Showing posts with label week02. Show all posts
Showing posts with label week02. Show all posts

WEEK 2 WEEKEND: February 6-7

HAPPY WEEKEND! I hope things are going well in all of your classes, and also that you are getting into a good routine for the semester. If you have not finished up the Week 2 assignments yet for this class, this weekend is the time to do that. Here is a link to Week 2, and Week 3 is ready to go too!

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. If you turned in a project on Friday before 2PM, you should have gotten comments back from me; anything that came in later than 2PM will be at the top of the stack for Monday. Over the weekend, as project assignments come in, I'll periodically update the stack, so you can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment. Then on Monday I'll start reading and replying to the assignments in the order that they were turned in (so the sooner you turn that in this weekend, the sooner you'll get comments back from me).

Comments. You should all start getting comments on your Intros this weekend as people start doing the Week 2 comment assignment. You can do the Week 3 comment assignment too if you want; that randomizer is full of stories now! I hope you will enjoy learning about each other and sharing your stories each week.

Check-in and Connect. An extra credit option I highly recommend is the check-in and connect; people have added some really nice things to the Padlet! If you want to add a YouTube, just paste in the YouTube address and the video will display right there in the Padlet.


The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. Check out this gorgeous work of art in Jennifer's Indian Epics brainstorming post: Buddha Head Sits in Growing Tree Roots from Wat Mahathat in Thailand. Find out more.


Twitter stream. I know people are probably feeling Zoomed out, but there is going to be a beautiful event coming up on February 18 with OU professor Honorée Fanonne Jeffers; find out more: Poetry as Protest.


Something very cool from the British Library: The curious tale of Solomon and the Phoenix.


And something from India in the New York Times Science section:


And be sure to check out #ColourOurCollections ... free coloring books you can download from libraries and museums around the world with drawings from Ovid's Heroides, illustrations for the Greek poet Anacreon, and the mermaid Melusine, plus so many more; explore the hashtag for all the coloring books.




And the cold Yukon weather is not going to stop Gurdeep of the Yukon: he's still dancing! 


February 6: Manutius. Saturday marks the anniversary of the death of Aldus Pius Manutius in the year 1515. Manutius founded the Aldine Press of Venice in 1494, and he was an innovator in typography, too; most famously, he invented the use of printed italics. You can read more at Wikipedia about Aldus and about the Aldine Press. Here's a fun animation of the press logo, a dolphin (graphic created by Laura Aydelotte):


February 7: Charles Dickens. Sunday is the birthday of the novelist Charles Dickens in 1812; you can read more about his life and career at Wikipedia. Do you have a favorite Dickens novel? My favorite is Hard Times (see below). Here is a lovely painting by Robert William Buss entitled Dickens' Dream:


 Here is a free audiobook of Hard Times. 




Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.
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Friday, February 5

HAPPY FRIDAY! Today is Friday of Week 2. Here is a link to Week 2; you can decide if you want to finish the end-of-week items today or over the weekend. Either way works! And if you have time, do some extra credit; now is a good time to get ahead so that you can then miss some assignments later when midterms get going in your other classes, etc.

And now... CONGRATULATIONS! I hope you all had a good time with the reading and storytelling this week. In Week 1, you became bloggers, and now in Week 2, you are storytellers! Thank you for being willing to try these new things; I really appreciate all the work you are doing so that we have this blog network full of stories now.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Announcements. At the end of the week it's a good idea to review the week's announcements to see if you missed anything important. There's even an extra credit option for doing that: Review and Back Up. (You'll see it there on the list of all the various extra credit options which are available each week.)

Project Stack. As people turn in their project assignments, I'll add them to the stack. Then, while you are waiting on feedback from me, you can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment. I've replied to all the projects people turned in on Wednesday, and I'll make sure to reply today to anything people turned in on Thursday, and hopefully anything from today also.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. Here is something super-cool from Savannah: she used Canva.com to make her own graphic to illustrate her story this week! You can read her story here: Sex and the Goblin City.


And people are adding fun things to the Padlet (more about that)... this animated gif someone added today is so cute!


Twitter stream. Something beautiful from one of my favorite cartoonists, Ricardo Siri, a.k.a. Liniers. Reading is my yoga! (larger view)


Plus a fun writing cartoon from Dave Coverly, a.k.a. Speedbump. (larger view)


And here is some procrastination humor from the classic pair of tortoise-and-hare as imagined in the world of Poorly Drawn Lines. (larger view)


In addition to cartoons, I'm always looking for art at Twitter, like this gorgeous Kala-Bhairava manifestation of the god Shiva (now at the Victoria and Albert Museum).


