Monday, March 15

Today is Monday of Week 8, which is a Review Week. Here is a link to Week 8, and I hope you will enjoy this chance to look back on your work so far and look ahead to the second half of the semester! For those of you finishing up assignments during the grace period this morning, here is a link to Week 7.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Review Week. With no new reading or storytelling, this week is a good opportunity to work ahead of the deadlines. If you finish up the Week 8 Review posts today (there are three of them), then you can finish up the rest of the Week 8 assignments (feedback, comments, project) before the weekend. And if you can do that, then you can get a head start on Week 9 and maybe be on track to finish the class early.

Project Stack. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your project. Today I'll be working on the projects people turned in last week that were still left in the stack on Friday, and then I'll move on to the rest of the stack in the order received. 

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. This is actually from a Storybook rather than from a blog post: Rachael recorded audio and embedded it with SoundCloud in her Google Site page (something you can also do in a blog post). Take a look/listen: Opossum Tales, with Cherokee vocabulary!

If you would like to add audio to a blog post or webpage using SoundCloud, there's a Tech Tip for that too: SoundCloud audio.

For an example of SoundCloud in a blog post, here's a story about one of Vishnu's avatars: Varaha, the Boar avatar. Shiva and Vishnu. This is audio you can click and play right here in the blog post:

Laura Gibbs · 132. Shiva and Vishnu

Twitter stream. And from Twitter, here's another Vishnu avatar: the Narasimha Man-Lion avatar.

And I'm guessing everybody can relate to this cartoon I saw go by at Twitter from webcomicname.com (larger view):

I'm really excited about Rachael's Cherokee project for this semester (see above), and I wanted to feature this wonderful Storybook of Choctaw legends from last year's Myth-Folklore class: Dark Legends of the Chahta Yakni.

And here's a video from Cherokee Storyteller, Robert Lewis, about the first fire.

Plus some maps to expand your Native American horizons:

For more information about these maps, see the NPR article: The Map Of Native American Tribes You've Never Seen Before (this is also audio you can listen to here; NPR often has audio you can embed in a blog post or webpage like this):

March 15: The Ides of March. Each month in the Roman calendar was marked by special days known as the Kalends, the Ides and the Nones. Today, March 15 a.k.a. "The Ides of March," is the most famous day in the Roman calendar because it is the day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated. Caesar failed to heed the warning to "beware the Ides of March" (a line made famous by the soothsayer who appears in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar). You can read more about the Ides of March in this Wikipedia article.

This Minecraft video tells the story of the Ides of March in Latin, but don't worry: you can turn on CC to get English subtitles!

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