MODULE 5 COMMUNICATION AIDS AND STRATEGIES USING TOOLS OF TECHNOLOGY

Creation and Production of Multimodal Texts

Although multimodal texts are often associated with digital communication technologies,
multimodal texts are not synonymous with digital. Their creation can be of any medium: paper—such as
books, comics, posters; digital--from slide presentations, e-books, blogs, e-posters, web pages, and
social media, to animation, film, and video games; live—like a performance or an event; or transmedia--
where the story is narrated using “multiple delivery channels” by means of a combination of media
platforms, for instance, book, comics, magazine, film, web series, and video game mediums all working
as part of the same story (O’Brien, 2017).

Transmedia, a highly contested term, is “what the word parts suggest it might be: a merging of
media forms, here the digital with the narrative, but with the multiple platforms a part of the narrative”
(Heick, 2018). To understand the term better, Henry Jenkins (2011) says that

Transmedia is more than just multiple media platforms. It is about the logical relations
between these media extensions, which seek to add something to the story as it moves from one
medium to another, not just adaptation or retelling. Transmedia enables the further development of the
story world through each new medium; for example offering a back story, a prequel, additional
‘episodes’, or further insight into characters and plot elements. It also can require a more complex
production process. (as cited in O’Brien, 2017)

Glee is an example of a transmedia narrative in which the audience follows the characters and
situations across media, but more often, its transmedia strategies focus on the transmedia performance,
with the songs moving through Youtube, iTunes, live performances, and so on, which the audience reads
against each other to make sense of the larger Glee phenomenon. (Glee is an American musical comedy-
drama television series that aired on the Fox network in the United States from May 19, 2009 to March
20, 2015.)

As freshman college students, you are expected to develop the ability to produce and submit all
kinds of texts, including (and especially) multimodal texts. With the current technological developments,
you can accomplish the task of creating whatever kind of multimodal text is assigned to you that befits
your chosen field without as much difficulty as it used to be.

The text you make is a literacy object because it displays your ability to express meaning. In the
past, literacy was understood to refer only to the ability to read and write texts; at present, however,
literacy includes making meaning by using varied texts available through the highly accessible
information and multimedia technologies. You construct meaning by creating your own expression of
that meaning or idea. This kind of expression empowers you because you are able not only to
understand the idea but also to talk about it.

When doing the class activity of devising multimodal texts, it is normal for you (and the
members of your group) to use your own voices to create the soundtrack, to apply transitions between
images to bring about movement, and to employ appropriate music to liven up the text. But this is not
the only way to do this activity. Another technique is to collect material for the voiceover, as well as the
images you are going to use, from sites on the Internet, like Facebook, Google , blogs and vlogs, Twitter,
Spotify, iTunes, and Youtube. You can use whatever free web stuff you find to mix image, sound, and
text. Take the elements you understand, elements that will become your language to construct your
meaning—your message, your text.

This method of gathering materials is merely copying (or cutting) and pasting, but during this
process of collecting the materials you need to adapt and rearrange (or remix) the materials to suit your
own purpose of creating the multimodal text. What you do, therefore, could not be just
“copying/cutting and pasting” in its traditional sense, but what Ryberg (2007) has identified as
“patchworking” in his dissertation (as cited in Godhe, 2014).

You do “patchworking” when you exploit certain threads in the materials you have gathered
from various sources and stitch these together to create your own “patchwork” and your own particular
understanding of the materials (Godhe, 2014). In other words, you recontextualize (or place in a
different context) the materials you have collected from various sites to serve your own purpose of
presenting them in a multimodal text in a classroom setting, and there is nothing anomalous about this.
If you use this patchworking, however, be sure to acknowledge all your sources or you will be guilty of
plagiarism.

Plagiarism is the act of stealing and passing off as your own the ideas, words, or any other
intellectual property produced by another person. For example, if you use another person’s words in a
research paper without citing your source, you commit an act of plagiarism.

Preparing multimodal texts in a classroom provides for new practices of reading, producing, and
disseminating texts (Jewitt, 2005). This means that you also apply in your creation of your class-assigned
multimodal texts whatever literacy practices (or abilities/activities connected to the use of technologies)
that you do at home or outside of the classroom environment (such as using computers and any other
technical devices-- mobile phones and tablets--to communicate and interact with others, reading
ebooks, watching film clips on Youtube, listening and downloading music on Spotify, and producing
home-made short films/videos on the Internet).