From one of my Twitter favorites, The Smithsonian, I learned something new about this old Stephen Foster song: although it was later used in minstrel shows, it was originally written as an anti-slavery song: The Complicated Legacy of ‘My Old Kentucky Home.’ 


Some of you have already started reading the Ramayana in the Indian Epics class, so I wanted to share this amazing Ramayana video which I learned about from a student last semester who is studying ASL: Silent Ramayana.


And here's a thought to inspire your writing: Start writing!


February 5: Inayat Khan. Today marks the anniversary of the death of the Indian Sufi teacher, Inayat Khan, in the year 1927. Inayat Khan's teachings centered on Tawhid, or unity, which you can read about in this Wikipedia article. Inayat Khan was also trained as a music master, so in addition to sharing a knowledge of Sufism with the West, he also spread a knowledge of traditional Indian music:


This video gives an overview of Inayat Khan's life:


I also used Inayat Khan as a source for some of the stories in this book of Sufi tales, which is a reading option coming up in the Myth-Folklore class in Weeks 5 and 6: Tiny Tales of the Sufis. (Yes, it's another one of the 100-word story books!)



Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.
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Thursday, February 4

Today is Thursday of Week 2, and here is a link to Week 2. For many of you, this will be a day of storytelling! I hope you will have fun as you choose one of the stories from the Anthology to retell in your own way: Your First Story.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Story stream. A lot of people will be writing stories today, and there are also people who have written their stories already (plus there are some stories from future weeks, thanks to the people who are working ahead). It might give you a creative boost to browse and explore the stories so far, so take a look if you are curious: Stories (you'll see each class in its own column).

Project Stack. Thanks to everybody working ahead and turning in their Week 2 (and beyond) projects already! If you turned something in on Wednesday, I'll get comments back to you today for sure, and you can always check the stack to make sure I received your form.

Blog comments. The Week 2 blog comment assignment is ready to go, and you will be commenting on other people's Introductions. For those of you working ahead, the Week 3 blog comment assignment is also ready now where you will be commenting on people's stories.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. There was a basilisk in the reading for Myth-Folklore yesterday, and Reid included this very cool medieval illustration of a basilisk, along with its legendary nemesis: the weasel. Here's Reid's post.


There is a whole medieval tradition of animal legend books called bestiaries, and there is a beautiful one online here: Aberdeen Bestiary. Here's the Aberdeen Bestiary phoenix:


Also, in addition to each person's blog posts, there's also our Check-in and Connect Padlet where people have been making some nice posts. You can find out about that here: Check-In and Connect (it's an extra credit thing).


Twitter stream. Here is some more beautiful animal art; this is an owl from ancient Egypt:


And from the Smithsonian, one of my favorite Twitter feeds: Antiquities Will Return to Cambodia. On the left is a statue of Ardhanarishvara, a composite male-female representation of the gods Shiva and Parvati, both of whom you will be reading about in the Indian Epics class.


Here's a depiction of Ardhanarishvara by an Indian painter, circa the year 1800, Shiva with his bull and Parvati with her tiger, unified as one:


And here's a helpful homework dog:


Of course there's a dog in the family of writers! And a cat...


And for a video today, here's Crash Course on the topic of Goddesses:


February 4: Sri Lanka National Day. Today, February 4, is the holiday that celebrates the day in 1948 when the island nation of Sri Lanka gained independence from British rule. (India had gained its independence about six months earlier, in August of 1947.) You can read more about Sri Lanka in this Wikipedia article, and the image below shows a mountain, Sri Pada, commonly called "Adam's Peak" in English, which supposedly holds the footprint of the Buddha (according to Buddhist tradition), the footprint of Shiva (in Hindu tradition) or the footprint of Adam (in Islamic tradition):


And here's a video you might enjoy: Ancient Sites in Sri Lanka.



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




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Wednesday, February 3

Today is Wednesday of Week 2. Here is a link to the Week 2 assignments. Yesterday you did the reading overview, and today you have some actual stories to read in an Anthology; here's the Week 2 reading link. As you read through  the stories in the Anthology, look for a story you want to retell in your own way. If you're curious, take a look at the stories people have written so far. There are already stories in both classes, all so different from each other; that's the power of creativity: no two stories ever come out the same way.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. So far, I've been keeping up with people turning in their Week 2 project assignments, getting projects back to people the next day. So, if you turned in a project assignment on Tuesday, I should be able to get that back to you today! As those projects come in, I add them to the "stack," and you can check the stack to make sure I have received your project.

