Blog 2

The college website that I choose to visit was the University of Florida’s. The modes of communication that were used to inform the audience about the university are linguistic, visual, and special. This makes sense for the context of the website since the University is choosing to share information about their school over the Internet. The author of the website used the linguistic mode by including the University of Florida on the homepage so that the intended audience automatically knows that they are looking at the University of Florida’s website. There are also important links at the top of the screen that say “About UF, Academics, Admission, Campus Life, Research, and Services”. These all are useful for the viewer In order to be able to navigate throughout the website. Also, there is an alert bout the Tropical Storm Isaac. This is important information for the students and any other person who is involved with the University of Florida to get information about their safety. The visual mode was used by incorporating the schools colors, orange and blue, into the website. It seems to me that the most important aspects and information about the school are at the top of the screen. The University of Florida is also located at the top left corner of the screen. This is the first thing that I noticed when I looked at the website because it is in the top right corner and it also is in a larger font than anything else on the page. There is also a slide show of pictures with captions in the middle of the screen to inform the audience of the types of things that the University of Florida is involved in. The spatial mode is used by grouping things under tabs. For example, there is a tab that says “for students” and under that tab there are links to pages that are resourceful for students. The location of the picture is in the middle of the page. This draws the viewer’s eyes automatically to the pictures. The purpose of this website is to reach out to perspective students, students, alumni, and anyone else who may want to seek information about the university; because of this everything that is in figure 2.2 from the reading under the section “things on the front page of a university website” are included on the University of Florida’s website. The things that are more difficult to find can be searched for in the search bar that is located in the top right corner of the homepage. I do agree with this lost of things people go to the site looking for because this is general information that one may need that is extremely relevant to campus life at the university and also from personal experience I know I have visited my universities website for some of the reasons listed in the ven diagram.

Blog 1

I do not think there is a difference between the terms “multimedia” and “multimodal”.  I believe that multimodal is a term that is a more modern form of the word multimedia.  They both use more than one form of communication to send a message to an audience.  I think that multimodal is a broad term used to describe more specific qualities that makes something a form of multimodal communication: linguistic, visual, aural, gestural, and spatial.

Linguistic Mode To Do

I think that the first sentence “our thoughts and prayers remain with the people of Japan” stands out to me because it shows that America was there to support Japan after this crisis.  “Offered” also stands out to me because it shows that the President volunteered to help Japan with whatever it is that they need in order to rebuild and take care of its citizens. 

Visual Mode To Do

When looking at the two profiles in Chapter 1 I noticed that the obvious difference is the choice of each profile.  The one on the left is navy blue, white, and green, which might be because those are his favorite colors or maybe the colors of a sports team that he likes.  The twitter profile on the right is light blue and white with a picture of a panda.  This makes the profile seem as if the person uses twitter to communicate to a lot of people or that they really like pandas. 

Aural Mode To Do

The music playing in the background of the attached video is upbeat.  I think the reason why they chose upbeat music because it lightens the mood of the clip and since they are trying to get people to work together could put the audience in a positive mood and associate the music with being positive and therefore be more willing to hear and like the message that the video is trying to get across.  I think that country or bluegrass music was not used because a lot of people do not lik that type of music so f that music was played then the certain members of the audience would not even listen to the message of the video because they associated not liking that type of music to not wanting to watch the video.

Spacial Mode To Do

When looking at the WSU my eye is instantly directed to the middle of the screen where there is a group of three images that are constantly changing every few seconds. The crimson stripe at the top of the screen with three links to the A-Z Index, zzusis, and Contact Us.  This is probably because those are important links for students that attend WSU or prospective students.  Then there is also a search box.  These links are also on the right of the screen where everything else on the homepage is located in the middle.  Directly underneath there are links to each campus of WSU which are noticeable, but do not take away from the visual appeal of the page.

Gestural Mode

I choose to watch the President Obama Speaks at the 2012 Kid’s State Dinner.  Obama’s gesturers were effective.  When he was addressing the audience as mothers, fathers, and grand parents he pointed to all of them while he was talking so it made it seem as if he was having a conversation with all of them.  Throughout the speech he makes subtle gestures that make him seem alive and not like a statue.  He also looks at his wife and it seems like he is doing this for confirmation of the points that he is making since she actually knows him personally.  I think that he used gestures effectively.  He gave the speech right before a dinner so it was light in mood and his facial and hand gestures went along with the tone of the speech since it was not formal.