Friday, January 29

HAPPY FRIDAY! Today is Friday of Week 1, and you have reached the end of the Orientation Week: congratulations on all you have gotten done this week! The Orientation is focused on getting ready for the semester to come, and in Week 2 the readings and stories will begin. I hope you will have fun with all of that!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Weekly schedule. As you saw this week, there were assignments due on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday — and then there are "end of the week" assignments, which you can do on Friday or over the weekend. So, if you have not finished up the last of the Orientation assignments, you can do that today or over the weekend, based on what is most convenient for you.

Catching up on announcements. If you didn't keep up with the week's announcements, you can always catch up on them afterwards; this link will take you to the most recent announcements.

Blog comments. I'm still commenting on the Favorite Places post (they are so much fun to read!), and then I'll start commenting on the Introduction posts; it usually takes me a couple weeks to read and reply to all of those. Meanwhile, the Week 2 Commenting assignment is available now, so you may be getting comments on your blog posts from other people in class too. :-)

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. There are so many cute pet pictures in the blogs, and I wanted to share this picture of Lewis's dog, Coco. Find out more at his post.

 

Twitter stream. I shared something from Legonium yesterday, and here's another: it's a Lego Pegasus.

And art from India: here is the great mythological horse of India:

Uchchaihshravas.

He is emerging from the great Churning of the Ocean:

From Studio Ghibli, something beautiful!

And more wonderful videos from PBS:

From the coffee files, here's a fun one from Nick Seluk:

Speaking of superheroes, here are 10 Things We Can Learn From Superheroes:

And here are some thoughts from an OU professor, Jennifer Barnes, about imaginary friends: Parasocial Relationships.

January 29: Edward Lear. Today marks the death in the year 1888 of the English illustrator and poet, Edward Lear (he was born in 1812). You can read more about Lear's life and work in this Wikipedia article, and you can find his books online at Project Gutenberg. He is most famous for his limericks and nonsense verse — especially the poem entitled The Owl and the Pussycat. You can listen to the poem at this Tales of Curiosity video: 

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