Rhetorical Analysis of Presentation and Remediation

Rhetorical Analysis of Presentation and Remediation

Going from Prezi to Popcorn Maker seemed like a great idea to give more emphasis to the video.  Giving impetus to the video in anyway detracts from the meaning that needs to be conveyed.  In fact the objective is to use multimodal communication to compliment the other.

The Prezi presentation on “The Reading Writing Project” gives it’s audience a chance to interact with the software on a personal level. Be it parents or educators, they are able to watch the video play automatically or they can click forward through the slide to the section that they are most interested in leaning about the project. As users interact with the Prezi they may notice that a presenter is unnecessary.  Unlike PowerPoints, Prezi’s don’t require the presenter to guide its audience or viewers thought the end of the presentation. Therefore, there is greater freedom of choice for the user to interact with the presentation on a personal level.

Prezi may seem intimidating. After interacting with the software for a while the fear of working with the software diminishes. The learning curve, in other words, understanding how to use Prezi’s features is quick.  The simplicity of using Prezi is not to be overlooked.  Finding the slide that suits your presentation is crucial because it makes your Prezi more or less appealing.  Finding a sample model and editing it with your information makes communication more purposeful. Hock states that the visual design has motivated and engaged readers in the complex web of text. Prezi actually engages its readers in the complex web of text. 

Using Popcorn Maker to remediate ‘The Reading and Writing Project” done through Prezi presentations highlight the affordances and the hindrances between both these sites. Popcorn Maker makes allowances for videos to be uploaded to the web and be “remixed”.  An incentive of using Popcorn Maker is that you can take a video and add texts, audio and pictures to the original creating a remix. What is remix or mashups? A remix is taking an original music or song(s) and manipulating it in a way so that it sounds completely different from the original.  A mash up is similar to that of a remix. It however also refers to taking music, videos, texts and manipulating them to look and sound differently from the original. Mashups can even include web applications where these applications can be manipulated to work in a completely different application thus create a hybrid web application. 

A major concern of using “The Reading and Writing Project” video recording that was available on YouTube is the copyright laws.  Lawrence Lessig asserts that the copyright laws are stunting the creativity of youths in the 21^st century. While Lessig does believe in the copyright laws it’s difficult for him to ignore the fact that copyright laws have criminalized the youths of 21^st century who want to be creative. Copyright laws also reduce the affordances that remix and mash up brings to the global culture.  Lessig stresses that there has to be some sort of balance with the current copyright laws.

The learning curve with Mozilla Popcorn Maker is steep. There are some hindrances. For example the site crashed a lot resulting in lost of work.  Popcorn Maker worked on some web browsers like Google chrome and not others likes Safari.  Thus creating anxiety and frustration for users.  On the other hand, users of Popcorn makers are developing skills in composing with videos online. 

Prezi and Popcorn Maker both give emphasis to the use video in multimodal composition.  Prezi is quite user friendly however Popcorn Maker requires greater patience and expertise with video editing. Both utilize text in a way that is meaningful to the manner and the purpose in which the program is being used. The experience of using Prezi and Popcorn Maker conveys the importance of multimodal compositions in this dynamic and global world where there are cultural shifts in the meaning of writing and composing texts.