When Mrs. Forgette told our class that we were going to be making a website about our research paper I knew that there was a catch. Unfortunately for me, I was right. The research paper was ten pages of sophisticated writing directed toward an academic audience but our website was supposed to be aimed at 18 year olds. You wouldn’t think that this would be that big of a problem, but boy would you be wrong. By simply changing the audience I had to rethink my entire paper. I could not simply transfer references, rhetoric, or language from my research paper over to the website. Well, I could but I’m pretty sure that I would have failed the assignment. The real problem with this change wasn’t the age difference, it was the fine print of the audience which I don’t think a lot of the other students noticed. Our research paper was supposed to be an academic audience who was somewhat familiar with the topic at hand. The college students didn’t have a clue about our subjects. This meant that I had to explain more basics in my website than I did in my research paper. I went in with the mindset of teaching chemistry to a toddler; explain the basics in the simplest way you can, and include pictures.

As I started thinking of my new audience, I wondered how I was going to discuss failing schools in a way that not only intrigued them, but made them want to read more. My first draft was AWFUL. I wrote it and it made me bored to read it. I realized that I needed a complete overhaul. I rewrote my articles a couple more times and saw a drastic improvement. I had included anecdotes and several pop cultural references. I do hope that I never have to mention the Kardashians in a college paper again. I felt confident, but when I looked at the site as a whole it was still very bland. It was just text, good text, but nothing else. The first article that I started on was the racial inclusion piece. This text was not great compared to the others and I was having a lot of trouble finding anything to make this particular subject POP to a college audience. While I was watching TV one night, TNT played a commercial for “The Help” and a million ideas came to head. After finding what I believe to be the most perfect gifs for that text, I felt on top of the world. I finished the racial inclusion article around 9 at night and continued working until my entire homepage was done. I used that one idea throughout the whole homepage and was shocked at how great it came together. Now, I might have gotten a little gif heavy, but I doubt that I will ever do something so academically-creative again so I decided to go all out.

I really thought that I would despise this multimodal, maybe because of Powtoon’s looming presence, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.