To effectively design and communicate meaning through such rich and potentially complex
sources of materials, you have to extend your multimodal literacy knowledge and skills. A quality
multimodal composition requires new literacy design skills and knowledge that will enable you to make
informed choices within and across the available communication modes and effectively construct
meaning out of them (O’Brien, 2017).

To create a digital animation, for example, which is a complex-meaning design process, you are
required to do a critical arrangement of a combination of “modes” (such as image, movement, sound,
spatial design, gesture, and language). The process of constructing such as text is a “cross-disciplinary
literacy process” because it involves the use of both digital information technologies and the arts
(media, music, drama, visual arts, design) to bring meaning to life (O’Brien, 2017).

In the traditional, established practices of writing texts in a classroom, students usually write
texts with pen and paper or create the text in a word-processing program on a computer (Hull, 2003;
Turner & Katic, 2009). In your application of new literacy practices when creating your multimodal texts,
the computer is still a very important device that you cannot overlook, but the Web amplifies your text
much more.

The Art of Making Powerpoint Presentations

 Powerpoint presentations are so common that lecturers and reporters use them all the time.
But are all these presentations effective? “Presentations can be among the most painful experiences in
both school and the working world -- and that includes listening to them” (Kangas, 2012). You can avoid
being a party to such broken and ineffective presentations by using “a smart and simple approach to
creating presentations that engage audience and inspire action” (Kangas, 2012).

A presentation is like taking your audience from one place to another, so make the journey
lighter and more fun by never overloading it with too much content. How you may do this? There are
only three things that you need to do before starting to make your Powerpoint presentation (Kangas,
2012):
1. Determine your goal. This is about you and your goal, which should be an achievable challenge.
Ask yourself what opinion or feeling of the audience you want to change. (For example, I want
them to understand…, I want them to buy…, and so on.)
2. Convert your goal into one “big idea.” This is now about your audience and your planting an
idea into their heads. Make them embrace the idea so that they can act by moving toward your
desired goal. Make them understand how they can benefit from the idea, and lead them to
believe in what you say, not in what you want. It is all about them, not you.
3. Consolidate your idea into just three concepts. For the audience to reach the place where you
want them to go—to embrace your idea—go straight to the 1 st point, 2nd point, and 3rd point to
the point where you want them to go and embrace it.

Afterward, as you go about creating your presentation, optimize your “Powerpoint science” by
bearing in mind five design principles that can help make the structure of your slides clear (Philips,
2014).

1. Outline first to control the number of slides and to provide balance. Allot 2 to 3 minutes per
slide (for example, a 30-minute talk may utilize 10-15 slides). Decide on only one story to tell or
one underlying issue to address. Divide it into logical, hierarchical questions and subquestions,
and make your talk a series of answers to these questions. Zoom-in your introduction; zoom-out
your closure.
2. Have only one message per slide to allow the audience to understand it more. If you have
many sentences on the slide, and you persist on speaking at the same time, the audience will
not be able to remember anything at all, and your effort will be useless. Enhance your
presentation material by having just one short text and/or one image on a slide.
3. Pay attention to size. The most important point of your Powerpoint should be the biggest, so
reduce the size of the title, and make the size of the content bigger since the content is more
important than the title.
4. Apply the principle of contrast. Contrast controls your focus, so use a built-in functionality on
the Powerpoint that dims or darkens the rest of the items and highlights only the item on the list
that is being discussed, one at a time. You can do this when presenting a table; use contrast to
focus on each item being discussed so that the audience can direct their attention to that item
alone and avoid having their eyes all over the place not knowing what to focus on. Change the
bright white background to a dark one, too, so the focus is on the text alone.
5. Limit the number of objects/items per slide. The magical number is six. You can have less than
six but not more. This means having more slides. The number of slides for one PowerPoint
presentation is never the problem; it is the number of objects/items per slide that is the
 problem. There should not be any limit to the number of slides. If the number of slides is
limited, the result is counterproductive—jamming too many objects/items per slide.

Now, you are ready; you feel more confident to stand before the audience and make your
presentation. Do not make a mess of it by getting your audience bored and putting them to sleep.
PLEASE do the following (NanoNerds, 2012):

1. Come prepared.
2. Get the set-up right.
3. Know your audience and adjust the content accordingly.
4. Go easy on fonts.
5. Go easy on logos.
6. Go easy on colors.
7. Make eye contact.
8. Be kind to questioners.
9. Be kind to folks in the back.
10. Design slides for distance.
11. Cell phone off.
12. Do not go crazy with the laser pointer.
13. Do not cram too much on each slide.
14. Do not read from your notes or slides.
15. Do not spew jargon.
16. Do not demean audience members.
17. Do not turn your back.