Online Education Review

Online Education

Online classes are a great option for students who have busy schedules. I love the freedom that online classes give you. It is nice to be able to do your classwork at your own pace and not have to worry about going to class two to three times a week. One of my favorite online classes was my history class. My history teacher posted all of the assignments and tests for the semester and then gave us a deadline on when we had to complete them. If you wanted to, you could take a test each week or you could wait until the last minute but it did not matter as long as you finished everything by the deadline. This was really convenient because it let each student set their own pace and allowed you to finish the class as early or as late as you wanted to.   

(Online Class Meme)

Reading Diary B: Grimm (LibriVox) (Continued)

Briar Rose

I

’ve always known that the Disney version of Sleeping Beauty was a lot more PG and family friendly than the original version but I did not know that there were 13 fairies. I always assumed that there were 3 fairies and of course Maleficent. It seems like all of this drama could have been avoided if the king and queen would have invited all of the fairies despite the fact that they didn’t have enough plates. Was it completely impossible to buy another plate or to maybe borrow on from someone in the kingdom or in the court?

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

I enjoyed this story. It was not at all how I expected it to be. I thought that the cutting off of heads was s little harsh just because they feel asleep on the job. A lot of people lost their lives because of those princesses. 

(Illustration by Walter Crane)

Reading Diary A: Myth-Folklore Unit: Grimm (LibriVox)

Myth-Folklore Unit: Grimm (LibriVox)

The Frog Prince

I used to watch this show on HBO called “Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child.” The show took different fairy tales and animated them and put a unique spin on them but still managed to stay true to the stories. One of the stories they did was The Frog Prince. The Princess and the Frog, the Disney remake of this story, is one of my favorite Disney princess movies but, it is quite different than the original story.

Rapunzel

Once again, the HBO show I used to watch did this story as well. This version of Rapunzel is the one I knew before I saw the Disney remake, “Tangled.” The original version makes Rapunzel’s parents seem like bad people because they agreed to give up their daughter for a vegetable. I guess Disney wanted the audience to feel more empathetic towards Rapunzel’s family by making them royalty and by having Rapunzel kidnapped by Mother Gothel. 

(Illustration by Walter Crane)

OU Gen. Ed. Review

OU General Education Review

Although I feel that some Gen. Ed. classes are a waste of time, some of the Gen. Ed. classes I have taken have been some of my favorite classes. For my Gen. Ed. language credit, I decided to take Italian and then after 2 grueling semesters I switched to Cherokee. I am currently in Cherokee III and I have to say that it has been one of my favorite classes. The language is so much fun and my professor, Mrs. Armer, is fantastic. For the most part, the same group of classmates I had in Cherokee I have stayed together through Cherokee III. We have become like a little family and it’s great to have that kind of support system. Bonding with the same people for 3 semesters is so much fun and it makes going to class every day that much more fun. My History of American Musical Theatre has also been an awesome Gen. Ed. fine arts class. Watching and analyzing musicals was a blast and I couldn’t believe that a class like that exists. Everything about that class was fantastic and I still recommend it to people to this day. 

(Cherokee Syllabary)

College Writing Review

College Writing Review

Throughout my college career, I have been exposed to many different forms of writing. I’ve wrote everything from standard run of the mill English papers to theatre reviews. As a Psychology major, the majority of the writing I have done is researched based. Research writing is very different from other forms of writing because it is all about the structure. This type of writing leaves very little room for creativity and is strictly about conveying information and new ideas. I have also written compare and contrast pieces and analytical pieces about different types of music. In my African Repercussions class, all of our tests were essay based and we had to write a paper analyzing lyrics to specific songs. Once again, these pieces were about conveying ideas and information.

My favorite things I have written are for this class and for my History of American Musical Theatre class. Both of these classes gave the writers creative freedom to write whatever it was that came flowing out of our minds. Although the reviews I wrote in my theatre class were about conveying information, it was less structured. We got to offer our opinions about different shows we watched in class and live at OU. Much like this class, my theatre class allowed each student to have their own voice and writing style. We may have all had the same opinions about the plays we watched but, each paper had a different feel. 

