The Emoji Project

The second week of school, I came up with an Emoji project for all 1st-5th graders.  I had them use Paint to design their own emoji and then asked them to use the text tool to type about themselves.

• The emoji and the background color can't be the same
• You have to type your name
• 3rd-5th grade typed a paragraph about themselves
• 1st and 2nd typed a sentence about themselves.

This was a great project because the students practiced:

1. Opening programs using the start menu
2. Selecting and using different tools
3. Mouse Control
4. Keyboarding
5. Saving and Naming their work
6. Closing programs

Now let's be honest, my first graders had a really hard time with saving and naming their work, so I ended up individually showing them how (also known as "doing it for them").  But still...It was a great learning experience for us all!  It also helped me learn a little about each of my students.

After they finished their emojis, I spent the next week moving them over to my thumb drive and organizing them by class.  Unfortunately our computer lab does not allow the students to save their work to a cloud or drive, it only allows them to be saved to individual computers.  So, it was a very tedious task to go to each of the 25 computers and pull off the students work.

Next, I used a free online collage maker ( I like fotor) to make a photo grid of only the emoji's of each class (I plan on using the text portion for another project later).  I then saved the photo grid to my computer and inserted it into a Word document.  At the top of the word document I have a # with the teachers name.

This is from a 4th grade class

I then printed and placed all of them on the wall outside my computer lab with the # of my school name.

It added a few more hastgags (#technology, #ComputerLab and #LearningIsFun) and managed to get this up just before open house!

It is now 5 weeks later and the students still love looking for their emoji as they are standing in line, waiting to come into computer lab.

Stay tuned to see what display I am doing with the written portion of the emoji project!

And if you want to see what my lesson plan looked like for the week, you can find it here.

What are some great computer projects you have done with your students?  Is there an easier way to get students saved work? Seriously, if there is...help a teacher out!