WEEK 6 WEEKEND: March 6-7

Happy Weekend, everybody! Here is a link to Week 6, and plus a link to Week 7 for those of you who are ready to get a head start on the coming week.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. On Friday, I replied to all the Week 5 projects in the stack. There were still some Week 6 (and beyond) projects that I did not get to, so those will be at the top of the stack on Monday. Meanwhile, you can check the stack to make sure I received your projects, and I'll update the stack periodically over the weekend.

Projects and Feedback. When you get to the Week 6 Feedback assignment, you'll see a randomizer for the Storybooks and Portfolios. I hope you will enjoy seeing other people's projects — and your feedback now, early on in the project, will be very helpful as people revise and develop their stories. Meanwhile, I'll also keep updating this slideshow, and there's a Tech Tip on how to add a Google Slideshow to a blog post if you want to learn how to embed a slideshow this in your own blog. (You can even embed a slideshow in the sidebar, as you can see in the sidebar of this blog.)


The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. This is actually from a project website rather than a blog: Drew used a tool called TextPro.me to create this very cool banner for one of his Portfolio stories: Adam and Eve in Simulated Paradise. Such a great idea! If you want to try something like that, you will find lots of different options at the website in addition to this distinctive Matrix style that Drew used.


Twitter stream. I saw this gorgeous mural via the Library of Congress Twitter stream: Hispanic Heritage in Murals.


And here's something fascinating from The Met's Twitter stream: Navagunjara, a Universal Form of Krishna. It's Krishna in the form of Nine-Animal-Parts:




From the British Museum at Twitter, a 4000-year-old board game: The Royal Game of Ur.


And a modern digital game from Google Arts and Culture: Put a cultural spin on game night ... with artistic jigsaw puzzles: you can play solo, or multiplayer.


Here's a great cartoon from Grant Snider:


And also a video to ponder from Aeon: Stranger Aliens.


March 6: Andrzej Wajda. One of the world's great film directors, Andrzej Wajda, was born on March 6 in 1926; he died in 2016, and you can read his obituary here in the Guardian newspaper. He made many amazing films, including a film about the massacre at KatyÅ„ during World War II in which his own father was killed. Here is a trailer with English subtitles:


March 7: Stith Thompson. Sunday, March 7, marks the birthday in 1885 of Stith Thompson who became one of the great folklorists of the 20th century. He pioneered the classification of stories by their basic elements, which he called "motifs," and his Motif Index is still a widely used standard. Those of you in Myth-Folklore may be reading stories from his book Tales of the North American Indians during Weeks 10 and 11: 


And he also worked on Indian folk traditions too; this book is online at Hathi Trust.



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