
To be honest, I didn’t get the emoji hype. Call me old-fashioned, but I often still use the traditional colon & end parenthesis for a smiley face (and would get frustrated when Facebook would autocorrect it!) But, the turning point for me was when I began thinking of emojis as digital stickers. Everyone loves stickers, you should see my laptop cover. When you think of it as another layer on top of an image to bring greater context to an image/slide, it opens up a whole new world. In education, Booksnaps are a great example of this. Follow #booksnaps for more examples of people using this, but it’s really pretty simple. When you read something brilliant and you just have to take a moment to pause and soak it in, take a picture of the text. Layer it with emojis and text to annotate your view explaining why you think this part of the text is important. Then, share it out on social media. It’s a great way to share knowledge, make book recommendations and help you better remember this section of the reading.


Not so surprisingly, my 👧👦 loved emojis as well, and quickly caught on to texting their 👵 with only emojis. It was a way of communicating a thought long before they were able to confidently compose a sentence.
Educators are ✍📓 of this and have started using 😉 in their classrooms. You can find students defining higher level vocabulary words in a series of emojis. There is also interesting 💬 around why certain emojis are chosen in their depiction.
“Can you relate to my representation of these two words? Let me explain why I chose them.”
lollygag: 💅😎💆
voracious: 🐅🏃😅
Other ideas include:
- Describe the events of a chapter or 📕.
- Demonstrate the emotions the main character felt at the climax of the story.
- Share your comfort level with this new skill.
- Not to mention these great elementary ideas.
Bangor University in the UK found that “72% of 18-25 year olds find it easier to express their emotions if they are using emojis and feel it makes them better communicators.” (See video below) So despite how you may feel about the use of emojis, this data shows that we need to take a serious look at use and how to leverage it in our classrooms. ✌
What Your Emoji Says About You
Why I Use Emoji in Research and Teaching
Why Scientists Should Research Emojis and Emoticons
Digital Learning Consultants
Amber Bridge (@abridgesmith) & Mindy Cairney (@teamcairney)