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Google Classroom and Emojis

I am taking an online course called Classy Graphics with Tony Vincent. This is the first time I have taken an online course for fun. I heard about the course by following Tony Vincent on Twitter. When he tweeted about the course I didn't allow myself to think about it and just jumped in.  It is a six week course and cost $100. I am only in my first week, as of this writing, but I have already learned so much and my hesitation over spending $100 of my own money is a thing of the past! The class is worth it...I am looking at it as in depth instruction on how to practically use the Google Drawings tool. Professionally it will help me with future questions and training ideas and personally it might help motivate me to start making pretty things to share with teachers.

Probably my biggest takeaway this week in the course is Tony's use of bullets in Google Classroom. I had read his post about it awhile ago but didn't really think anything of it until I saw it in action and now I am OBSESSED. It really does make assignments more fun. The screen shot below is me putting it in action in my sample class I use for training purposes.


It is super easy. Per Tony I used https://emojipedia.org to find the emojis I want and then I simple copy and paste it in the text of the assignment and topic. The emojis are limited so you do have to use your imagination, or at least different keywords, to find something you want.

Why use emojis? I think this graphic from Tony's website sums it up nicely.


I definitely want to try some of the other ideas mentioned in his blog post like using it in my Google Drive to identify folders. I also like the idea of emoji story generating. Definitely start with adding emojis into Google Classroom first. Once you see how easy it is it might motivate you to try adding emojis elsewhere.




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