Fifteen minutes is all that the Year 8 students at Melbourne Girls College had to produce a short video about their passions with the help of Adobe Spark Video.

This was the first time the students had been exposed to the Adobe Spark tools and it was very pleasing to see easy they found the software. With less time needed to learn the tool, it allowed them more time to be creative.

Criteria for the video included the following:

• Must work with a group of two or three
• Must include the passions of each member of the group
• No more than 7sec per slide
• Must include text, still images, video and voice overs
• Be creative
• Be entertaining

The girls chose a wide variety of passions for their very creative video projects.

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Special thank you to Wendy Keen and Catherine Walkear for inviting Adobe to be part of the Year 8 Melbourne Girls College end of year program.

Adobe was pleased to again support Swinburne University’s 2018 Department of Film and Animation Students’ Showcase & Industry Awards hosted by Aussie Oscar winner Adam Elliot.

It was my pleasure to give the award for Creative Excellence in Animation to Giuliette Lugara and Lara Nguyen who both received 12 months of free access to the Adobe Creative Cloud software (retail value of about $900).

I was delighted to watch the wide range of student’s short films that were on show during this event. The quality of the film making and animation was outstanding, a true tribute to the quality of teaching and mentorship at Swinburne’s Department of Film and Animation.

Special thanks and congratulations to Adobe Education Leader Dr Max Schleser and his team for putting together this event and helping to create these amazing film makers of the future.

It was delightful to work with a number of students and teachers from Tintern Grammar on Tuesday December 4 and share with them the value of digital creativity with Adobe tools.

Tintern Grammar is unique because it runs a parallel program with boys and girls in seperate parts of the school for most subjects until Year 10 when they mix. As stated on their website …

The provision of both single-gender, and mixed classes on a co-educational campus- a best of both worlds approach- creates the optimum learning environment for students.

Most of the day was spent with the Year 6 students, introducing them to the Adobe Spark apps.

Their challenge was to produce a poster with Spark Post and feature the poster in a Spark Video focussing on their passions – what they love doing in their spare time.

In the afternoon, Brian Chau (Adobe Solution Consultant) and I worked with the Tintern Art  and IT teachers to help advance their skills with the more professional Adobe applications in the Creative Cloud.

The NSW Institute of Industrial Arts Technology Education (IIATE) had a strong involvement with Adobe at their annual conference this year.

On Thursday November 29 Adobe hosted a set of all day workshops for over 50 members of IIATE at the Sydney office. Adobe Education Leader Jason Carthew and I ran a series of workshops focussed on video production, composting & animation with Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Character Animator and the new Premiere Rush.

Later that evening the IIATE hosted a dinner cruise on the beautiful Sydney Harbour.

On Friday November 30, I had the privilege of doing the opening keynote in front of about 300 IIATE members at the Sydney Masonic Centre.

All the resources I shared throughout the conference are available on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-iiate18

Ben Forta (Adobe’s Senior Director of Education Initiatives) completed his 2018 Aussie tour with a visit to Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School in Melbourne on November 26.

We worked with the Year 5s who had already experience Adobe Spark Page so we introduced them to Spark Post and Spark Video.

Each student was challenged with the task to create a Spark Post about their passions. Then to add their posts into a short Spark video that they would be happy to share.

It was lovely to be back at Strathcona where I taught for 13 years from 2000 to 2013 and see the way the school is enhancing digital literacy skills among their students and staff.

Special thank you to Eleni Kyritsis, the Junior School Leader of Digital Learning and Innovation, for making this day happen.

Later that afternoon, Ben and I (with the help from Brian Chau from Adobe) ran an Adobe professional learning event for Victorian educators at Swinburne University.

Eleni Kyritsis

On November 23 Ben Forta and I worked with a number of teachers and students from TAFE NSW at their Enmore campus in Sydney.

We began by sharing about the impact Adobe (in particular the Adobe Spark) is having in education around the globe.

Then we spit everyone into three workshop groups. Ben ran sessions on Adobe Spark, I ran a session on Photoshop and then a session on Adobe XD and Character Animator. Adobe Education Leader (and TAFE NSW educator) Craig Daalmeijer-Power) ran workshops on Adobe Dimension and Acrobat.

The New South Wales Department of Education InteractED roadshow hit Coffs Harbour in northern NSW this week and it was a pleasure for Adobe to be involved again, this time with Ben Forta and myself.

The wonderful Joachim (Jo) Cohen (Schools Technology Innovation Lead) and Mark Greentree (Director, Technology for Learning) from NSW DoE kicked off the event. Jo did a great job with his usual enthusiastic hosting style.

Google Australia’s Engineering Community and Outreach Manager Sally-Ann Williams, did a wonderful keynote presentation titled Preparing students for careers of the future.

Among a range of interesting facts and figures, she told us that 80% of all new STEM jobs in the US are in computer science but only 8% of STEM graduates are from computer science courses.

She also said that according to code.org, computing jobs are the number 1 source of new wages in the US and that there are currently 500,000 computer science related jobs available in a wider range of industries.

Sally-Anne shared some research from LinkIn.com stating that soft skills that 57% of leaders are looking for include leadership, communication, collaboration & time management.

In between the keynote sessions were a range of hands-on workshops and presentations from the NSW DoE Info Tech Department (ITD) and four key ICT partners Apple, Google, Microsoft and of course Adobe.

Ben Forta and I ran a session on Acrobat & Spark Page for the School Leadership Stream, an overview of the Creative Cloud in education for Technical Coordination Stream and a session on Adobe Spark for the Using Technology Stream.

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We also had the privilege of doing the final keynote session for the day titled: Focusing on creative problem solving skills to enhance employability in the age of automation.

Most of the resources we shared throughout the InteractED event can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-Coffs18