Admittedly, I was pretty excited to try this task.  This seemed like a natural activity to try with my class and after now experiencing it first hand, I will most definitely be bringing this exercise to my Grade 6/7 French Immersion students.

At first, I thought that this task was going to have to be a lot more in-depth because movies have a lot of detail which would need to be passed on to the reader.  But as I started to work myself through the task, I realized the power of the emoji.  You don’t have to worry about every single word because with one simple emoji, even without words, the author can pass on a lot of ideas and meaning to a reader.

As Kress correctly notes “With depiction and with images, the situation is different:  that which I wish to depict I can depict, at the moment at any rate.  I can draw whatever I like whenever I like to draw it.  Unlike words, depictions are full of meaning; they are always specific.  On the other hand, there is an infinity large potential of depictions – precise, specific, and full of meaning (2005.  p. 15).”

As I moved through the task, I found myself moving at a quicker pace.  The story didn’t seem as long now.  Whether it be myself becoming more apt at the process, or myself realizing and becoming more comfortable that complicated stories can be told through imagery, the story seem to write itself rather quickly.  Something else that surprised me was the vast amount of emojis available to choose.  As I slid through the collection emojis, I found myself continuous going back and editing my story to add in or switch emojis that I had previously selected because these newly found emojis, at least in my mind, shared more of the details I was trying to share.

Although this exercise would be valuable in any classroom, I believe this task would be especially valuable in a language classroom because it allows students to express their thoughts without the fear of circumnavigating specific language and becoming frustrated with the process.  Through universal images, language students can share their thoughts and feelings using symbols that are true to them.  As Bolton notes “The image therefore slips out of control of the word and makes its own claim to presenting the authentic and the real (2001. p 70).”

Finally, one of my last reflections on this task is something that I read in Kress’ article “Speech and writing tell the world; depiction shows the world (2005. p. 16).”  In the 21^st century, I would argue that the visual medium is more powerful than the spoken or written medium.  As the world becomes more connected through the power of the Internet, the power of the image becomes more dominant as billions of them are passed across all parts of the globe.  Language matters less.

Though context is important and what something means in one part of the globe, can mean absolutely nothing or something completely different in a different part of the globe, I still focus on the power of the image. “The Web remediates photography, film, radio, and television, and each of these technologies of representation have their own cultural constructions and their own design principles … All of their remediations will be in pursuit of the same goal:  greater authenticity and immediacy of presentation (Bolton, 2005. p. 70).”

The power that an image can connect billions of people to the same idea in an almost immediate way, no matter what the language, no matter what the context!  That’s what I take away from this task.

References

Bolton, J.D.  (2001).  Chapter 4.  Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2^nd ed.)  Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.  Doi:10.4324/9781410600110

Kress (2005), Gains and losses:  New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning.  Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.