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HOME - Desire2Learn - Ning - Mythology & Folklore - World Literature - Indian Epics |
In Week 6, Week 8, Week 10 and Week 12 you will be adding a NEW Story Page to your Storybook. At the bottom of this page you will find a list of the requirements for a Story Page. Please make sure you are familiar with these requirements, especially during Week 6 when you are adding your first Story Page.
To complete the assignment, you must publish the Story Page online. You also need to edit the Coverpage to include a link to the new story, and to publish this revised Coverpage again. Finally, you will almost always want to revise and republish the Introduction page in order to reflect the new story that you have added to your collection. You can find information about all of these requirements below.
When you have published your new Story Page, notify the instructor by email. In the email, you MUST cut-and-paste the questions below, and confirm that the answer to all the questions is "yes" before you turn in the assignment. You do not have to put a "yes" next to each one; it's fine if you say "answer to all is yes," or something like that. Please give the email a subject line based on the class you are enrolled in ("MythFolklore Storybook Story" - "World Literature Storybook Story" - "Indian Epics Storybook Story").
See the bottom of this page for detailed information about each of these questions.
Please confirm that the answer to each question is YES: Is the link to your Coverpage from the list of Storybooks at
the class website correct? |
A Note About Project Deadlines. Everybody is strongly encouraged to complete their assignment on Monday, by the noon deadline. The only way you can get full credit for the assignment (10 points) is if you turn it it on Monday, before the Monday noon deadline (that's CST, Norman time). Late assignments. You can receive partial credit for the Storybook assignment if you turn it in late, based on the following schedule:
No late Storybook assignments will be accepted after noon on Thursday. |
Is the link to your Coverpage from the list of Storybooks at the class website correct? For anyone in the class, including the instructor, to access your Storybook, there must be a correct link from the class list of Storybooks: Myth-Folklore, World Literature, Indian Epics. Please do not change the name of your Coverpage file, because that will break the link. You need to make sure every time you turn in an assignment that the link to your Storybook is still working. Do not just assume that it is working; you must CHECK and make sure. You will receive zero credit for the assignment if I cannot access your Storybook Coverpage from the class list.
Does the title of your new story appear on your Coverpage with a link to the Story Page? It is essential that your Coverpage show the title of the new story you have added, with a link to that story. You can use a short title or a long title on the Coverpage, but the story title MUST appear. "Story #1" is not a title; please make sure you give your story a good title! Please check and make SURE that the link from the Coverpage to the new story is working. You will receive zero credit for the assignment if I cannot access your Story page from the Coverpage.
Does the Story Page contain a link back to the Coverpage? You must have a link from the Story Page back to the Coverpage. Optionally, you might also include links to the other stories in your Storybook on each Story Page; that is up to you. At a minimum, you must have a link from each Story Page back to the Coverpage.
Is this story written in your own words? If you have any doubts about what it means to write a story in your own words, please review the Story Retelling assignment from Week 1.
Did you spellcheck your story? This is a very serious requirement; if I find spelling errors on the page that a spellcheck would catch, you will receive ZERO credit for the assignment. English spelling is very difficult, and there are many kinds of spelling problems that a spellcheck will not catch, such as as homonyms (pique and peak and peek) or easily confused words (thorough and through). I am very glad to help you with these kinds of spelling errors, but you MUST do a spellcheck before you turn in the story. The Seamonkey Composer program has a spellcheck feature; use it.
Did you proofread your story by reading it out loud to yourself? Again, this is a very serious requirement. It will take you less than five minutes to read your story out loud, and it will help you to catch many different types of writing errors. I am glad to help you to improve your writing, but I am not your personal proofreader. It is up to you to proofread your story by READING IT OUT LOUD before you turn in the story. If I find writing errors on the page that you would find by reading out loud (missing words, repeated words, etc.), you will receive ZERO credit for the assignment.
Is your story 500-1000 words long? Both the minimum and maximum word count limits are important. You need to make sure you tell a vivid, complete story - so if your story is too short, find a way to develop it more thoroughly. You also need to make sure that other students in the class will have the time to read your story and comment on it - so if your story is over the maximum word limit, you need to edit it down. You can check your word count as you write your draft if you use Google Documents; you can double-check after you publish by using WordCountPlus.
Is your Author's note 200-300 words long? See the note above about word counts for the story. The same applies to the Author's Note. If the Author's Note is too short, you need to find more to tell us about your goals for the story and the way you used your source; if it is too long, you need to find a way to edit it down. You should not have any trouble meeting the minimum word count since your Author's Note, because of all the things you can do in the note. Most importantly, you need to explain anything important we need to know about the original story which we cannot learn directly from your version of the story, along with an explanation of why you made the changes to the story that you did. Do not tell us about the plot of your story in the Author's Note; instead, tell us things we need to know about the original story! Then, you also need to explain how this story fits into the overall plan of your Storybook, how it is similar to the other stories, different from them, and what specific contribution this story makes to your overall project.
In the original story, there were actually three trips into the dragon's cave. The first time, the hero stole the sword. The second time, the hero stole the gold. The third time, the hero learned the dragon's name. In order to make the story shorter, I combined all three of these separate trips into one trip in my versions of the story. Instead of making three trips, as in the original story, in my version the hero made just one trip, and got the sword, the gold and found out the dragon's name all at once. Although this takes away from the folklore emphasis on the number three in the story, since now there is only one trip, I kept all three things that the hero took from the dragon, so you can still tell that the story has a quality of "threeness," even if I made it much shorter than the original story. The original story was almost 4000 words long! If you like fairy tales, you should definitely take a look at the original to see the many details and twists and turns in the long version. I was excited to find this story because it plays an important role in my project. The hero defeats the dragon in this story and gets all the things he needs from the dragon, but he does it using tricks. Instead of doing battle with the dragon as you saw in the story of Saint George, this hero uses intelligence as the weapon to defeat the dragon. This dragon is very wise - which makes the hero's achievement even more impressive. In my next story, I will focus on the wisdom of dragons and how wisdom is part of the dragon's powers.
Does your Story Page include complete Bibliography for your source(s)? Please review the notes about Bibliography, and make sure your Bibliography entry is complete. For those of you in Indian Epics, you may find these Bibliography references useful:
Does your Story Page include complete Image Information for your image(s)? Make sure you review the guidelines for Image Information, paying special attention to the items marked in red.
Is there a reference to this new story in your Introduction? You may or may not need to revise your Introduction based on your new story. At a minimum, the Introduction must contain some reference to the story. So, if you already told your readers that this is one of the stories you were planning to include, you do not need to revise the Introduction. The reference to the story can also be as simple as a list of stories at the bottom of the Introduction; you can add to that list each time you add a new story to the Storybook.