Introduction

The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, or the RSA, launched a program called RSA Animate in late 2009.  The idea is to provide an accessible way to learn complicated ideas presented by the RSA by timing animated drawings and text to spoken words.  One video, “Changing Education Paradigms,” premiered in October 2010.  In it, Sir Ken Robinson makes several rhetorical choices, in both discursive and non-discursive ways.  This provides the watcher with an eleven-minute, multi-modal video with a variety of messages.  Without the use of multiple modes, the RSA Animate video would not be able to administer the assorted concepts it presents, as effectively, because the context of the speech would not be as clear.  It would just be another speech about the education system needing to change instead of creating a world that harshly indicates what is wrong with humorous images juxtaposed with a serious message.