Hi everyone! My name is Amelia and I'm new to the Hive as well as A&S blogging. So, I would like to present my beginning, introductory blog which will be quicly followed by various travel related or French related blogs. I hope everyone who watches these enjoys them!

Students in Professor Randolph Hollingsworth's History 351 course created some important biographies of Kentucky women on Wikipedia during fall 2010. Some of the women include Anna Mac Clarke, the first African American women to command an all White regiment. Social activists and political leaders like Dolores Delahanty are also featured. An entry on the Kentucky Female Orphan School tells the story of a school that eventally became Midway College. 

In case you missed it during the hectic holiday season, A&S English professor Nikky Finney was featured on “UK at the Half” with Carl Nathe during the UK vs. Loyola basketball game. Finney’s book, “Head Off & Split,” was the winner of the 2011 National Book Award in Poetry. The National Book Awards is one of the most anticipated events in the publishing world. Finney has taught at UK for decades and is a member of the Affrilachian Poets group that includes Frank X Walker and Kelly Norman Ellis.

To hear the "UK at the Half" interview, click here.

Upon doing a list of all the podcasts made in 2011, I was astonished to find that the A&S Podcast team made more than A HUNDRED PODCASTS!!! Holy moly! 

And we covered SO many different topics -- from the geological reasons why Kentucky's groundwater is best for bourbon, to the process of translating a rare language guide into English from Chinese, to move-in day at A&S Wired and Ahmed Kathrada's gallery opening in April... 2011 was quite a year for A&S, and I feel really glad to have been here to document some of it. 

Lexington has a creek running through downtown, though you would never discover it if you walk the city's streets. Town Branch Creek, part of the South Elkhorn Creek, has long been buried underground. In 2010, several geography students at UK attempted to bring Town Branch into the space of public memory through an art project downtown.

While I surfing the web the other day for online technology websites, I found a large amount of iPad apps that can be used for educational use.  I was surprised to find how many there are!  This prompted me to make a spreadsheet of them and categorize them according to the discipline in which they would work best, i.e. biology, astronomy, etc.  Some of them could be very useful for students, especially those who are taking science classes online.  Whereas they may have found it hard to visualize the various parts of a cell or muscular structure, they can now explore 3-D images on their iPad; some apps are even available on an iPhone or iPod.  I am excited to see all of the different educational apps I can find, not to mention various app tools that we could adapt to any class for online education.

Have you found an image on our website that you love, and must have a copy of?

Here is how you can download and print that photograph and then charish it for the rest of your life!

1. Go to Univerity of Kentucky College of Arts and Sciences website home page at: http://www.as.uky.edu/

2. If you haven't already taken a look at our recent photographs, take a look by choosing the Photos option on our homepage.

3. After you have made a decision on any photographs that you would like to have, return to the A&S homepage to find the FLICKR button. This link will bring you to our photostream on flickr, called UK College of Arts & Sciences. Below is an image of where the flickr button is on our A&S website homepage.

4. When you have successfully surfed to our flickr website account, UK College of Arts & Sciences, find your desired image by searching through the photostream, or more efficiently by clicking on the sets link shown here...

As the semester comes to a close, I want to take a moment to recognize several faculty members and students who were recently honored for their outstanding accomplishments.

Six UK professors have been recognized for their excellence in the classroom with the UK Alumni Association 2012 Great Teacher Awards. Beginning in 1961, the Great Teacher Award is the oldest continuous award that recognizes teaching at UK – the nominations are made by students. A&S faculty include Arne Bathke, director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Statistics and director of the Applied Statistics Laboratory; Eric Christianson, associate professor in the Department of History; and Ana Rueda, chairwoman and professor of Peninsular Spanish Literature in the Department of Hispanic Studies. The recipients will be honored at the UK Alumni Association Great Teacher Award Recognition Dinner on Jan. 17, 2012. They are scheduled for further honors at Rupp Arena during the Arkansas vs. Kentucky men’s basketball game later that evening.

Animators refer to a deviation from a cartoon character's model sheet or original design as "off model." I've adopted the term to speak about brand and identity guidelines with students. The hilarious website, Cake Wrecks has provided this perfect, local example of "off model" content in the wild.

While jarring - surely, you can admit there's something whimsical and charming about this. It'd never pass snuff as a promotional image for the university (for good reason) but it has a certain je ne sais quoi.

Compare it to the following. This is also off model but probably gets a little more respect (via Gannadene at Deviant Art):

While catching up with Robert Krulwich's blog, I was struck by the entry about sounds. The sounds of things that are no longer ubiquitous; though I remember rotary phones and watched film strips as a young kid, these were displaced by more modern technologies, which have been displaced yet again!

This entry, "What I Still Hear: Sounds That Have Disappeared" features lots of recordings of old bits of technology doing their stuff, and then some more contemporary versions of similar technologies (or at least, similar in intent or effect). As a podcaster, I know that ambient sounds can make or break a recording... or add some unexpected sound effects. (Does anyone recall the Janis Joplin song with the typewriter in it? The Moldy Peaches song with the phone ringing? Ah, the joys of field recording...)

Some sounds that have stayed the same in my lifetime: planes overhead, freight trains outside, and emergency vehicle sirens. I suppose when we get flying cars, bullet trains and travel internationally by teleportation machine, these sounds will change along with the technology.