Tangled Concerns

With my confusion of the assignment guideline, I found myself slipping at the face of failure. Just as I had enthusiastically prepared for the presentation, it did not go as expected. I realised that our presentation was not to be reviewed by the tutor herself, but quite unorthodoxly it would be reviewed by fellow peers. On top of that, I was always under the impression that we could choose our presentation week, and I remained unperturbed by the fact we were told that this was our presentation day.

However, I was assigned to a group with fellow course mates, Meaghan, April and Rachael for the peer reviewing session. We were required to compare our reengineered PowerPoint’s and grade accordingly to what we believe are accounts of their PowerPoint credential.

Meaghan started off the session by explaining her PowerPoint which was based on the theorist, Maureen Walsh. Meaghan did hers differently by making the PowerPoint a lot simpler than the original, more cluttered version. Quite fantastically she succeeded in her objectives, however, could have chosen to reduce the copy on her PowerPoint as it seemed too messy and became too informational without engaging.

Meaghan's References

Crystal, G 2008, What does jumping the couch mean?, WiseGEEK, viewed 13 August 2008, .

Howells, R 2003, Visual culture, Blackwell publishers, Cambridge

Michael O'Shaughnessy, aJS (ed.) 1999, Media and Society, 4th edn, Oxford University Press, London.

Walsh, M 2006, ‘The ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.

Yildz, M 2002, ‘Semiotics of new media literacy’, College of education, viewed 13 August 2008,

Rachael, on the other hand, decided to reengineer the original PowerPoint to make it more attractive. Her PowerPoint was based on the theorist Shriver, and she successfully practiced Shriver’s ideas and theories into her presentation. This was done by incorporating words and visuals that complement each other.

Rachael's References

Hart, G. 2007. Combining words and pictures: degrees of abstraction. Intercom January 2007:38–39, 42. http://www.geoff-hart.com/resources/2007/words-plus-pictures.htm

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers. The interplay of words and pictures Ch.6, pp. 261-441, Wiley Computer Pub, New York. [electronic version]

Nijibour, N 2001, “Better Technology Does not Equal Better Communication”, Viewed 15 August 2008,

April’s reengineered PowerPoint was also based on Shriver. April remade her PowerPoint to make it visually attractive and included a different PowerPoint design to harmonize the words that came with the original PowerPoint. Still, I believe April could have reduced the words and chose to adapt more visuals to make it more appealing to her target audience. As departing information solely through words can prove to be a difficult task, the presentation was less engaging.

April's References

Bernhardt, S, 1986, ‘Seeing the text’, College composition and communication, Vol 37, no 1, pp 66-78

Reep, D C, 1997, Technical writing: Principles, strategies and readings, 3rd edn, Allyn and Bacon, Boston, pp 90-128

Penman, R, Sless, D & Wiseman, R, 1995, ‘Best practice in accessible documents in the public sector’ in Australian Language and Literacy Council, 1996, Putting it plainly: Current developments and needs in plain English and accessible reading materials, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, appendix V, pp 2-32

Schriver, KA 1997, Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers, Wiley Computer Pub., New York.

New York Times Company, 2009 About.com: Desktop Publishing, Last viewed April 2, 2009

As the class was close to ending, I decided that it will be worthwhile that I work further on my PowerPoint and present the following week. Reengineering the PowerPoint to make it more visually appealing as well as informatively engaging will be a tall order. Nevertheless, the motivation to excel will be my push for wrapping up the presentation in due time.