Portfolio Introduction

Hello this is my Portfolio! I hope you all like my stories if you chose to read them! My favorite story that I wrote this semester is "The Blood under the Sun" but I also really lke "The Love-Driven Sister". Just kind of depends on what you want to read! The Blood under the Son is pretty funny and has a lot of Texas hate if you're into that! Then the Love-Driven Sister has a lot of action and had my fovorite story of the whole semester! Have fun!

Story: Lau and his Betrayal

This is a story of how the easy way out of a situation is not always the best way out.

"White Stag":Source

Story: Love-Driven Sister


A retelling of a sister that defies her brother's orders because of the love that she feels for a man.

Source: "Bhima fights Hidimbi"

Original Story: Blood under the Sun 

A Red River battle for the ages with two of the most iconic characters in college football! Watch how this dramatic tale unfolds!

"Boomer and Bevo": Source

The Story of Jon and the Fire Leopard: Original Story

This story is about how a young boy was gifted with a special weapon that helped shaped his life in a positive way. This would eventually lead him on the path of a hero to benefit the people around his village.

"Fire Leopard": Source

Learning by H.E.A.R.T. - Health/ Happiness

Today I chose to do the Health/ Happiness and in that video they talk about gratitude. I think this is something I don't really think about all that much or really act upon that much. In this video they talk about how just simply writing down 3 things that you are thankful for each day for a week you will increase your happiness level by 3% which is huge! If I think about it I don't think I can remember when I just sat down and thought about things that I am grateful for. I have a lot I am grateful for but do I tell people that or say it out loud so that I know it for myself? No I never do these things! So for my goal over the break and the rest of this semester is before the day is over and I am laying in my bed I will go over 3 things that I am grateful for!

"Be Grateful":Source

Tech Tips: Canvas Notifications

For this week my tech tip is the Canvas Notifications! Again since Canvas is new and next semester we are moving to this site I thought it would be a good idea to set it up.  I use to have the notifications on d2l but this semester I don't have any classes that actively use this site so I have been a little at a lose of remembering what I need to turn it. So next semester this will help me out a lot in remembering quizzes and assignment that are due the next day that I forget about. As of right now the push messages were really easy to set up and thing I will really enjoy this alert next semester!! I recommend every to turn this on especially if you forget stuff a a lot!!

"Notification":Source

Future improvements

I think changing the review week to a planning week would work better. I found myself kind of scrambling to have a plan of what I wanted to write right before I wrote a story. Here again I'm not the best at planning my moves out very well so having students actually sit down and plan what they think they would want to write would be better in my opinion.

Create writing tutorial. This would be a great idea! Lord knows and I know you know Mrs. Gibbs that I need a lot of help writing stories and proof reading over them! Posting some videos explaining how to find things like would help me a lot throughout the semester so thing could be a great thing to add into the class.

Create thematic reading units. I think this would be a good idea. I did like how we read through both the book that we had so I would change that. On the later parts of the class were we had free choice I think that thematic reading would be a awesome idea because it was hard sometimes to find what I wanted to read since I don't have the greatest knowledge of Indian stories and you do! So I think this would be a great idea!

Another idea I think would work much better for people and there schedules would be changing the due dates at the beginning of the week. I think if you changed the Monday, and Tuesday due dates to having them all due on Wednesday night that would help people free up there schedule. I found it hard to get my reading done and turn in a reading notes blog on Monday and Tuesday, but I had a lot of time on Wednesday to get those reading done. I also think it would be easier for students to remember a Wednesday and Sunday due date rather than remembering to do things for the first 3 days of the week. I think this would have help me a lot in the class to get things done that I skipped out because I couldn't find time or didn't feel like doing on that one night.  

Reading Notes: Krishna and Jarasandha

This was a pretty cool story! I hope to be able to hear another variation of this story some time! So in the beginning of this story it starts off with Jarasandha being born. His birth is pretty strange. His father didn't have a son yet so he divided a mango to his 2 wife and they both gave birth to one half a boy. SO he took him to the forest because that is weird right?  Some rashasi finds Jara and tie him together to carry him but that just help him form together.

After a while he came back to his father to eventually rule his kingdom but his was afraid that since his birth prophecy came the one about his death coming from Krishna would to.

To continue forward Bhima and his brothers go to find Jara after he left to hide. They fought for 27 days in a row to defeat him until Krishna told Bhima that he was a person with 2 parts. Then Bhima ripped him in half.

I loved this story and I think I would just want to tell the story from Jara's point of view until his death by the hand of Bhima. Or change it to were he kills Krishna or Bhima.

