Friday, September 25

HAPPY FRIDAY! Today is Friday of Week 5... which means the semester is already one-third over. Incredible, but true! Here is a link for finishing up Week 5 and, for those of you working ahead, here is Week 6.

Class Procedures and Reminders

Project Stack. If you turned your project in on Sunday, you should have comments back from me now. I'll finish the rest of the Week 4 project assignments that are in the stack today for sure, and I will reply to as many of the Week 5 and Week 6 assignments as I can. As always, you can check the stack to make sure I received your project. (And anything left in the stack at the end of the day Friday will be at the top of the stack for Monday.)

P/NP Petition. I was really glad to see this petition at Change.org for a P/NP grading option this Fall. I thought the Spring P/NP option was really helpful, and I hope we will have that option again this Fall. You can find the petition here: OU P/NP at Change.org. Over 2000 signatures in less than 24 hours! If you benefited from P/NP last Spring and/or think you might benefit from having that option this Fall, I hope you will consider signing. (And then we just need to get the OU administration to act on it!)


The following items are for fun and exploration:

Blog stream. Morgan tried out the collage-maker Tech Tip... and she made cats. Lots of cats! Here's her blog post. If you have multiple images you want to use for a blog post or webpage, making a collage is a good way to do that.


Twitter stream. Because of National Punctuation Day yesterday, there was lots of punctuation humor in the Twitter stream. Look what Eden (in Myth-Folklore) shared, ha ha.


And I love these breathing gifs from Nathan Pyle; see the thread for more:

As you're breathing, you might even want to use a mantra, which is a word that English has taken from one of the ancient languages of India: Sanskrit. More about the word mantra.


Storybook. Neal in Indian Epics has been working ahead all semester long, so while people are mostly just starting to write their Storybooks now, he has actually completed his (wow!), with three different stories about Shiva and the animals in his family... including his wife Parvati's manifestation as the Bee Goddess, Bhramari.


100-Word Stories. And here's a tiny tale from India about Shiva and another one of his family animals, Nandi, the bull: Riding Shiva's Bull.


And in the spirit of animals, here's a Crash Course video about Mythological Horses:


In the spirit of written-text traditions (including comic books; see below), here's a beautiful new open-access book you can read online: Continuous Page: Scrolls and Scrolling from Papyrus to Hypertext.


September 25: National Comic Book Day. I'm sure there are some comic book fans in this class... and today is National Comic Book Day! In honor of the power of comic books, here is a really cool video about why comic books are special. Really special. Gene Luen Yang on How Comic Books Can Make Kids (and Adults) Smarter.



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