Course Redesign Update: July 26 ... LOTS of fairy tales

Today was a day full of fairy tales because I was doing proofing on the Europa collection by Jacobs, the two units of European fairy tales by Lang AND the Czech fairy tales. I am so delighted by all of them! There's no way of knowing how many, if any, of the students will choose these units as their reading choices, but I am going to get so much incredible re-use out of these fairy tales for all kinds of purposes in the class. I really hope to start promoting the idea of a "Fairy Tale Laboratory" for example! I don't have time to work that up in advance for Fall, but maybe that is something I can build piece by piece during the semester, writing up a laboratory "method" each weekend or something like that.

Anyway, when I began this project, my one and only goal was just to replace the course website with new readings... but the granular, modular approach I took, facilitated by Blogger, is going to prove so useful for other kinds of content development — much more important content development, in fact: building learning experiences for students that go beyond just reading!

In honor of Caturday, I shared some cat stories at Google+ of course: The Cockerel, the Cat, and the Young Mouse; The Eagle, the Wild Sow, and the Cat; and The Earl of Cattenborough (Puss in Boots).

I am pleased at how many cats have turned up in the Un-Textbook! And I'm going to include here the LatinLOLCat of the day because it expresses perfectly why I think the wide range of choices in the Un-Textbook is exactly what my students need: different students like different things! Details at the Proverb blog:

Diversis diversa placent, et sua gaudia cuique.

Different people like different things,

and each person has their own pleasures.