Class Procedures and Reminders
Week 2: Reading Overview. Each week, there are two reading assignments, and this week the first reading assignment is actually a Reading Overview. (The other reading assignment this week is an Anthology of stories, and then you'll be choosing one of those stories to retell in your own way.)
Extra Credit. You don't need to wait until the end of Week 2 to try out those extra credit options; if there is something you want to try, you can do some extra credit at the beginning of the week. Any time is a good time to explore and try new things! Here are the Week 2 extra credit options.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Blog stream. One of my favorite things in the blog stream is seeing art that I have not seen before, and in Melanie's reading overview, she included this gorgeous picture of the goddess Parvati holding the baby Ganesha:
If you look closely, you can even see more goddesses watching happily from up in the clouds (detail view):
Twitter stream. Here is something fun from the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa: can you find the emoji in the painting? Click here to learn more; the painting is "Clan Mother" by Tuscarora artist Richard Wayne Hill:
One of my favorite writers at Twitter is Debbie Ridpath-Ohi, and here's a fun conversation she started about writers and their weird research, with a fun cartoon to go with it (my favorite research is when about unusual animals that show up in fables, and I need Wikipedia to show me what they look like!).
I also really like this technology cartoon by Eric and Bill: just imagine what the computers are thinking about us! :-)
But we can dazzle the computer and ourselves by being creative (via Denise Krebs at Flickr): We don't just browse, click, chat, game, we invent, we design, we create, we build, we share.
For your listening enjoyment, here's a video with one of my favorite Indian musicians, Bickram Ghosh:
February 1: Langston Hughes. Today, February 1, marks the birthday of the African-American poet, Langston Hughes, who was born in 1902. He was one of the luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance, and you can read about his remarkable life and career in this Wikipedia article.
(cover of Weary Blues, 1926)
Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.
(cover of Weary Blues, 1926)Here's a video interpretation of "Weary Blues" that I found at YouTube.
And here's Langston Hughes reading one of his own poems, The Negro Speaks of Rivers; he starts with a fascinating account of just how and when and where he wrote this poem:
