About 90 staff from Macquarie University registered for one of three Adobe workshops that were run on Monday 9th & Tuesday 10th July.

The aim of these workshops was to enhance video storytelling skills and introduce these educators to some key Adobe storytelling apps such as Spark Video and Premiere Clip.

I shared with the participants that today’s students are immersed in digital realms, they want to produce media not just consume it. They are engaged more in formal education when they can work with digital creativity tools. Digital is how thinking and learning are increasingly happening across the whole curriculum.

School systems and universities across the globe are revising their curricula with an increasing emphasis on experiential learning, interdisciplinary approaches, and an array of literacies.

Adobe applications such as Spark Video & Premiere Clip help extend literacy traditions into new contexts, with an emphasis on creative problem solving through writing, speaking, presenting, making & storytelling.

I also shared the following video made with the Macquarie University Ancient History Department in April 2018.

Here are a range of images taken throughout all three workshops…

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The main resources I shared during these sessions is now available on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-Macquarie18

Brigidine College in Brisbane was the venue for about 90 educators who attended the 2018 QSITE (Queensland Society for Information Technology in Education) Conference.

I had the pleasure of running the following three workshops:

• Basic video production with Adobe Premiere Pro
• Photoshop Tips & Tricks for teachers
• Make Photoshop Puppets come alive with Adobe Character Animator

All the resources I shared for this conference are available on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-QSITE18

Last week, a group of about 20 students from the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) in Singapore visited Swinburne University in Melbourne for a culture exchange and I was invited to run a half-day digital creativity workshop with them.

We started by looking at the top five skills required to thrive in the future according to the World Economic Forum. Then I asked the students to form groups to build posters, videos and webpages with the Adobe Spark tools based on each of the above skills.

The students were encouraged to download the three Spark tools on their various iOS devices (and Spark Post now on Android). After some brief demonstrations, they produced some great work.

Video production was the focus of an Adobe Day for a group of Year 9 multimedia students from Bethany College in Hurstville, south of Sydney.

Adobe Days are when an Adobe expert workshops with a group of students either at their school or at an Adobe office. The aim of an Adobe Day is to enhance the digital literacy skills of students and teachers with the use of Adobe applications.

This was the first time that many of these students had worked with Adobe Premiere Pro. After showing them some of the basics of video editing, the students were given a challenge to work in a small group and produce a short video story about a concept, idea or issue that was important to them.

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I was very impressed with what these girls were able to achieve and they way they collaborated and creatively solved problems in a relatively short space of time.

Special thank you to their teacher Theresa Chisari who organised this incursion.

Stay tuned for a special video on CreateEdu TV about this Adobe Day.

The Nepean Arts & Design Centre – TAFE NSW, Western Sydney Region in Kingswood was the venue for a special Adobe in Education event for TAFE NSW teachers on Thursday 28th June.

This was an information session based on how and why Adobe Creative Cloud applications are making a positive difference in Education & Training across the globe. Over 40 TAFE teachers registered for this event from a range of schools around western and central Sydney.

Jerry Wong (Adobe Customer Success Manager), Craig Daalmeijer-Power, Me & Jason Grant (Adobe Solution Consultant)

The event was largely organised by Craig Daalmeijer-Power (second from the left), Head Teacher – Photography and Screen & Media at the TAFE NSW Nepean Arts & Design Centre. Graig, myself and Jason Grant (far right) offered a set of the following workshops:

• Sparking creativity with Adobe Spark
• Illustrator & Photoshop Tips & Tricks ( inc. Mobile apps) 
• Folio Fancies  – Behance, Adobe Portfolio, Indesign
• Premiere Pro Tips & Tricks
• Adobe XD
• Photoshop 3D, Dimensions and Acrobat

Craig is an Adobe Campus Leader and a great advocate for the use of Adobe products in the world of TAFE education.

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We also had the support and representation from the TAFE NSW Skills
Point team, Sandi Lucock and Stephen Bull who spent the afternoon with us and attended the workshops. Stephen Bull is also the current bass player for Icehouse.

Feedback comments …

• Very inspiring and extremely useful
• I will be watching the development of XD it sounds very interesting the areas of development that are currently being considered
• I would love to be involved in replicating this activity in the TAFE NSW Sydney region
• Highlight – The simplicity and effectiveness of Spark and XD

Special thank you to Jerry Wong and Craig Daalmeijer-Power for helping to put this event together. I expect that this will be the first of many future Adobe in Education events with TAFE NSW.

The main resources I shared during this event are now available on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe28June18

Here is a recording from my presentation filmed at the Sydney Big Day In at UTS on 20th March, 2018

The new Learning and Teaching Building at the Monash University Clayton Campus was the venue for an Adobe professional learning event for Monash teachers on Thursday 21st June, 2018.

Over 20 lectures and support staff from a range of faculties registered for this event. Some were experienced Adobe users keen to refine their skills. Others were brand new to the world of what Adobe offers to educators.

We work-shopped and demonstrated a range of useful Photoshop techniques that are helpful for teachers such as:

• compressing large image files for online use
• batch compressing lots of large images file
• using the content aware fill tool to take out unwanted objects on an image
• working with the perspective warp tool to adjust the perspective of individual image layers

We did some Adobe Spake activities and made a short video with Spark video. The Adobe Spark video were new to most of them.

I did a demonstration of Character Animator and we discussed how a range of the Adobe Creative Cloud apps and Adobe’s mobile apps are used in schools and universities around the world.

I also had the pleasure of introducing the new beta version of Project Rush, Adobe’s most resent video app that is now available to try.

The Adobe for Academics site on the Adobe Education Exchange was promoted. This is a great portal of resources for for those wanting to make the most of their Adobe tools in higher education.

My friend Roland Gesthuizen, who is a lecturer in the Education faculty at Monash, very proudly gave me a tour of the new Learning and Teaching building that was opened at the start of this year.

I was very impressed with the architecture and the emphases on student focused, collaborative learning spaces, rather than the traditional teacher centered approach i see in so many schools and universities around the world.

The main lecture theatre space looks more like a restaurant than a lecture theatre. Its open plan circular design and focus on small group interaction is a refreshing change from the traditional approach. Students are encouraged to interact with the concepts being taught and when a more didactic approach is required, the technology in the room is such that attention can be on the lecturer and the screens.

Here are some more images I took of the learning spaces and the building …

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The following video gives you a better understanding of the architecture of this outstanding building …