The BiG Day In is an IT careers conference designed by students for students in association with the Australian Computer Society Foundation. It is designed for both high school (Years 9-12) and University students interested in careers in technology and involves events throughout Australia.

Here is a video that gives a taste of what a BiG Day In event is like …

The Sunshine Coast event involved nearly 400 students and was hosted at the fabulous Innovation Centre at the Sunshine Coast University.

I have had the pleasure of presenting at a number of BiG Day In events over the past 18 months, sharing about the skills that industry is looking for young people as they come out of schools and university.

At this event, I shared some of the thought leadership of Marc Prensky who has outlines specific skill sets that young people should be aiming at developing to help them as they enter an ever changing work future workforce where ICT is at the forefront.

Find out more about Marc Prensky’s though leadership in this area via: http://marcprensky.com/

During the morning tea & lunch breaks at a BiG Day In event, it is always great to meet so many young people and find out what their passions are and share with them the value of developing skills with the wide range of software offered by Adobe.

Cheryl White (from XCERIO) and me at the BiG Day In (Sunshine Cost, 2016)

It is always lovely to also support the work of XCERIO, Adobe’s certification partner, and encourage teachers and students to consider working towards formal certification in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver or Premiere Pro. Not only are these certifications recognized by industry, in Queensland passing an Adobe Certified Associate exam also contributes to a student’s senior high school certificate (QCE). Find out more via http://www.xcerio.com/certifications/adobe/

The Adobe Education Leadership Summit moved to Hong Kong this week with an all day event on Tuesday April 19 at The Mira Hotel.

The Adobe Hong Kong team did a great job putting this event together which included about 56 leaders from about 40 Hong Kong universities and schools.

As always, it was a delight to work with Mark Henley (Adobe’s Director of Transformation and Digital Strategy).

Me introducing Mark Henley

Mark Henley in action

Paul Burnett (Adobe’s Principal Evangelist for APAC) wowed the audience with some outstanding demonstrations of a range of Adobe products that are changing the landscape of creativity in education throughout all sectors and subject areas.

Paul Burnett

Paul, showing off some of Adobe’s great free touch apps

One of many highlights of this event was seeing local digital artist and freelance illustrator Jack Lee demonstrate his skills with  Photoshop & Illustrator via a Wacom tablet.

Meeting Jack Lee

Here are a range of other images from this event in a slide show …

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Special thank you to Candice Ma, Raymond Fung and their team for helping to put this event together. I can’t wait to visit Hong Kong again.

The beautiful Malaysian island state of Penang was the venue for the first of a series of Higher Education Leadership Summits run by Adobe Education. About 55 guests and Adobe employees  were hosted by the friendly team at the Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort & Spa.

#AdobeEdu16

Adobe Education Leaders Summit – Penang 2016 from CreateEDU TV on Vimeo.

Themed “Transforming Education for Student Success in a Digital World“, this seminar series aimed at bringing together Southeast Asia’s eminent thought leaders and higher education leaders, providing a great opportunity to connect, inspire, be inspired and to grow as leaders together.

Tony Katsabaris (Adobe’s Senior Director  for the Public Sector and Education in Asia Pacific) doing a keynote address about how digital technologies are shaping the future of education.

Wayne Weisse (Adobe’s Manager of Enterprise Sales) and Callistus Chong (Director, School of Design & Media ITE – Singapore) who both keynoted.

Yours truly had the pleasure of doing some Adobe demos and presenting a keynote with Tacy Trowbridge titled The New Generation  Creative Worker: How Can Education Meet the Needs of the Future Worker.

I enjoyed sharing the stage with Paul Burnett (Adobe’s Principal Evangelist for Asia Pacific) sharing some of Adobe’s great creativity tools.

A real highlight was working again with Indonesian design student and now freelance media artist Ira Carella.

It is always a pleasure to work with Tacy Trowbridge, Adobe’s Worldwide Head of Education Programs. This is us doing our keynote rehearsal.

Tacy & me keynoting

Great panel session, moderated by Tacy

Prabhjeet Singh, Titu Minhas (from the Adobe Singapore office) with Ira & Me)

The next events in this series will be held in Bali, Hong Kong and Columbo.

The first ever Teach Tech Play Conference has been a great success with about 300 teachers from across Australia and beyond gathering at the beautiful Ivanhoe Grammar School in Melbourne. This is a very unique conference because it has all be organised by practicing teachers who are passionate about enhancing good practice in the use on ICT in the classroom.

I’d particularly like to highlight the work of teachers Eleni Kyritsis, Corey Aylen  and Michael Ha (ACL) for their tireless work in getting this event off the ground. It is much appreciated by all involved.

Michael, Eleni & Me

I had the pleasure of sharing a range of Adobe focused workshops:

• Creative storytelling with Adobe Voice, Slate & Clip on the iPad
• What is flipped learning all about and how does Adobe help?
• Adobe and the Digital Technologies Curriculum
• Mastering multimodal text with a range of Adobe solutions

All mt resources can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via: http://bit.ly/ttp16-adobe

Highlights for this event have been all the keynotes:

Alice Keeler – USA

Mark Anderson – UK

Ryan Trainor – AUST

Mark Anderson & Me

Other highlights have been seeing a wide range of sessions from many passionate educators and ICT in Education consultants.

Travis Smith from Microsoft

Bec Spink from codefuture.org

Mike Reading – Microsoft Master Educator & Google Certified Innovator

Nathan Jones – Computers Now

Alice Keeler – Author

Hamish Curry – NoTosh

Michael Ha – K-12 eLearning Facilitator, Newington Grammar

Corey Aylen – Google Certified Innovator

One of the biggest highlight was have students, ICT staff Principal Mr Gerard Foley from Ivanhoe Grammar involved in filming, presenting and hosting this amazing event.

Steve Brophuy and some of his outstanding media students from Ivanhoe Grammar