Dr Tim Kitchen (Adobe), Professor Sherman Young, Dr Ronika K Power, Professor Gary Fallon and Sasha McQuaid (Adobe)

The Ancient History Department at Macquarie University invited the Adobe Education Team to help them use some of Adobe’s video solutions to rethink and change the way they do formal assessment.

Educational assessment is a bit like death and taxes, it is an unavoidable part of the education process. However, it doesn’t always have to be a tedious, dry and boring process. Assessment of students is about showing evidence of knowledge gained with an aim to help enhance a student’s learning and capacity. Assessment can be a very creative and exciting process, especially if technologies such as video production are involved.

Dr Ronika K Power, Senior Lecturer in Bioarchaeology is passionate about teaching ancient history. She is a strong advocate for the use of modern technologies to help tell ancient stories and share student’s knowledge. On Tuesday 17th April  she invited the Adobe Education team to work with her staff and help train them in the art of video story telling as a form of assessment.

We began the day with some work-shopping on the use of Adobe Premiere Clip, a free and simple video editing app for iOS or Android. The teachers were impressed with its simplicity and the fact that they could make a quality video production without much if any experience as video makers.

We then moved to Adobe Spark Video, and encouraged the teachers to use  mix of both Premiere Clip and Spark Video. Both have their limitations, but by starting with Clip and finishing off the production with Spark Video, they were able to achieve most of what they needed to make a quality video story including voice overs, transitions, music, still images, moving images and text.

During the day we also filmed a series of interviews with key people from Macquarie University and Adobe. We used this footage to learn how to use Adobe’s professional video editing solution Premiere Pro. The free mobile apps are great for quick, short clips that don’t require a lot of production value. Premiere Pro is the ultimate video editing solution because it has no real limit to what can be created. It is the standard for the TV & video production industry and is even use in Hollywood film making.

Premiere Pro is relatively simple to use when it comes to stitching together clips and  layering titles and audio. It can get a bit complicate when adding filters and doing special effects, but after a couple of hours, most of the Macquarie History teachers were getting their heads around the basics and were very excited about the potential of what they can now achieve in terms of their own teaching and, most importantly, how they can encourage their students to construct their learning more creatively.

Professor Sherman Young, the Pro Vice-Chancellor Learning and Teaching at Macquarie University was interviewed. He said that allowing access of Adobe software to Macquarie students and exposing them to these industry standard tools is important.

Dr Power interviewing Professor Young, Vice-Chancellor of learning & teaching at Macquarie University

Professor Gary Fallon, Professor of Digital Learning in the Department of Educational Studies was also interviewed by Dr Power. He said that he sees the Adobe products as a very interesting platform for self expression, creativity and for the developing of original products and collaboration.

Dr Power interviewing Professor Fallon

Stay tuned for the video story about this day which will soon be published on CreateEdu TV.

If you are interested in having the Adobe Education Team visit your campus for some professional learning or a student incursion, please contact us via – http://bit.ly/book-adobe

Teach Tech Play is one of my favourite annual professional learning events because it is genuinely organised purely by full time teachers who give up their valuable time to provide learning opportunities and inspiration for other teachers.

Eleni Kyritsis (Strathcona BGGS), Corey Aylen (Haileybury) & Steve Brophy (Ivanhoe Grammar) run Teach Tech Play. They do a great job each year organising this event.

Kasey Bell, Tom Barret & Emily MacLean were the main keynote presenters. They all had a wealth of experience to share.

There was a dedicated Adobe workshop room for the two days of the conference where participants were able to choose from a great selection of topics.

Day 1

• Sparking Creativity with Adobe Spark – Dr Tim Kitchen
• Teaching Media Art Using Adobe Mobile Tools – Joel Aarons (AEL)
  
• Smartphone Filmmaking – Dr Max Schleser (AEL)
  
• Making cool HTML websites without coding – Dr Tim Kitchen

Day 2

• Amplify your legendary status by becoming a ‘Classie’ designer – Andy Hair (ACL)
  
• Make Photoshop Puppets come alive with Adobe Character Animator – Dr Tim Kitchen
• Enterprise and Digital Technologies: Social Media Marketing using Adobe Tools – Michelle Dennis (ACL)
  
• Photoshop Tips & Tricks – Dr Tim Kitchen

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Stay tuned for a video about this conference, coming soon to CreateEdu TV.

The close relationship between Adobe and Microsoft continued last week when the Microsoft’s Sydney flagship store in Pitt St was the venue for a special educator’s professional learning event titled – Animating with Adobe Character Animator.

