Google Earth

The visuals that I critiqued for this presentation were representational. One visual characteristic was the map that Borg passed around for the audience to see what he had been working on. PowerPoint was another visual characteristic that was used to show a brief overview of what JMU faculty has been researching. The two speakers themselves, Borg and and Whitmeyer were also a form of visual characteristics that I critiqued. The visuals that were created were from Borg and Whitmeyer and their students that helped and are still helping them with their research. I feel that the purpose of these visuals were to show the audience (which are JMU faculty, staff and students, as well as Harrisonburg and Rockingham residents) the idea of what they are trying to accomplish. The overall idea is to be able to build a network for the state for Google Earth and the ability to like and integrate data into other links and materials.

There is an assumption in this presentation that most people were familiar with or knew of Google Earth. However, even if you did not know much about Google Earth, by the end of the presentation you had a better understanding of what it was and what the professors are trying to create. The visuals were a perfect representation of what was being presented because they gave examples by going to the site (Google Earth) and explaining how it works. The visuals were created through microfilm by scanning maps from 1886-1930 and them printing the sets of maps as well as photo- shop to create the overall final images. The visuals were displayed by printed out maps that were passed around as well as an overhead projection that allowed us to see the website and view the content of the multilevel map template. The quality of the images was not affected by the display system because that is how it would be viewed if anyone in the audience were to use Google Earth on their own.

The message and meaning of the visuals that were presented were not affected that much by what was not shown. Both Borg and Whitmeyer did and are still doing extensive research to make this project in the making complete. The affect I feel that the audience will have to the visions and information that is not shown or told in detail about is less overwhelming and simplifies it for everyone else that is not involved. The voices that are herd throughout the presentation (Borg and Whitmeyer) are not the only ones that contributed to the visuals. A large portion of the research has come from students, which was not visually displayed at all. I did not learn any new terminology but I did learn how to navigate Google Earth through the visuals through this presentation and how "anyone interested in the past, present and future of a city" can use this cite to find out the history and geography of the Shenandoah Valley and eventually all of Virginia.