Wednesday, March 1

Today is Wednesday of WEEK 7. 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, and you'll find some style ideas here in the announcements. Here is a link to this week's assignments.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Canvas outage. As I explained in the email yesterday, there was a Canvas outage for several hours yesterday. I think I've updated the points manually for anyone who was not able to make a Declaration during the outage, but if you need me to make a correction for you, just let me know!

Project Stack. I've replied to all the assignments turned in before Sunday at 3PM, and I'll keep working through the Sunday assignments today. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your assignment.

Style Idea: Open-Ended. As a style idea for today, I want to suggest something fun that Shruti has been doing with the stories in her Portfolio: she is leaving the stories open-ended, and asking people to suggest the ending they prefer in their comments on the stories. I think that is really fun, and I've enjoyed coming up with endings to Shruti's stories when I send comments back to her. To see what that's like, here are her stories: Shruti's Portfolio.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Spellcheck. You've probably done this too: Is spellcheck working?

Storytelling. Check out this blog post for the text of Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling.

Word Mix-Up. This is an especially sneaky mix-up: DISCREET versus DISCRETE.

Featured Storybook. This project is from the Myth-Folklore class: The Thin Line Between Tragedy and Comedy. In this "choose-your-own-adventure" Storybook, you get to decide the fates of Romeo and Juliet. Can they escape the doom that Shakespeare imagined for them? And will that simply lead to another tragic ending, or perhaps to a happily-ever-after ending worthy of comedy?

Free Book Online: Today's free book is Bengali Household Tales by William McCulloch. See the Freebookapalooza blog for links and the table of contents, and here's a historical photo of Bengali women spinning... you can imagine them telling stories while they work:

Words of Wisdom: Today's saying is Don’t put all your eggs in one basket (an English proverb). Find out more at the Proverb Lab. I was thinking about this proverb yesterday when Canvas was down, and I was very glad that I don't try to rely on Canvas as my only webspace for this class!

Video: The video for today is What Gods Wear Before They Ride. This "Public Service Announcement" is a fun storytelling style; you can learn more about that at the Writing Lab blog.

Growth Mindset: Today's growth mindset cat is ready to try something new for storytelling this week: Open the door... and explore the unknown! You can find out more at the Growth Mindset blog.

Upcoming Event on Campus: This Saturday is Soonerthon, and Sonali (from Indian Epics class) will be participating; here is Sonali's Soonerthon page. Last year, Soonerthon raised $721,941.16, and the goal this year is one million dollars: wow! You can find out more at the Soonerthon website, and here's a recap of last year's Soonerthon:

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