Class Procedures and Reminders
Taking a break. I had originally thought people might want to take a break in Week 5, but a lot of people needed a break in Week 4, and that's all good. The whole idea with the break points is that you have 30 extra points to use however you want/need to use them. So, that could be to cover missing work from back in Weeks 2 and 3, to cover taking a break in Week 4, or to take a break in Week 5 if you want, or you can just push on through and finish the class early. It's totally up to you; more about how that works here: Week 5 and Week 10 Break Weeks. You can also use this chart to track your progress, and if you have any questions, just let me know.
Project Stack. On Friday I replied to almost all the projects in the stack, and the ones that were left in the stack on Friday will be at the top of the stack on Monday. I'll update the stack periodically over the weekend so you can check the stack to make sure I received your project.
The following items are for fun and exploration:
Blog stream. Some cool artwork in Chris's blog post here: Storybook Plan. He's doing his Storybook about Kintaro, so everybody will get a chance to learn about these Japanese folk hero (and that includes people in Indian Epics; later in the semester, there will be some chances to read Storybooks from the other class too, so those of you in Indian Epics can check out the Myth-Folklore projects and vice versa).
And thanks to everybody for adding to the Check-in/Connection Padlet. Here's how it was looking as of Friday:
I thought this dog-on-the-ice animated gif that someone added was really cute:
And there were some beautiful weather pictures in the Twitter stream, like this from OU's Dr. Surratt:
For some video diversion, you can learn about emoticons: Are Emoticons the Future of Language?
As the semester goes on, I hope I can inspire everybody in this class to enjoy the power of punctuation. It's a big part of how writing works! Punctuation saves lives:
And punctuation makes all the difference here too:
February 20: World Day of Social Justice. The theme of the 2021 United Nations holiday is "A Call for Social Justice in the Digital Economy." You can find out more at the U.N. website.
February 21: Mother Language Day. This is a United Nations holiday celebrating everyone's mother language. The date has a special connection to South Asia, as the United Nations website explains: "The date represents the day in 1952 when students demonstrating for recognition of their language, Bangla, as one of the two national languages of the then Pakistan, were shot and killed by police in Dhaka, the capital of what is now Bangladesh."
There are so many languages spoken in India! Here's a helpful chart:
You can listen to some of those languages in this video; you can even try guessing what language you are hearing if you speak an Indian language (or languages!):
Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.
