Week 2 Reading Response

I agree and disagree with the comic. The large amount of traffic on the website is current students and faculty. The other part of the traffic is students who are figuring out which college to enroll in. For the first group the right side of the comic makes sense, that is definitely the information the University wants to be displaying for its currently students. The left side is where all the money is. The University must be attractive potential students especially in today's culture! With internet access today, you can bet that every person who is picking a college will check out that Universities website, collect some information and compare it to other Universities. After that lengthy process, then the student will visit the campus.

The Art Institute of Portland's website is geared very much to the left side of the graphic. First rather than having navigation or quick links on the left side, the author puts sigh up for more new student information. Upon staying on the home page for a few seconds a scripted window appears asking you to live chat with someone from the school or sign up for more information.

The visuals of AI Portland's website clearing focus your eyes on the different topics you can study at the institute. The viewer's eye goes straight for the the sideshow of students and their works. The home page of this University is not at all geared towards current students or factually members. It is for new student. It is about where the money is.

Week 1 Reading Response

The linguistics of the White House response are very thought out. They chose to use information sentences with a lot of information, no bloat. I think it is interesting that they included "prayers" considering all the ridiculous religious things people complain about. Apparently people still like hearing they are being prayed for when things get rough. Also, I leaves the listener without a doubt that the USA is doing every possible to help Japan.

The visuals are the two Twitter pages are different, yet the give me the same feel. Figure 1.3 has more contrast, but the colors do not look professional and neither does the profile picture. Figure 1.4 has a smoother color, but again, with the profile picture, both Twitter accounts look like they are for personal use.

For the video, I actually had to stop watching and just listen because the visuals are so strong and I am incredibly visual. It sounds a little magical in the beginning. The drumbeat keeps the same tone through the whole video and keeps you listening and keeps things flowing. The magical affects do not seem as professional as what the person is talking about and take away a little of the credit.

The space of our university's homepage is not meant for the student or faculty member it is meant for the person who is look at the school for the first time to see if they want to attend. The news articles on the front page flip through every few second, anyone who comes to the site to read an article is not going to sit there and wait for the site to flip through. They want a list or grid of articles they can quickly scan through, find what they want and be on their way.

The President folds his hands when he is not flipping pages of his notes. This makes him look calm and thought out and without aggression. This is vital because he is talking about war and terrorist in another country. If he were to throw his hands in the air and point and shout, the viewer would not, it's all out war and they other country has it coming.

Multimedia vs. Multimodal

Multimodal has to do with how something is presented. It is things like, what sounds were used, was it a picture, did it have worlds, what medium was it created in. Multimodal is different forms of expressing something. For example, "A picture is worth a thousand words." One picture can tell a story. A story of a family, during the Great Depression, waiting in line for their daily soup. You could also tell this story with a novel as well. I written story of the family, with no pictures, only words.

Multimodal combines the two, words and pictures. If I were to do multimodal piece on the Great Depress, I would do a video interview with someone who has lived through it. While the person is telling about their experience I would put picture into the movie as well as letters or postcards the person may have from that time. This would put together video, photos, and words, making it a multimodal piece. 

A multimedia piece has to do with what the medium is. For example, is it a news paper, online article, or tv show? It is the same information conveyed on different mediums to reach a broader audience. 

A multimodal piece can me multimedia and often is. I believe multimedia and multimodal are to different things but work very closely together.