your project on Saturday instead of Sunday.

Click for curiosity. As you are doing the reading today, you may run into links, or images that get your attention, or names you are curious about, words you don't know etc. etc. My advice is to pursue that curiosity; the answers you seek might be just one click away. And if you keep on clicking, you could end up with a nice Wikipedia Trail for extra credit.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. Speaking of Wikipedia Trails, here's a wild one from Carlo: From Sita to the First Crusade.

Comic Book On Reserve. Today's comic book is Pareekshit: Son of Abhimanyu, which gives the backstory of how the Mahabharata was first recited to a descendant of the Pandavas, Parikshit, the son of Abhimanyu (who is the son of Arjuna the Pandava hero).

Free Audiobook. Today's free audiobook is The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang.

Featured Storybook. I know there are a lot of fans of Greek mythology in these classes, so here is a fun Storybook to look at: Real Housewives of Greek Mythology. Things are tense around Mount Olympus these days: Hera and Zeus are fighting. Again. (Check out the stories to see full-blown script style in action too!)

Myth Video. And for those of you in Myth-Folklore looking at Buddhism this week, here is a quick BBC video: Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths.

India Video. This is a video about an important concept in both Buddhism and Hinduism: Samadhi.

India Item. From Kashmir comes this proverb: Man is more fragile than a flower, and yet harder than a stone.

And here is a thought about books and reading from Madeleine L'Engle, author of A Wrinkle in time.

Growth Mindset Cats. When you read, you grow your knowledge, and that's good: Knowledge is enjoyable and often useful in strange and unexpected ways.

Writing. You can create graphics for your own stories using fun generators online like this Fortune Cookie Generator. If you want some modern "prophecy" in a story, use a fortune cookie!

This is a fascinating video about your brain and storytelling: Empathy, Neurochemistry, and the Dramatic Arc.

Event on Campus. The French Film Festival begins tonight at 7PM in Meacham (details). The first film is Two Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit) starring the astounding Marion Cotillard:

Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

February 20: World Day of Social Justice. The theme of the  holiday this year is "If You Want Peace and Development, Work for Social Justice." You can find out more at the U.N. website.

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