(Seussical Logo)

Extra Reading Diary: Celtic Fairy Tales

Celtic Fairy Tales

The Horned Women

I was excited when I saw that this story was in this unit! When I was researching stories to use in my storybook I came across this story but because of time and the fact that it didn’t really fit with the direction I wanted my storybook to go in. I’m glad that I got a second chance to go back and read this story. I noticed that this story had some similarities to one of the stories that used in my storybook – Baba Yaga. In this story, the woman tried to get water for the witches by carrying it in a sieve just like the little boy in the Baba Yaga story. Both characters tried many times to carry the water but the water kept running out. Both sets of witches told the characters to seal the sieve with clay. I thought it was kind of interesting that in both stories, a sieve was used to try to carry water. I wonder if there is some symbolic reasoning behind this or do witches just enjoy watching their “victims” carry water. 

(Sieve)

Storytelling Week 12: The Curse of the Piper

The Curse of the Piper

.It’s been a week since it happened. All of the adults don’t seem to understand. They have tried almost everything to keep this outbreak from harming more children but it seems as if they have absolutely no way of stopping it. My grandmother thinks that the town is cursed and I am starting to believe her. She has always told me tales of the piper and how he lured all of the children away. Every time she told me the story I would blow her off and call her crazy but now, I think she may be the only one who knows what’s going on. According to granny, many years ago, a man known as the Pied Piper did a great deed for the people of a town called Newtown. Unfortunately for him and for the people, the mayor of the town refused to pay the piper for his services and in return, the piper lured away all of the children of the town with his hypnotic tunes.

The people of town tried for years and years to have more children but after a few years, the piper would come back and the children would vanish. The people finally decided to relocate in order to get away from the Piper and start their lives over. This seemed to work and the townspeople had more children, and their children had children and so on. Now, kids are starting to go missing. Only this time, the ones going missing are girls. Girls ageing from 16-21. The whole town is in a panic. They have decided that the only way to keep us safe is to lock us up and keep an eye on us twenty-four seven. They have no clue what is causing this but, I think I might. Every girl went missing the same way. It all started with an iPod. I saw Sarah and Rachel sharing headphones on the bus one day. The next day, they were listening to the same iPod together and refused to put it down. When our teacher tried to take it away from them the kicked and screamed about how much they needed it. After that, every time they listened to this iPod, they would start screaming and jumping up and down and crying. When we would ask them what was wrong, they would reply, “Oh my Gosh! I love them so much!”

Not long after that, they were gone. These “symptoms” started happening to more and more of us and soon, girls all over town were having what they called “meet ups.” At these meet ups they would listen to their iPods and scream with each other. I’ve been trying to warm everyone about this but no one will listen except for Granny. She has decided to listen to whatever is on these mysterious iPods for herself. I watched her as she tore an iPod from one of the infected girls. I give her a day or so and she too will be gone like the rest of them. Granny puts the earbuds in and as I nervously stare at her. In an instant her eyes light up. When I ask her what is on the iPod, she stares blankly and says, “It sounds like a boyband. The Piper, he has found us. He must be using these boys to lure away our girls.” I stared at her, confused as she continued rambling. “He is smart. He’s taking away our girls. No girls, no children, just like all those years ago.  Curiosity gets the best of me and I snatch the earbuds from her. The last thing I remember is hearing the most beautiful voices I’ve ever heard singing “You don’t know you’re beautiful” and then everything went dark.   

(Girls)

Author’s Note: This story is based on the fairy tale, The Pied Piper. As I was reading this story, I started thinking about things that could willingly lure kids away from their parents and I automatically thought about a tweet that I saw from a girl who said, “I would give up and sell my parents for One Direction.” As a self-proclaimed professional fangirl, I know how passionate girls can get about their favorite boy bands. You hear one amazing song from them and watch one music video ad next thing you know, you’ve been locked away in your room researching them for hours. I took this and thought to myself, if the Pied Piper used boy bands to do his dirty work, he could easily lure away hundreds of girls in an instant.

Bibliography: This story is based on the story The Pied Piper from the book, More English FairyTales by Joseph Jacobs with illustrations by John D. Batten(1894).