Our President has finally decided that the rest of the semester will be online. I think that is wise because it is hard to shift from an online course back to a face-to-face one. It is also clear that our Covid-19 situation will last longer than a few weeks.

For the second meeting of the ninth week of this course I assigned two stories from Peter Beagle’s collection, The Secret History of Fantasy. I include a podcast and some notes for each one.

“Fruit and Words” by Aimee Bender

Here is a link to the notes I used in making the podcast.

This story is about marriage, hope, magic and mangoes.

“The Empire of Ice Cream” by Jeffrey Ford

And here are the notes.

So far, this system seems to be working. Students have to listen to the podcasts to get the discussion questions. Then they respond on the new discussion boards. Several students are already doing this.