Some of you may have noticed a new little piece at the end of each podcast listing that looks like this:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

These little boxes with letters in them are Creative Commons Licenses - meaning that we, as the A&S Podcast team, have decided to indicate clearly what type of copyright we would like to exert over our own work. The "Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike" license means that people may use the podcast for non-commercial purposes (ie, to share for free, for educational purposes, remix for whatever purposes they wish, etc), they must attribute the work to its originator (whoever is listed as the producer for the podcast), and is obligated to share their derivative work under a similar CC license. 

Roughly a year ago, the primordial nebula of A&S administrators, designers, podcasters, videographers, instructional designers, software developers, and help desk support workers was tasked with coming up a name to reidentify and unify our staff. Prospective names came and went. Finally, it was decided - the Hive. As you may have heard from some of our podcasts, the Hive is A&S' newly unified team of both creative and technical services which provides the College with support on web and print media projects, public relations, and computing and information services. We are organized into 13 structured, yet fluid teams. We are a higher education-multimedia-information-technology-powerhouse.

On Friday, before the scorching Memorial Day Weekend, A&S Hive team members Derek Eggers, Amelia Stevens, Carly Germann, Russ Caldwell, and myself made a special visit to TiER 1 Performance Solutions in Covington, KY. Almost immediately, the similarities between the culture and workflow of TiER 1 and the HIVE were easy to spot. The HIVE, a fusion of creative and technical services does everything from designing and leading the online education offered by the College to producing video and audio content for all of A&S. Rooted in instructional design, TiER 1 organizes itself into teams (just like the HIVE) to satisfy the needs of their clients.

It's no secret that technology influences student life. From the ways in which we take in information, retain information, and synthesize information, technology provides a helping hand in each of these processes. I recently came across an awesome infographic from Presta Electronics that maps college students' relationship with technology. I encourage you to look it over. Some of the stats may surprise you, as well as some of the useful apps for education. 

I've hit the more-than-halfway mark for my trip to China this summer, and it's been really great so far! One thing that Dana Rogers (the Hive's photographer) and I got to do was visit Yiwen Chen, our Chinese Social Media Specialist, at her grandma's house in Wenzhou, about five hours south of Shanghai by bullet train.

Dana took some photos (many more to come), but you might want to take a look!

The past few days have been a whirlwind, meeting up with other UK students and faculty and participating (or, in my case, getting audio from) various seminars and group discussions on all sorts of topics relating to cultural exchange and Appalachian art & study in particular. When I return there will be a few podcasts from this event, so stay tuned!

Dear Friends,

As the 2011-12 academic year comes to a close let me thank you for all the incredible work, dedication and commitment you have exhibited throughout the year.  Without a doubt, our faculty and staff rival those at the most prestigious institutions in the country. 

Over the last year we have welcomed and educated a record-number of new students; we have successfully launched a new general education curriculum (UK Core) and a new residential college (Wired); we have made progress on shortening time-to-degree through our online and summer school initiative; we have greatly expanded our international efforts through faculty exchanges, short-courses, new education abroad programs, and our passport to the world initiative (Year of China); among many, many other successes. 

Our faculty and staff have been recognized by countless national organizations and agencies, as well as by the University community.  The following are just a handful of the many successes achieved this year:

For the past week I have been getting used to life in Spain.  For the month of May I am studying here with Francisco Salgado-Robles, a professor in the Spanish department. Last Sunday for the first time ever I took a plane out of the States and made the journey to Spain.  Right now I am living in Seville which is in southern Spain about an hour from the coast.  I have been here, in Seville, for a week now and I still get lost when I am going to my classes.  I am also doing service learning so I work at a Children’s Hospital.  

I have been to many places with some of rich history of both Spain and the United States.  For example, this past weekend my class went to La Rabida and la playa (the beach) where we saw the monastery where Christopher Columbus (in spanish he is know as Cristobal Colon) went to get monks as warriors for his ships.  

Many are quick to critique social media as being a giant time waste, something incredibly self-indulgent, and even slightly creepy. We have all heard these arguments before. An interesting counterargument posits that social media can be used to increase social capital and even be used for purposes of social good. The same two arguments also swirl around the sphere of videogames as well. I can't tell you how many times my parents told me to turn off my Nintendo and go outside. So what happens when you smash social media, gaming, and social good all into one? We're finding new, innovative sites almost everyday. 

As the Internet and social media are growing and changing, the idea of of what is proper nettiquete has been debated by many professionals and academics. While there is no one widely accepted canon of guidelines for online behvior, there seem to be a few generally accepted do's and don'ts.  I've recently been reading The Chronicle of Higher Education, a great source for all things higher ed. I came across this article, 10 Commandments of Twitter for Academics. The author, Katrina Gulliver, goes over a few commonly asked questions about social media interaction for academics as well as frequent mistakes academics make in the Twitterverse. It's a pretty interesting read.

If you don't have a Twitter account, you should get one. Follow A&S @UKarts_sciences and we'll be your first follow! Join the Conversation!

Coming from a Library & Information Science background, I am always excited when I see resources getting archived -- especially online (despite my reservations about the amount of power it takes to keep all those servers up and running). The web started off as an information commons, where anyone with access could peruse or post their own contributions to the growing pool of knowledge. I was reading the WNYC blog and came across this article about the 2012 WebWise Conference, which focused on "Tradition and Innovation;" mostly dealing with the challenges and opportunities that come along with archiving in the digital age.

One of the things the blog mentions is Fugazi's Live Series archives, which will eventually hold 800 live shows... I've liked this band for going on fifteen years, so it's pretty cool that I'll get to listen to shows that they were playing when I was in kindergarten! Another thing it mentioned was the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer, which I interviewed Doug Boyd about awhile back.