Projects: Brainstorming Topics for Indian Epics

For this week's project assignment, you will be brainstorming four possible Storybook topics. I know that for many of you, the world of Indian Epics is something completely new, so it may feel strange to start brainstorming topics now before you have read the epics. But trust me: taking a look through the topics and other class resources will be a great way to help you focus your attention and heighten your curiosity for the Ramayana reading next week. Use this assignment to think about what you want to be your learning focus this semester, and that way, when you start reading the epics, you will have some ideas of your own to bring to that experience.

By the end of this assignment, you will end up with FOUR possible Storybook topics. You'll write a blog post about those topics, and then I'll read that and send you back comments, recommendations for online resources, etc. Then, for Week 3, you will pick your favorite of those possible topics and do some in-depth research to learn more and decide if you would like to work on this topic for the rest of the semester. To see how that all fits together, you might want to take a look again at the Project Overview.

Time. You should budget approximately one hour for this assignment, which is about how long the project assignment will take each week. For each topic you are considering, you need to do 10-15 minutes of reading and research, writing up your thoughts and notes in a paragraph. You will end up with a blog post that has four paragraphs, one for each topic.

Topic Ideas. There are several different ways you can get ideas and inspiration about possible topics:

• You can look at the Project Topic listings; each topic there has a page with research suggestions and ideas, plus links to any past Storybook projects that are still online. You can also browse the past Indian Epics Storybooks to see the kinds of projects other people have done. (Some of those links might not be working, but most students do leave their projects online, for which I am very grateful!)

• You can browse through the Amar Chitra Katha comic books again; I hope you will want to read some of those in the Library later on, and for now, they provide a great way to survey the Indian storytelling tradition: Ramayana - Mahabharata - Krishna - Gods and Goddesses - Heroines and Heroes - Folktales.

• You can browse through the Class Library at Diigo. You will find links there to online books and videos and also books in Bizzell. Click on the title to go to the overview page which gives detailed information about each item. You can also browse through the YouTube playlist of India-related videos; there are lots of possible topics you can find there too.

• Look back through your blog posts. Some of your earlier blog posts and/or comments on the posts might give you some ideas about topics to consider for this class! For example, you can look back at the items you wrote about in your Reading Overview post in Week 2, or the Storybook Favorites you listed in Week 1.

• You can also write me with questions or ideas, and I'll be glad to brainstorm with you by email before you write your blog post.

Finishing the assignment. When you are done, you will have FOUR possible topics, and you need to write a paragraph for each one in your blog post. Explain why you are interested in this topic, what previous knowledge you have, what you would like to learn, what kinds of stories you would like to tell and how you might want to retell them. For each topic, include a link to at least one online source that you think looks promising (that might be a link to a page at one of our class websites about a book or resource, or a link to some other online resource you have found). The more specific you can be about each of your ideas, the easier it will be for me to give you useful feedback!

Image. Please include at least one image (with image information) related to one of the topics you have chosen.

Additional details. For the post title, include the phrase "Topic Brainstorm" somewhere in the title, and use "Project, Week 2" for the labels (or "Project, Week 3" if you are doing this in Week 3). Don't forget to put a comma between the labels.

FILL IN THE FORM and DO THE DECLARATION. To let me know the assignment is done, fill out the form below. Then, after you have submitted the form, you can do the Gradebook Declaration for the Project assignment in Canvas. I will send you back comments on your assignment by email.