Tuesday, April 7

Today is Tuesday of Week 12. Here is a link to Week 12, plus Week 13 for anyone who is working ahead, plus Week 11 which is still available all this week too (mega-grace period!).

Class Procedures and Reminders

Self-Confidence Survey. I got an email yesterday from Cat Jackson, a graduate student research self-confidence among online courses students; some of you may have already done that survey earlier this semester, but if you have not done that, she would be very grateful to get some more responses. You can use that for as Growth Mindset extra credit (self-confidence is a big part of growth mindset!). You can find out more at the Growth Mindset extra credit list; there's also a survey there from Murat Turk, another OU graduate student. Both surveys will run for the rest of the semester.

Project Stack. I still have a few projects from Friday in the stack, so I should be able to finish those plus the Saturday items today too, and hopefully I'll get started on the Sunday items also. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your project.

The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog Stream. I know all of you who are seniors have been thinking a lot about graduation, and Zhanie wrote something about that in a biography post, so I wanted to share that here: Graduation Postponed.

Twitter Stream. Tom Gauld is one of my favorite cartoonists, and I thought this was so cool: he shared a cartoon along with some of his doodling to go with it, like a cartoon rough draft!

And as a Covid-related item, I really like this essay about the Internet: Thank god for the internet.

H.E.A.R.T.. For those of you who are starting the Week 12 reading today, here is a thought about reading as a useful escape from reality.

Indian Epics. This is an aetiological story; you can see read the text here: The Origin of the Coconut. Vishvamitra is one of the characters in the story, someone those of you in Indian Epics know from the opening of the Ramayana.

India Video. If you have a few minutes today, here is one of my favorite videos from Devdutt Pattanaik (yes, TED is a global thing!): India is not chaotic.

Indian Epics Today. The Ramayana character for today is Bharata, Rama's noble brother who refuses to take Rama's place as king. Instead, Rama's own sandals sit on the throne, as you can see in this painting of Rama embracing Bharata on his return:

Proverbs. This is a proverb from Zanzibar: A coconut shell full of water is a sea to an ant.

April 7: Ravi Shankar. Today is the birthday of the amazing Indian musician, Ravi Shankar, one of the modern masters of the sitar. He was born in 1920, and he died in 2012. You can read about Ravi Shankar's life and career at his official website and in this Wikipedia article, which is the source for this photo of Ravi Shankar with George Harrison of the Beatles, back in 1967. You can also find some great Ravi Shankar videos at YouTube.com - such as this wonderful video of Shankar's appearance on the Dick Cavett show. He left us with much beautiful music!

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