Thursday, March 14

Today is Thursday of Week 9. Here is a link to the Week 9 assignments. For many of you, today is storytelling day, and I hope you have fun with that! Tomorrow I'll be able to update the randomizer with all those new stories. :-)

Class Procedures and Reminders

Spring Break is coming! After you do your Story post today, the rest of the Week 9 assignments are not due until the weekend at the end of Spring Break (March 24), but I would urge you to finish them now so that you won't even have to think about this class during vacation. Week 10 will start on Monday, March 25, after Spring Break.

Project Stack. If you turned in something before 6PM on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now, and I'll keep working on the Sunday assignments today. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your email.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. I really liked this motivational graphic from Victoria's blog: A Dream. Even better: A. P. J. Abdul Kalam is one of India's most famous scientists, and he also served as President of India (Wikipedia).

Free Book Online. Today's free book is Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm, translated by Lucy Crane and illustrated by her brother, Walter Crane... and for more about Walter Crane, see below.

Free Audiobook. Today's free audiobook is also by Walter Crane: The Frog Prince and Other Stories. 

Featured Storybook. If you want to learn about Gilgamesh, you can do that here: The Heroic Tyrant-King. The ancient epic of Gilgamesh survives only in fragments, but this Storybook fills in the gaps to conjure up both Gilgamesh and Enkidu in great psychological depth.

Myth Video. And here is someone performing the Sumerian Gilgamesh in a musical re-creation of the ancient story.

India Video. Here's another Epified video, this time about the heavens: Lokas - Seven Worlds Above Us.

India Item. This is a proverb from the ancient Sanskrit Hitopadesha: For one whose foot is enclosed in a shoe, the whole surface of the earth is covered with leather.

Writing. Maybe you can borrow some characters for your story this week from this Tom Gauld cartoon: Characters for an Epic Tale.

Plus, here's some advice from Brene Brown for both writing and for life: don't worry about what people think.

And here's a lovely Brene Brown video about Empathy.

Growth Mindset Cats. There is always room to grow because your abilities are NOT carved in stone.

Event on Campus. It's Pi Day! Come celebrate in Collings Hall from 11AM-4PM to play pi games and purchase a slice of pizza “pi" for $3.14 to support  student groups (details).

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

March 14: Walter Crane. Today marks the anniversary of the death in 1915 of one of my favorite book illustrators, Walter Crane. You can read about his life and career at Wikipedia, and here is one of my favorites among his books: his beautiful illustrated Aesop's fables:

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