Monthly Archives: June 2022

Did you start with the title? Why? Why not?

For this activity, I felt it was necessary to outline the category first and then the book’s title so it was clear to my colleagues viewing my emojis. My hope is if a person viewing my emoji story can recognize the title, the rest will be easy to follow! Initially, I used https://emojikeyboard.io; however, I could not search for emojis, and it did not copy and paste correctly onto my document. Instead, I explored https://emojipedia.org and, using the website’s search tool, I selected the best-suited emojis to accurately convey my story title. 

Did you choose the work based on how easy would it be to visualize? 

Working on this task made me think of the YouTube video that went viral in 2015/2016, “Frozen as Told by Emoji”. Although the video is substantially more complex than the simplistic emoji story I created, it could be used as inspiration for how emojis and minimal wording could accurately and interactively retell an entire movie in a matter of minutes. Bolter (2001) suggests that images have the ability to bypass written work altogether. I continued to view the different Disney Emoji stories on YouTube and felt Bolter’s statement to be accurate. Emojis can rewrite messages, jokes or implied comments without texting a single word. I use emojis regularly when texting, but I’m curious if the current generation uses emojis as regularly as mine, or do they use a different form of expression?

I have attached the Frozen as Told by Emoji YouTube video for those interested.

Did you rely more on syllables, words, ideas or a combination of all of them?

I primarily focused on individual words rather than trying to blend words; thankfully, my book choice was simplistic enough that most of the emojis were present to embed into my story. As Bolter (2001) suggests, emojis/visual images provide viewers with a visual experience that allows for an appropriate realization. Therefore, for my emoji story to be accurate, I went page by page and selected the most important words/theme of the page and chose the emojis accordingly. After reviewing my emoji combination and running it by my husband for a quick accuracy check, I felt pleased with the result. I’d also like to note this is one of my daughter’s favourite stories! 

References

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

As a teacher, I still have to write by hand for my Grade 3 students. I write their notes or information on my whiteboard or Loft TV and also have handwritten comments for their work. For this assignment, I found it challenging to simply write my ideas without a clear direction of what I wanted to write. It’s been a long time since I’ve freely written my thoughts in a reflective piece!
One thing I quickly noticed while completing this assignment was when I made a mistake while writing and editing my work; I couldn’t push ‘delete’ or use a whiteboard eraser to change my wording. Instead, I had to cross out (I couldn’t find my whiteout) the words I wanted to change. The messiness of the mistakes/crossing out bothers me, but because I chose to use a pen, I didn’t have many other options – unless I wanted to rewrite the piece entirely.

In the podcast, “From the Vault: Invention of the Book”, I appreciated how Robert and Joe highlighted when a person writes or documents something by hand, the written memory is very different from the memory you have in your brain (From the Vault: Invention of the Book, 2021). This thought resonated with me as when I was documenting my story and re-reading what I had written by hand, I felt the emotional context I was attempting to portray was lacking – the recollections and memories were challenging to put into words. One of the most significant differences I noticed in writing my ideas versus typing my thoughts is that I often read aloud what I’ve written and delete/edit accordingly. As a teacher, I love writing in my classroom and watching my students write, for University assignments, I strongly prefer typing. When writing by hand, I couldn’t simply move sentences around or have my spelling automatically corrected – I became very conscious of what I was writing. With typing, I’d have more of an opportunity to edit and change my work because of the ease of deleting, moving and adding additional thoughts. I feel I can better portray what I’d like to say with more concise thoughts and clarity while I’m typing.

I have attached below my written work – I included in my reflection one of my favourite poems I’ve received as a Teacher.

References:

Lamb, R and McCormick, J. May 26, 2020. The Invention of the Book (Part 1) [Audio podcast episode]. In From the Vault. https://www.iheart.com/podcast/stuff-to-blow-your-mind-21123915/episode/the-invention-of-the-book-part-63031174/