Friday, February 24

HAPPY FRIDAY! You have reached the end of Week 6! The blog commenting assignment for this week is available now, and so are the project feedback groups. Here is a link to the class calendar; maybe you will want to start on the Week 7 assignments today too.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. Yesterday I read and replied to all the assignments turned in on Sunday last week, and now I am working on the late Week 5 assignments from Monday plus the early Week 6 assignments. I hope to reply to all the assignments turned in as of Thursday, although it may be late on Friday before I finish; this was a really busy week with all the Storybook Introductions. You can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

Grading Chart. Now that the semester is really moving along, you might want to use this Grading Chart to check how you are doing. The chart lets you see the point totals week by week so you can gauge whether you are on track for the grade you want to receive in the class. If you are not on track, just make sure you do more of the assigned work, along with some extra credit to make up any assignments you might have missed.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Spelling. Because you can never have too much spelling humor.

Punctuation. And punctuation humor too: celebrity commas.

Words from Mythology. Today you can join Theseus and the Minotaur in the LABYRINTH.

Featured Storybook. This project is from the Indian Epics class: CSI: Indian Epics. The crime scene is the battlefield of Kurukshetra itself, with the deaths of Drona, Karna, and Bhishma demanding a thorough investigation.

Free Book Online: Today's free book is Oral Literature in Africa by Ruth Finnegan. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents. This book is made available thanks to the UnGlue.It organization which raises money to buy the copyright to books and then to make them free, open publications:

Words of Wisdom: Today's saying is The roughest stone becomes smooth when it is much rolled (a Swiss proverb). Find out more at the Proverb Lab. This is good metaphor for the "rough edges" of life too!

Video: Did you know the words to the Battlestar Galactica theme song are in Sanskrit? No kidding! You can hear a more traditional Indian recording of the Gayatri Mantra here.

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat knows that conversation is part of how we grow: Ask me about what I'm learning! You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Event on Campus: FANTASTIC BEASTS! Yes, tonight is the night: free showings in Meacham at 6PM, 9PM and midnight (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

February 24: Maha Shivratri. This year, the festival of "The Great Night of Shiva" falls on February 24, the moonless day of the month (since the festival is based on the lunar calendar, it moves from year to year). You can read more about the Maha Shivratri festival at this Wikipedia article. In particular, the festival marks the occasion of Shiva's great cosmic dance. You can read about the great dance of Shiva in this article online, Shiva, Lord of the Dance, which is also the source for the image below:

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