During the summer Tony Vincent helped me see emojis as more than just annoying symbols that people use in text messages and social media posts. He did that with a slick graphic that he created and shared on Twitter. In the graphic, seen here, he created a game in which students have to decipher school terms based on the emojis displayed. If you want to create a similar activity, you can do so by using emojis that are built into Google Docs or by creating your own emojis with this simple tool that I demonstrate in the video embedded below.

And here’s a video to show you how to add emojis to Google Docs.