Blog Post 5!

I learned a lot about what makes an effective text through this project.  Comparing texts that all have to do with the same idea really showed how rhetoric effects everything.  For example, who the intended audience is has a lot to do with the look and layout of a web page.  Family friendly sites are much more simple and easy to use than sites geared toward older generations.  The word choice, font size and color also have a lot to do with who is viewing the site.  Every genre also has different expectations for what is rhetorically effective.  The movie review sites that I was analyzing had very similar layouts and had many of the same features and elements included on each page.  But comparing a movie review website to a social networking site would be completely different.  Overall, I learned that every text uses a different way to get their main points across and that every element of the rhetorical situation effects the others.

Cassie's web analysis of how to make sushi was extremely well done.  She had an overview of all the texts and did a good job of explaining everything.  Because she analyzed websites, videos and books, there was a little more variation in context, as well as purpose and genre.  These different mediums would have made the analysis a little bit more difficult because of the broad spectrum of rhetorical situations.

Lauren's layout was a little bit different.  She divided everything up by the modes, rhetorical situation, and the IX terms.  I found this a little bit harder to follow along with.  Posting what the terms were and what they meant in that context helped a lot.  Each of her analyses are well written and she goes in to detail on every text.  The variation of genres between book, web article and blog were interesting.  Seeing how the modes and rhetorical situations change among those mediums is awesome.

Courteney's site analyzed each Avenger's poster individually.  This was an effective way of laying out the text to keep all of the ideas for each poster together.  It was interesting to see how each poster used the same modes, but they all used them in such different ways to create a rhetorically effective, visual text.  Since all of these posters were so visual, they all had about the same purpose, audience, genre and context.  Seeing how the modes change among these is very interesting.

After looking through all of the class' websites, there were quite a few that I liked.  Tai's was very interactive, I especially like how the skateboard turned over on each specific page.  I also liked Nick's webpage.  It was very easy to use, I really liked the pictures and the color scheme and header.