The teachers who attended this event, were introduced to Adobe Character Animator as a tool for doing real-time animation of 2D puppets made with Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.

These teachers (who were all from the NSW Department of Education)  were shown how to personalise a puppet with Photoshop, prior to animating it. Then they had fun recording a short animation by tracking their facial movements via the webcam.

They exported their animations with Adobe Media Encoder and imported them into Adobe Premiere Pro to add special effects and enhance their clips.

Special thanks to the community team at Microsoft for helping to put this session together.

A number of senior secondary students from Arthur Phillip High School in Parramatta visited Adobe’s Sydney office for an Adobe Day.

Rob the robot made a special appearance to help quiz the students on their knowledge of Adobe as a company.

Then the students were introduced to the Adobe Spark tools (Spark Post, Spark Video & Spark Page) with a focus on producing a Spark Video about what they have learned about Adobe as a company.

The students had a tour of the office.

And met some interesting Adobe staff

Following the tour, we went through a range of video editing techniques with Adobe Premiere Pro.

It was great to see what these talented students were able to produce in just a few hours of work-shopping with this industry standard application.

Special thank you to Media teacher, Jesusa Mercado for organising this event for her students.

Click here to find out more about Adobe Days.

A group of media students from Ceders Christian College, near Wollongong, NSW got up early on Wednesday 4th April and made their way to Adobe’s Sydney office for an Adobe Day focused on video literacy with Premiere Pro and Photoshop.

Adobe Days usually involve students either on an excursion to the Adobe Office or an incursion when an Adobe expert visits a school or university to help student enhancing their digital literacy skills.

The students were very impressed with the views of Sydney from the 27th floor. It is always exciting to give students an aim to reach for, especially for those interested in working for a multi-national company in the future.

We started the session by looking at the way Adobe Character Animator can be used to animate a puppet by tracking facial movements via a webcam. Character Animator became a fully fledged part of the Adobe Creative Cloud in October last year.

Then I introduced the students to the power and potential of Adobe Premiere Pro as a communication tool. They learned a wide range of video editing techniques with this application that is now considered the industry standard in the world of TV and video production.

After the morning tea beak, the students went on a tour of the Adobe office. A couple of the students enjoyed a short game of table tennis with me and they had the opportunity to meet some of the Adobe staff, including (Adobe Founders Award winner, Michael Stoddart).

By the end of the day, the students each developed a video story with both Premiere Pro and Photoshop.

Adobe’s agreement with AISNSW has allowed independent schools in NSW (and also in other regions) the opportunity to access Adobe software for their students and staff. With video production now being considered as important as reading and writing, these students have developed some communication skills that will benefit them in the future.

Special thank you to Ceder’s media teacher Jessica Barsenbach for organising this excursion.

Stay informed about future Adobe in Education professional learning opportunities for teachers in Australasia via:


 http://bit.ly/adobeEDU-events




If you haven’t already, please join the Australasian Adobe Professional Learning Group on EdEx to stay in touch with Adobe in Education – 
http://bit.ly/adobe-edu-updates

Also, keep in touch with the APAC Adobe in Education active use program via the CreateEdu TV Channel on Vimeo – https://vimeo.com/createedu

All 95 Year 9 & 10 media students at Our Lady of Mercy College had an all-day incursion with me this week focused on enhancing their video literacy skills with Adobe Premiere Pro.

The girls used a mix of footage that I provided for them and footage that they captured themselves to create a video story. They learned some of the basic editing tools within Premier Pro as well as some of the more advanced techniques that help add to the quality any video production.

I shared with them that video is now considered a literacy and that 70% of all Internet traffic today is via video thanks to sites like YouTube and Vimeo. I told the girls that, these days, it is almost as important to be able to make a quality video as it is to be able read & write.

For just about all of these students, it was the first time they have used Adobe Premiere Pro, so I was very impressed with what they were able to achieve with just one days training.

Special thanks to Mrs Kristy Treloar and the multimedia teachers at Our Lady of Mercy College for organising this incursion. I am looking forward to visiting again next year and seeing what the students have been able to achieve with their new video literacy skills.

I was invited to present at the 2018 Swinburne University Learning Transformations Conference which was held on Thursday 29th March.

This is an annual event run by the Learning Transformations Unit which is responsible for the exploration and exploitation of learning technologies at Swinburne as well as the resourcing, preparation and scholarship of Swinburne staff; and the development of partnerships that increase and extend Swinburne’s online provision and presence.

I was presenting in the employability stream and my topic was Focusing on creative problem solving skills will enhance employability in the age of automation. As you can see from the above image (thanks to Adobe Character Animator), Rob the Robot made another staring appearance.