Introductions. I'm working on the Introductions; it usually takes me all of Week 2 and Week 3 to read and reply to everybody. Plus you'll be getting some comments from other students as people start doing the Week 2 Comments, and you'll also be getting comments all semester on the Introduction posts as you'll see when you get to the Week 3 Comments (commenting on Story posts and on Introductions).

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. One of my favorite blog posts to see pop up in the stream are Wikipedia Trails, and here's one that Amy did: Wikipedia Trail: Garuda to Majapahit. This Garuda statue she found is amazing: Garuda Wisnu Kencana in Bali, Indonesia:


You can see the god Vishnu there; Garuda is his vahana (vehicle); more Vishnu and Garuda images here.


Twitter stream. Yesterday I featured a request from Farid at the OUDaily for students who want to talk about online classes, and now Blake Douglas is looking for people who have information about OU classrooms; here's his tweet.



And here's a great storytelling idea: Ancestry.com ... for non-human beings. A Scott Hilburn cartoon I saw at Twitter:


And from Open Culture: good news about the power of the public domain! The Great Gatsby Is Now in the Public Domain and There’s a New Graphic Novel.


From OUr Mental Health at Twitter, make sure you get enough sleep! It's vital for good health... and for learning.


And something beautiful from Dust-to-Digital:


For a story-writing video, here's a TED talk by Kate Messner: How to build a fictional world.


Plus another TED video, this one from John McWhorter about fictional languages: Are Elvish, Klingon, Dothraki and Na'vi real languages?


February 3: Setsubun. Today is the Shinto holiday known as Setsubun, the "Bean-Throwing Day," which is part of the spring festival season. You can read more about this holiday at Wikipedia. The image below shows an antique demon mask used for the Setsubun festival; the bean-throwing is to ward off demons:


And here's a video: Spring Ogre Purification.



Check out the Twitter stream for information and fun stuff during the day, or click here for past announcements.
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Tuesday, February 2

Today is Tuesday of Week 2. If you have not done the Week 2 Reading Overview yet, today is the day to do that; here's the link: overview of reading options, and here is a link to all the Week 2 assignments.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Canvas Modules. As each week ends, I move it on down to the bottom of the Modules list in Canvas, so that means Week 2 is up at the top of the Modules list now. As you can see, all the Modules are available now, so after you finish Week 2, you can move right on to Week 3 if you want, Week 4, and so on. 

Project Stack. Some people are already turning in their Week 2 Project assignments, which is great! As people turn those in, I'll add your name to the Project stack, and you can always check the stack to make sure I received your Google form (and then I'll reply by email). 

Blog comments. The Week 2 blog randomizer is ready to go, and you'll be commenting on people's Introduction posts. I am also pleased to announce that the Week 3 randomizer is also ready for those of you who are working ahead; starting with the Week 3 comments, you'll be commenting on stories at people's blogs. :-)

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. Okay, it's now time for true confessions: I have been watching Star Trek for 49 years; I became a devoted fan of the original series when I was in third grade. So of course I totally laughed out loud when I saw this in Clay's Technology Overview. 


Twitter stream. Here's an OU item: Farid, a reporter for the OU Daily, is looking for students to interview about online courses; you can DM Farid at Twitter or via the OUDaily.


Also OU-related: this is from Professor Jennifer Davis in the History department, sharing this great example of Norman street art:


Plus something relaxing from Nathan Pyle:


And this comes from Tanmay Vora, one of my favorite sketchnote-artists at Twitter: these are all practices I hope to encourage in this class! :-)


And I know people are probably Zoomed out... but it really is amazing how many great lectures are going on; this is an announcement relevant to both of these classes (we're starting the week in India with Buddhist jatakas, and the jatakas also come up in Myth-Folklore): Buddhist Art Online Lecture Series which starts later this month.


Some of you might be interested in supernatural creatures (a theme in both classes!)... so, do you know about the octopus monster in Lake Thunderbird? It's one of America's Mythical Lake Monsters.


And now, moving northward: here's a Bhangra video from Gurdeep Pandher, who offers Bhangra lessons online. He's based in the Yukon, hence Bhangra on a frozen lake: Indian dancing all over the world!


February 2: Imbolc. In the Wheel of the Year holidays, February 2 is celebrated as Imbolc (sometimes spelled Imbolg), the cross-quarter day which is in-between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox. When it is Imbolc in the northern hemisphere, it is the holiday of Lughnasadh in the southern hemisphere.


And from YouTube, here is Music for Imbolc:


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