Examples of Bernhardt's on-screen text trends

While reading Bernhardt's article on on-screen text and the characteristics of on-screen text, I kept thinking that our blogs represent many of the 9 characteristics. For example, they are to some degree interactive. A viewer can click on my screen name on the left to view my complete profile or they can click on my "Fun Links" to connect to another site. They can click on "comments" to respond to any post or they can click on my multimodal video that's posted. Our blogs are also modular. The main posts are chunked in the middle with our profile info. on the left and other information on the right. They are graphically rich with a picture as the background, our logos, and the many imported pictures and screen shots that add representations to our postings.They are also customizable, publishable texts in that we decided how our blogs would look as we made a series of decisions about layout, colors, themes, and visual images. These decisions can be changed with the simple click of a mouse at any time. We can also edit our posts and remove posts at any time. Our blogs are also spacious texts. We can add to our blogs an infinite amount of information, links, postings, etc. The links are really what make the space infinite. With one line, we can connect our blogs' viewers to entire sites with an expanse of information without having to copy it all onto our blogs.

This screen shot is a Word Document with a professor's comments in the margins.

This represents several of the characteristics. Firstly, it is customizable, publishable text in that any aspect of the document can be altered quite simply. A professor can add comments directly on the document and the student can then go in and edit without having to retype the page. Font sizes, themes, and colors can be changed with one click and images can be placed directly into the document with text in front of it or around it. Word is also graphically rich. Look at all the icons along the top of the screen that will enable a writer to manipulate the appearance of the document.

My last example is our very own school's home page.

 Many of Bernhardt's characteristics can be found on UTC's home page as well. First of all, it is a spacious text. Nearly every word is hyperlinked to take a viewer to another page filled with more information. It is situationally embedded. No one (I hope) sits and clicks on each link in order and reads all the information contained within the newly directed page. We consult the page and the links based on the need of the situation. The page is completely interactive in that a viewer can clink on dozens of links and icons at any time. The page is functionally mapped with visual clues for viewers such as the facebook and twitter icons along the bottom and the arrows along the right side. While it is not in this screen shot, there is also a search box at the top of the page to allow viewers to find exactly what they need. This page is modular with essentially three columns of information, each chunked accordingly. It is also navigable with icons, hyperlinks, arrows, a search box, etc. It is hierarchially embedded with layers of text, each layer containing yet another layer. Finally, it is graphically rich with pictures (along the top although I did not capture it completely), icons, hyperlinks, etc.