I am starting to wonder how emoji (expressive characters) might affect the way students learn to communicate. As an experiment, I am going to ask my Year 7 students to produce an “Emoji Story”, using the instructions below: 
I imagine that they will copy and paste emoji into a slideshow, and when they present, they will talk through the slideshow, narrating their story. The slideshow can then be read by others without narration, to see how differently it can be interpreted.
Tag Archives: language
Google Forms Choose Your Own Adventure
Do you remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 80s and 90s? I used to love reading them at school, and recently I have been wondering if students could write their own using a Google Drive Form. This is a proof-of-concept for this idea…sorry if my creative writing is not amazingly griping.
Note: you might find this works better as a stand-alone form, rather than viewing it within this site.
Assembler vs High Level Programming
This single lesson aims to introduce students to assembly programming in the context of the high level programming that students will be more familiar with.
Download the lesson plan.
Portfolio: What they Dream and What they Do
This awesome photo set consists of amazing photos of people; along with their life story. It is a great tool for getting students to consider the range of humanity and their own responses; or as a prompt for creative writing.
Oldest English words identified
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7911645.stm
An interesting look at applying computer modeling to linguistics.
Engrish
http://engrish.com/
Students can gain a new appreciation of the difficulties inherent in learning English, by studying Engrish’s real-world, visual examples of English gone wrong. Whilst this site is mostly intended to entertain, it can be used to provide stimulus materials which help to engage students with their work.