I shared some of the research around future job skills and the potential threat of automation and computerisation. A 2015 CEDA (Committee of Economic Development of Australia ) warned that more than five million jobs could disappear in the next 10 to 15 years because of technological advancements. It threatened that computerisation and automation could see more than six out of 10 jobs in rural and regional Australia vanish.

https://www.ceda.com.au

A 2017 report by PWC, titled Workforce of the Future: The competing forces shaping 2030 surveyed 10,000 people across China, India, Germany, the UK, and the U.S. with an aim to “better understand the future of work.” 37% said that they thought artificial intelligence and robotics will put their jobs at risk, up from 33% in a similar study in 2014.

https://futurism.com/reports-ai-robots-threaten-jobs-5-years

We looked at a 2013 study by The University of Oxford titled The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?  It claimed that 47% of jobs are at risk of being automated in the next 20 years. It also provided a website that allows users to type in the name of a job and it will give them the probability of that job being computerised in the future.

http://bit.ly/jobsatrisk

I asked the audience to call out some job names to see what their future is likely to be according to this Oxford analytical tool. They were reassured that post-secondary teachers only had a 3.2% probability of being computerised in the future. Many were surprised that Computer Programmers had a 48% probability of being automated in the future.

We looked at the recent ISA (Innovation Science Australia) report that indicated that automation is not necessary a bad thing. It said that our ageing population is likely to create a 6% shortfall in the number of workers needed to maintain our current GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth in 2030. It suggested that Innovation and digital technologies such as automation and computerisation will help fill Australia’s future labour gap, by improving productivity and performing tasks workers do not want, or need, to do. It also inferred that more jobs will demand 21st‑century skills, such as interpersonal skills, entrepreneurialism and creative problem solving.

https://www.industry.gov.au/Innovation-and-Science-Australia/Australia-2030/Pages/default.aspx

Another point of interest from the ISA study is that in the future and current age of automation, more jobs will demand 21st-century skills such as interpersonal skills entrepreneurialism and creative problem-solving skills.

If students are encouraged to develop skills & techniques such as creativity that computers can’t yet manage, then they are preparing themselves for a brighter future.

We then looked at the recent study undertaken by Adobe on creative problem-solving in schools that highlights that creative problem-solving skills are critical in the age of automation. It was with 2000 educators and education policy makers from around the world. Nearly all of them (97%) agreed that creative problem-solving is important for students to learn in school. About three quarters of them of them (76%) agreed that professionals that require creative problem-solving skills are less likely to be impacted by automation.

Find out more via – http://cps.adobeeducate.com/

There were some interesting tweets shared during this session …

Linden Clarke‏ @LindenClarke

@timkitchen research shows creativity boosts self-esteem, motivation and curiosity. Surely that makes creativity a life skill. #createedu #SwinburneTLC

So many Adobe products available for staff and students – really impressive work being done. 20 Adobe Creative Cloud products available on Swinburne-owned PCs through the Application Catalogue, plus heaps of free ones online @timkitchen #SwinburneTLC L

Learning all about Adobe with Dr Tim Kitchen – Tim’s animated character Rob who introduced the session was created in 10 minutes using Adobe Character Animator #SwinburneTLC@timkitchen

The World Economic Forum has forecasted the top 5 employability skills for 2020 as being: complex problem solving, critical thinking, creative, people management, and coordinating with others #SwinburneTLC @timkitchen

How secure is your job in the future? Will technology replace your job? The University of Oxford website will forecast it #SwinburneTLC @timkitchen

Christopher Scanlon‏ @c_scanlon

@timkitchen looking at the jobs of the future — and those that are likely to be swallowed by automation #SwinburneTLC. Pro-tip: academics are fairly safe.

@timkitchen talking about how face-tracking software can be used to quickly create engaging animation for students #SwinburneTLC

@timkitchen research shows creativity boosts self-esteem, motivation and curiosity. Surely that makes creativity a life skill. #createedu #SwinburneTLC

@timkitchen we learn from failure — we should create opportunities for students to try, fall short, learn and try again #SwinburneTLC

@timkitchen Most believe creative problem solving is important and will be so in the future. But most agree we are not doing enough to foster it in the classroom. #SwinburneTLC

Should everyone learn to code? @timkitchen is concerned we may have the wrong focus. Many coding jobs may be automated. 21st century skills/capacities such as creative problem solving, collaboration and interpersonal skills can’t be automated. #SwinburneTLC #employability

The full set of resources I shared during this session can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-29March18