The snippets of texts that were hidden under the images on the previous page had different modalities, fonts and text sizes. On this page, the text has been put together and presented in a different form (see text below). While the entire text is in one piece, the structure and orthography have been completely disregarded. The following  exercise will test your understanding of conventions on how text is structured.

Exercise 1: From Mash-Up to Text




Step 1. Copy and paste the text below in a Word document:


TEXT
have you ever sent a handwritten letter to someone in which you have described a visual experience like the view from your window or an intriguing story that you heard on the radio depending on which generation you belong to you will either be familiar with these modes of communication or will have shared similar experiences by using social media apps on your cell phone this overview of the brain indicates where the various functions are located that we use to process different kinds of information regardless of time period and age we always rely on our sensory, cognitive and motoric capabilities to capture process and dens out information while our physical aptness to process information has remained the same, the form in which we communicate changes our social behavior and the conventions we follow to communicate with each other we have moved from producing and consuming text on pages that have to be turned to engaging with a non linear mix of text, audio and video the advent of affordable and accessible digital technology in combination with the world wide web induced these changes it is likely that now that most of what we want to convey can be captured visually and aurally in a split second and passed on instantaneously skills such as handwriting will become obsolete as well as conventions on how to describe an event there are even prospective studies that indicate that the amount of moving images and sound will soon supersede the amount of text on the web what we are witnessing is a gradual shift from a focus on alphabetical literacy to developing forms or visual and aural literacy this not only means learning to view moving images symbols and body language and to listen to sounds more attentively, it also means knowing how to mix modes of communication in a meaningful way when creating a message we are already experienced in mixing modes of communication in fact we engage in multimodal communication in our everyday life without being conscious of it when speaking to someone not only the words create meaning but also the tone the speed and the rhythm of our voice when designing a poster the image and text create meaning through many modes of communication such as the color size style of what is depicted fonts the printing technique and the type of paper considering that multimodality is part and parcel of communication and that monomodality is non existent what really marks the difference between before and after the massive use of digital technology is the scale at which we are able to mix text with sound and images our acquaintance with digital devices has magnified the potential to create multimodal messages this is why it is important to be more conscious of how such meanings are created transferred and received


Step 2. Add the following features to make the text readable and coherent:

• Upper case letters where needed
• Punctuation
• Paragraph breaks
  

Step 3. Illustrate your newly formatted and punctuated text with six copyright-free images spread throughout the piece. You can find such images on these online web resources:

• https://search.creativecommons.org/
• https://pixabay.com
• https://unsplash.com

Step 4. Upload your work on Padlet:

Padlet is a collaborative online noticeboard. Users register their account and add the email addresses of other contibutors to a list. Upon receiving this invitation, contributors click on the  + (plus) icon to add their version of the assignment.

Create an account on Padlet (click here for instructions). The free version allows for one image, recording, or clip per board. As seen in the example Padlet board below, this can cause confusion, as the order of the posts changes when more posts are added. This is the consequence of the non-linear character of this tool.

Step 5. Examine the differences in results when using Padlet versus Word

The characteristics of Padlet affect the texts' appearance. A Word document keeps every entity of text in the right order. To illustrate this, you can refer to the Word file below. This file is an example of what the text could look like, and has the same content at the Padlet board.

DOWNLOAD:  Example Text in Word