Wednesday, February 15

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 5. If you have not written a story for this week yet, that means today is Storytelling Day. I hope you will have fun with that! Here is a link to this week's assignments.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Midterms. A lot of people have contacted me about midterms and other tests this week, and here's the thing: don't worry! The reason there is extra credit in this class every week is so that you miss some assignments in this class any time, and then you can make up the missing points with extra credit later when you have some free time. So, good luck on those midterms, and don't worry if you have to miss some work in this class during crunch time in your other classes.

Project Stack. Yesterday I got through all the assignments turned in before noon on Sunday, and I'll keep working through the Sunday assignments today. You can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

Storytelling Style. Many of you are writing stories today, so I wanted to feature a new style here in the Announcements: social media style! You can learn more here about using Simitator to create social media stories, and here's a wonderful example from an Egyptian story last semester: Ra Turns to Social Media for Help.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Writing. Words of wisdom from the Writing Laboratory: Writing does not have to be perfect to be wonderful.

Storytelling. With the help of this periodic table, you will never ... NEVER ... run out of storytelling ideas! See a dynamic, full-sized view of the table here where you can click on each element to learn more: The Periodic Table of Storytelling.

Word from Mythology. From the Colossus statue in Rhodes, we get the English word COLOSSAL.

Featured Storybook. This project is from the Myth-Folklore class: Gossip Girl: The Dirt on Hawaii's Elite. Gossip Girl dishes the dirt on Hawaii's kings and princes, queens and princesses, celebrities whose love lives are full of every scandal you can imagine.

Free Book Online: Today's free book is The Mahabharata translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents. This is the complete Mahabharata in English, and it is thousands of pages long... and free online!

Words of Wisdom: Today's saying is Dawn does not come twice to wake us (a South African proverb). Find out more at the Proverb Lab. I'm not very good at waking up at dawn myself, but I still like this proverb!

Video: The video for today is a Chaiyya Chaiyya - Don't Stop mash-up, which is a style of storytelling and also a style for making music! I'm sure you all know the Michael Jackson song, and here's the Indian hit: Chaiyya Chaiyya. You can hear Vidya and Sam Tsui, with Shankar Tucker on clarinet, performing the mash-up here:

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is making careful observations for use in future creative work: Creativity requires thoughtful observation. You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Event on Campus: Dr. Steven R. Gullberg will be giving a lecture on Archaeoastronomy and Ancient Cultures at 6PM in the OCCE Forum Building (details). Find out more about this and other events at the Campus Calendar online.

WAFFLES FOR WRITERS! Every third Wednesday of the month, it's Waffles for Writers at the Writing Center in Wagner Hall from 9-11AM. Come write your story... and have a waffle!

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