When the hurly-burly’s done

ENG223 students: By Friday, 5/4, please write a comment on this post that addresses the following question:

What, if anything, did you find in The Odyssey that is relevent or interesting to people now, in April of 2007?

Given our class discussion about double standards (and to refresh your memory, here are “Double Standard: Stereotypes that Just Won’t Go Away” and the Wikipedia entry), I think it’s safe to assume that this is a topic in which we’re all interested.  So let’s get things going here.

 By 10pm Wednesday, please write a comment on this entry (using your first name only) in which you address, in about a paragraph, how a specific example from one of the articles relates to a specific example from The Odyssey.  If you’re not the first person to leave a comment, you should respond, in your comment, to what one of your classmates wrote.

ENG213 students, please complete this before 10pm Tuesday:

Think back on Friday’s class activity about the ancient sources of information on the Trojan War.  Now read these two modern interpretations:

Trojan War Summary

Odysseus in the Trojan War

Did reading these piece help you to better understand the Trojan War?  What are you still confused about?  Why do you think the Trojan War is such a well-known story?  How do you think Odysseus’s experiences in the Trojan War will influence his actions in The Odyssey?

So I just found out about CoComment, and it might be the most useful blog add-on I’ve come across yet. What it does is provide an easy way to stay on top of what you write not only on your blog, but in the comments sections of the blogs you visit. You can embed a simple line of code in your own blog to display all the comments you’ve written, and it automatically updates the list. If you look toward the top of the right-hand column on this blog, you’ll see my CoComment box. Those are just comments I’ve written since I set up my account this evening.

I can see this being really powerful for student bloggers. As you read more blogs, you start to comment on them. Now you can easily follow your thoughts throughout the blogosphere (and someone please smack me if I start using that word more than, say, once a month). I wish I was using this service back when the whole Dan/Sarah blog etiquette/NCLB throwdown was still going on.

Anyway, it’s definitely worth trying out. Learnerblogs users, you’re going to need to create a text widget (under the Presentation menu) in which to paste the code that the CoComment setup process spits out. I’m happy to show you how to do it, if you can’t figure it out on your own. Have fun!