Task 6: An Emoji Story
I had a lot of fun with this task. I had never considered how emojis could be used instead of written text. As mentioned in our module, I use emojis as a way to both complement my written text and also to help clarify meaning and tone. In recent years I have also increasingly used emojis as a way to respond to messages. Oftentimes times a simple thumbs up emoji can capture my reaction to a message without needing to add any additional written text. I also noticed, however, as Bolter (2001) writes, “the picture elements extend over a broad range of verbal meanings: each element means too much rather than too little” (p. 59). I found this to be my primary struggle in using emojis as many of them can be interpreted in numerous ways.
When I first started the task I found myself attempting to translate my thoughts into emojis word for word. I quickly realized that there are a finite amount of emojis and not enough to represent every single word in a thought or sentence. For example, I found that verbs like “is” are impossible to represent through an emoji. As a result, I pivoted into focusing on nouns, action verbs and ideas in combination with one another to create meaning through the visuals. I started looking at the overall meaning of the title and the summary rather than the structure of the response. I think that this would be a great way to reinforce teaching and learning about summarizing and identifying the main ideas in texts as it forces one to really think in a big-picture sense.
For my task I started with the title. I don’t necessarily think that there was a particular rhyme or reason to this, other than the linear nature of my thinking concerning producing a text. I have always found that starting with a title gives me a launching pad for my text. Even when I write these tasks I have a title on my page. This could also be a product of my own obsessive behaviours.
References:
Chapter 4. Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.