"Krishna and Jarasandha":Source

Book Information: Found in Bizzell Library
Author: Anant Pai

Wikipedia Trails: Brothers Grim to Adolf Hitler

Well this was a very interesting Wikipedia Trail for this week. I started out with the Brothers Grimm because aside from watching a movie about them and reading a few tiny little things I really had no idea who they were. What spurred my interest was my favorite storybook the Brothers Grimm. So that was my first link and I read through there history until I saw probably there most famous story in my opinion that is just associated with them which is Hansel and Gretel.

In this link I basically knew the story line but I didn't know that the the witch in the original story was a cannibal that wanted to eat the children I though she just wanted to kill them so that was interesting. Looking through this link I found another that was called German Origin.

Once I got to here I read through a lot of there history and stumbled upon Nazi Germany which I knew I would eventually run into if I kept going on this page. So naturally that lead me to Adolf Hitler.

Adolf was my last link and was pretty interesting that the two German story tellers lead me to Adolf Hitler. At least the trail stayed German the whole time.

"Brothers Grimm":Source

Trail Links

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brothers_Grimm

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansel_and_Gretel

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germany

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler

Famous Last Word: Almost over

For last week I was able to connect with a few more people who I hadn’t really meet in this class. I honestly thought that I had read everyone’s intro but that hasn’t been the case. I read the last part to a few of my favorite storybook this year and I was happy to be able to finish those up this past weekend! The Learn by Heart this week I think has benefited me because I am a procrastinator and I did time for this challenge. I was able to learn how to take breaks so that I can set myself up for success rather than failure in getting motivated to study and complete assignments!

Well we are entering into Dead week and my pretty happy about it honestly. It has felt like a pretty short semester but at the same time it has been kind of long. Pretty much all of my classes have been over since last week we are just going and listening to lecture and waiting for the inevitable to happen when we hit finals week. I think for the most part the hardest thing I will need to focus on will be studying for finals and making the most out of dead week. It helps that all the football for this semester is over so I don't have to look forward to going to a game. That kind of sucks but I'm ready to be over with dead week and finals week!

Hopefully by this time next week I will be prepared to do really well on my final test and be done with the semester! I only have 3 final test so for the most part if I can just schedule my time correctly I should be able to get a lot of studying done!

"Dead Week":Source

Learning by H.E.A.R.T. - Time

This weeks Learning by Heart I chose to focus on time. I am a pretty big procrastinator so for this week being dead week and know how much studying I need to get done. I figured it would be wise to look into this challenge. I watched "The Science of Procrastination - And How To Manage It" by AsapSCIENCE on youtube and I think it was very infromative overall.

The biggest thing I pulled away from this video was that to be able to eventually get to the point to where I can be productive more often I have to give myself small breaks or rewards from my efforts. This is called the Pomodoro Technique and it works by working for 25 minutes then taking a 5 miutes break as a reward of your efforts!  I think I will try this technique for the rest of dead week and finals week and see how that goes!

Source:Procrastination

Source: The Science of Procrastination - And How To Manage It

Growth Mindset: What Fear can teach us

I chose to do my Growth Mindset over the video called "What fear can teach us" by Karen Thompson. This was a very unique video to me because it is all about fear. For myself I don't really feel as though I have that big of fears. You know not the type of fear that will leave me standing stone cold if I image jumping off a cliff or trembling because I saw a snake.

However, in this video she spoken about how all fear can be viewed as stories and how people can think of elaborate fears about almost anything. This is also translated into how we view the fears in our life and really only are worried about the most vivid of fears rather than the fears that are in our life everyday but chose not to worry about. Like instead of thinking about serial killers and whether or not the plane we are boarding is going to crash we should be listening to the slower more sutler fears. For instance, whether or not the food we are cramming in our face is causing a build up in our arteries or one she gave in the video is the gradual change in climate.

So what I learned from this video is not that I don't have fears or that the fears that I have could not come true, but instead of listening to my irrational fear I should be listening to the stories in my head that have meaning and are the truest in my life.

"Fear":Source

Video Source: What fear can teach us.

Tech Tips: Canvas Calendar

I chose to do figure out how to work the Canvas Calendar for this weeks Tech Tips!
I figured it would be a great idea to do this option since OU is switching to Canvas next semester and I had no idea how to work the calendar. I think it was pretty cool how it already had all of the due date for all of my classes programmed in so I don't have to go into the calendar that I already use and fill all of that out individually.

It was surprisingly a lot easier to upload my canvas calendar to the calendar that I use on google so that I could see everything all in one!

"Calendar":Source