Week 8 Progress

Looking back, I am really happy with my decision to do both classes. Previously, I used to do one class, alternating each time. That worked well, but of course I was always getting ideas I wanted to try for the OTHER class. This way, I got to write stories relating to both classes, and I think that engagement helped me do a better job participating in the class as a teacher too, since I've been thinking hard BOTH about Myth-Folklore stuff AND about Indian Epics stuff all semester long.

Looking forward, I've got both Storybook projects half-way done with two story pages at each project, so I just need to focus on bringing them to completion, and writing these posts today helped me plan that out.

I'm also excited about doing the anthology. I don't know how many students will be interested in that, and I'm a little worried about managing the graphics since that is something new for me at Pressbooks, but now I can get started on preparing for that, and hopefully I can do a good job of making that happen. There are some Pressbooks tips here, and I think the take-away is that doing the images for print is way more trouble than it's worth... but it looks like there could be an Appendix of images like the ones that Eden has been doing, with the text-as-graphic. If I do it as an Appendix, that can be a separate "item" in the Pressbook, which would make it easy to leave out of the Print-for-PDF export.

Okay, so now I am feeling confident even about that problem. Confident cat is ready for the second half of the semester to begin!

Confident Cat says:

I can do this.

(made with Cheezburger)

Week 8 Comments and Feedback

This post is a little harder to write since I don't do the regular comments and feedback like the students do since all that feedback on the projects I do every week is more my teacher role than anything like the student role. And as for comments on the blogs, that all happened back in Weeks 1-4 when I was commenting on all the Introduction posts and all the Favorite Places posts (which went really well this semester! I actually stayed on track and finished that earlier than I did last semester).

So, for this post I thought I would think about this idea of doing a class anthology of microfiction. If that's going to happen, starting to publicize that and get to work starting in Week 9 makes sense, after we're reached the halfway point and are not on the way towards the end of the semester.

Week 9: I should set up a page describing the idea, along with a form for people to submit the microfiction they want to use. The graphics are the most complicated part, so I need to think about that, and also additional information to solicit on the form... I can at least draft that in Week 9 even if I don't release it until Week 12.

Week 10: I will try really hard to promote the microfiction writing option in Week 10, and then revising in Week 12. Keep working on Google Form.

Week 11: Promote the microfiction extra credit. Finalize Google Form.

Week 12: Promote revising for the Story Lab. This would be a good time to actually start soliciting submissions.

Week 13: Hopefully by this time I will have a draft of the book going in the form of a Google document for people to look at and comment on. I could make commenting on the microfictions an option every week for the blog comments too!

Week 14: Promote writing the microfiction for Story Lab, and remind people about upcomign deadline for submissions.

Week 15: Promote revising again; it's not too late to turn in a microfiction for the book; I can make submissions deadline same as end of the semester.

I'm thinking we could do a Fall-themed cover, and then if I do another anthology in Spring, it can be a combo of both classes with a different cover!

Week 8 Reading and Writing

I have had a great time reading this semester, and I've focused all my reading on the India side. Doing both classes at once makes that kind of weird, but it was an easy choice since I wanted/needed to do Ramayana reading for my 100-word Ramayana project. I listened to the audiobook of Devdutt's Sita and I read the book; I had read the book awhile ago, but I was way more in awe of it this time. The way he develops both the narrative structure and the themes is really brilliant, and I used this book as the jumping off point for acquiring different versions of the Ramayana in English to use for a future project with even more Ramayana legends. 

As for writing, I'm really happy with what I've been doing. For the Indian Epics project, I'm working on the 100-word stories, but I decided to do a Twine project for Myth-Folklore, and that's going to work out really nicely since it means working on each of those two projects feels really different.

I also wrote a traditional type of story for Week 2: Pygmalion and the Woman of Wax. I really prefer writing microfiction, but I don't want to get out practice with writing other kinds of stories too.

Going forward, the Ramayana Storybook is working great, and it will be easy to add the Hanuman and Rama pages. For the Myth-Folklore project, I want to do something complicated for the third story, writing an actual game about "outwitting Anansi" where I keep track of the points that someone scores based on their choices. I've never done a Twine game like that with keeping score, so that is something I'll need to plan out. In terms of the calendar, I'll work on the Ramayana project some more in Week 9 and Week 10 to finish that. 

Meanwhile, in Week 10 I'll do the Story Lab and teach myself how to do the Twine variables I'll need to build the game.

Then for Week 11, I'll collect the Anansi games I want to use and storyboard it without writing the Twine versions.

Then in Week 12, I'll turn it into an actual Twine game, learning some additional Twine tips as needed with the Story Lab that week.

Then in Week 13, I'll write up a little appendix for the project about how I used Twine to create the three different games.

With final revisions in Week 14 and Week 15 for each of the two projects. It will all fit really nicely!