The Great Emoji Debate

August 21, 2018

• Topical

The emoji was first invented in Japan in 1999 as a means to ensure that digital communications could portray emotions. Almost 20 years later, the emoji is enjoying a meteoric rise, it has become a globally recognisable symbol, around 60 million of emojis are used every day and there are new emojis being created and introduced every year. It is clear that the emoji has become a popular means of expressing emotions in the digital world, but the educational effects of emojis are less clear.

For some educators, the emoji represents a new teaching opportunity. Teachers in the UK have used emojis to show and discuss the emotions of characters in books and plays; some have used them to make content more relevant and accessible to children, which can aid with memory; others have used them to overcome language barriers with children whose first language is not English. Emojis have also been used in ways which are not directly related to learning. Some schools have used emojis to explain the progress being made by their pupils. One school encourages its pupils to express how they are feeling through emojis; this allows other pupils and staff to act in ways which can account for how pupils are feeling.

Those who do advocate for the use of emojis in the classroom stress that emojis are never used as a primary source of teaching. Rather, they are often used as starting points for learning and are almost always complemented with words and other content. Advocates have also argued that emojis should not be used for their own sake, but for specific educational purposes.

There are many other educators who are less convinced about the effectiveness of emojis. Some have argued that schools provide children with their only chance to learn English language skills and that this chance should not be wasted on the teaching of emojis. Others have argued that the use of emojis actually hinders creativity because English language itself allows for more creativity than proscribed emojis. Overall, this is an issue on which the jury is still out. Individual teachers will have to decide for themselves whether language should be the limits of their pupils’ worlds, or whether emojis can be used to add another dimension to teaching and learning.

https://www.tes.com/news/emoji-or-not-emoji