Monday, April 29

Today is Monday of Dead Week (Week 15), the last week of the semester! Here is a link to this week's assignments, plus a link to Week 14 if you are using the grace period this morning.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Dead Week. If you have not finished the class yet, you can use this week's assignments to get to your goal; the key thing is to make sure you complete all your work for the course by Friday at noon. As soon as you have the points you need (410-A, 360-B, 320-C), you are done. Just fill out the "Finished" form that you will see in Canvas, and you are good to go!

Project Stack. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your email. I'm focusing first on the assignments from people who are not done with class yet, starting with the new stories people turned in for Week 14, and then moving on to the other Week 14 and Week 15 assignments.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. Wikipedia Trails can be full of surprises like this one from Umlaut to Gregorian Calendar in Baylor's blog:

Free Book Online. Today's free book is Coyote Stories by Humishuma, also known as Mourning Dove; you can read more about her life and work at Wikipedia.

Free Audiobook. Today's free audiobook is the Finnish epic Kalevala, The Land of the Heroes by Elias Lönnrot, translated by W. F. Kirby.

Featured Storybook. This project is inspired by the Ramayana, but it goes in a totally new direction: The Trials of the Four Warriors. There is a battle to fight against Ravana, although it is not Rama who goes to face the king of the rakshasas, but instead four unlikely warriors.

India Video. This video is about Kathy Foley's work as a storyteller and the masks she uses for telling the stories of India: Masks.

India Item. This is a fascinating infographic about religion that shows the distinctive presence of Hinduism in India: World Map of Religions.

Myth Video. This is a Smithsonian video on Native American Ledger Art.

Myth Item. Here is a Latin proverb: A serpent, unless it devours a serpent, will not become a dragon. And for those of you who have studied Latin: Serpens, ni edat serpentem, draco non fiet.

Writing. And here are some thoughts from Grant Snider about keeping A Writer's Notebook.

Take notes, and then just let your creativity go wild! Benefits of Creativity:

And here's a video on the power of creative constraints.

Growth Mindset Cats. These cats are using their curiosity in order to grow.

Event on Campus. (repeat announcement) This is an online event: the window is open at eval.ou.edu. Your course feedback is really important, especially for the online course program. The only reason these online courses exist is because students find them valuable: your support for online courses matters! Also, there is going to be an app making the OU course evaluations searchable, sort of like RateMyProf. That means your information will be very useful to other students! You can read more about the new OU Course Eval app at the Daily.

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

April 29. Today is the birthday of the Indian artist Raja Ravi Varma, who was born in 1848. Below you can see his depiction of Rama building the bridge to Lanka, and you can check out the Indian Epic Images blog for more of Varma's work.

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