Did you rely more on syllables, words, ideas or a combination?
To start, I wrote out the title and plot using typed text. I noticed that my plot explanation relied on quite a few verbs, which was hard to find a specific emoji for. For instance, with the word create, I tried to find another word that would connect to an emoji, but was unable to do so. I decided to rewrite the sentence so that it was simpler, and did not rely on that word. Verbs in general were hard to find emojis for, and that is what made it tricky to write a descriptive explanation.

Did you start with the title? Why? Why not?
I did start with the title. I saw the example in the assignment instructions, and it was a great example of the emojis matching the title. So I thought I may gain some confidence in using emojis for a story, starting with the title first. 

Did you choose the work based on how easy would it be to visualize?
I considered my audience quite a bit when I was writing my emoji story. I wondered if they would understand the collection of emojis I chose. I sometimes tried to see what other emoji’s fit the description, to ensure that I gave my best effort in my description for the audience. I realized how I have been so busy, that I hardly have watched any shows, movies or have read any fiction books lately. I decided to watch one of the shows my daughter was watching. When trying to explain the storyline of the episode, I quickly realized that in a fictional story may have been easier to find emojis to describe the events. Since the episode that I chose was more of a reality tv show/educational show, it was hard to find emojis to match names or specific proper nouns.

While reading Bolter (2001), I reflected on the image that was described as an “image of the cultural” (p. 60). The image contents included in Bolter (2001, p. 60) described a lot about the Ojibwe culture. It made me consider how our emoji story would say a lot about our current cultural context. The emoji images are digitized, and not hand-drawn, which would depict that we communicate digitally and that the emoji’s symbolic meanings are commonly understood. Also, when I used the Chrome Extensions, Joypixel and Emoji keyboard on my Chromebook to complete the task, any emojis from these programs did not save as a draft, instead, they turned to question mark symbols when I saved a draft, and previewed it in WordPress. So instead, I used my cell phone, and composed an email, while using emojis built into the Apple keyboard. These were transferrable and you can see the emojis above. This made me connect to how Bolster (2001) discusses digital images and file storage. The readability of the images did not transfer on WordPress, so instead, I used an alternate source of emojis, which worked out well. I also noted that typing and searching for emojis on my mobile device was way more efficient and easier than on my laptop.