It was a pleasure assisting two of South Australia’s most active Adobe Campus Leaders Lorraine Nitschke  and Giovanna Iannicelli in the running of the 2016 BETA (Business & Enterprise Teachers Association) Conference in Adelaide on Saturday 28th May.

About 70 teachers from Adelaide, and as far away as Coober Pedy, spent the day at the wonderful Next Generation centre which is part of the Adelaide Oval complex.

It was a pleasure to do the keynote session titled Creativity in Education is no longer an option, it’s an absolute necessity.

I also ran a workshop on Photoshop Tips & Tricks and another one on Adobe InDesign.

Resources that I shared at this event can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via: bit.ly/adobe-beta16

Ben Forta’s finished off his tour of Australia for this year in Brisbane by spending a day with Queensland teachers and students at Clayfield College on Monday 16th May.

We began by spending some time with a group of Year 9 Clayfield students. Ben introduced them to ProjectM (Adobe Spark) and we enjoyed seeing what the girls were are to produce with these digital storytelling tools.

Later in the afternoon, a number of teachers from Clayfield and from around Brisbane joined us for a special professional learning event.

Special thank you to Clayfield College, especially Andrew Russell (Head of Technology) for helping to make this day a great success.

DATTA Vic is Victoria’s teacher professional association for Design & Technology subjects and Ben Forta and I were invited to take part in their conference this year on Friday 13th May.

Ben keynoted the first day of the conference with a great presentation titled The Case for Creativity in the Classroom.

I ran three workshops for theses Design & Technology teachers on Flipped Learning, ePortfolios and a overview of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Resources from both Ben’s keynote and my workshops are available on the Adobn Education Exchange via http://bit.ly/adobe-dattavic16

Ben Forta (Adobe’s Senior Director, Education Initiatives) and I visited Chifley College Senior Campus in Sydney’s west on May 12th, 2016.

The aim of the day was to enhance the student’s video editing skills with Premiere Pro CC. So we used the opportunity of Ben’s visit to Australia for the students to interview him and produce some stories about what was then ProjectM and what is now Adobe Spark.

Here is a video produced by one of the production crews and edited by Casey who had never use Premiere Pro before this opportunity.

Ben Forta at Chifley College, NSW from CreateEDU TV on Vimeo.

Here are some images of the students in action …

Planning their video story

Capturing their footage & still images

Filming the software in action

Interviewing Ben

Editing with Premiere Pro

Ben and I were very impressed with the work achieved by these students, most of whom had never use Premiere Pro before.

Special thanks to Chifley College teacher Andrew O’Brien for organising this special opportunity for his students.

On Wednesday 11th May, The Hon. John Barilaro, MP (NSW Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Skills, and Minister for Small Business) visited the Adobe Sydney office to thank Adobe for being a partner in his NSW Jobs for Tomorrow Scholarships initiative.

(Left to right) Ben Forta (Sr. Director, Education Initiatives), Me, Hon. John Barilaro, Chris Skelton Sr. Director, Enterprise Sales ANZ) & Wayne Weisse (Manager Enterprise Sales)

The Jobs of Tomorrow Scholarships are for NSW students who have skills in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM). From 2016, the NSW Department of Industry are offering 25,000 scholarships over four years.

Adobe is one of many industry partners who are happy to open their doors for some of the scholarship recipients and give them a taste of the IT industry.

It was a pleasure to welcome the Minsiter as well as a number of industry representatives, students, teachers and members of the Adobe Education Community to this event.

The Minister shared about his passion for encouraging students to consider entrepreneurship and turn their skills and passions into a future job.

Ben Forta, who was visiting form the US, also addressed the visitors and shared about some of his experiences working for Adobe for 18 years.

It was great meeting some of the scholarship winners and their teachers.

A personal highlight for me was having AEL Chris Woldhuis and his media crew from Northern Beaches Christian School there to capture the event.

Here are some images of the event…

On Tuesday 11th May, Ben Forta (Adobe’s Senior Director, Education Initiatives) and I visited Roseville College in Sydney to work with a number of Roseville students and staff in the morning, and some visitors in the afternoon.

Ben enjoyed sharing the features of ProjectM (the browser version of Adobe Voice, Slate & Post) to the Year 6 students and seeing what the girls were able to create. ProjectM is still in beta mode but available to try via https://projectm.adobe.com.

At one stage, one of the girls discovered a bug in the program (not unusual with beta software). Ben immediately looked at his watch, worked out that the product team in Seattle would still be in the Adobe office and emailed them. Five minutes later, the bug was fixed. The student was so pleased that she was able to help develop this amazing software.

Here are some images of the Year 6s in action …

Ben went on to work with some senior students and staff while I had the pleasure of working with the Year 2s and 3s, introducing them to Adobe Clip.

Later in the afternoon, a number of teachers and students form around Sydney joined us at Roseville for a special Adobe Education event with Ben. A highlight was a showcase of some of the great Adobe related work being done at Roseville.

Ben Forta (Adobe’s Senior Director, Education Initiatives) began a busy week of Australian engagements immediately after stepping off his long flight from his home state of Michigan, USA on Tuesday 10th May.

His first engagement was at the wonderful Hilltop Road Public School in the west of Sydney. Principal Mrs Natalie See gave Ben & me a warm welcome and was delighted to also welcome a number of visiting students and teachers from nearby schools.

Ben has one of the best jobs at Adobe. He works with the Next Generation Product teams and has the fabulous task of traveling the world and sharing new product ideas with students and teachers to get their opinions on how they can be used to enhance learning and teaching.

Project M is the code name of what will be the browser version of Adobe Slate, Voice & Post. Currently in beta, but available to try via …

https://projectm.adobe.com

Here are a couple of image collages tweeted by Mrs See (@see_natalie) soon after the event …

After Ben’s keynote address, the students were broken into three workshop groups led by Ben, Bret Kent (Adobe Education Leader & Year 6 Teacher at Hilltop Rd) and me. Ben showed his group Project M. Brett ran a workshop on Adobe Post and I ran a session on Adobe Clip.

It was lovely to introduce Ben Forta to members of the Australian Education Leadership Community – Brett Kent (left) & Rita Maroun (right)

The 2016 AIS ICT Leadership Conference was held at the National Convention Centre in Canberra from 4th to 6th May and Adobe was the Platinum Sponsor.

This conference involved over 500 ICT Mangers, education leaders and vendors associated with the The Association of Independent schools NSW. It was my pleasure to do an opening welcome address focusing on the importance of providing students with the digital tools to enable them to enhance their creativity in this ever changing world.

One of the great highlights for me was doing a presentation with Chris & Abi Woldhuis and two of Chris’ students from Northern Beaches Christian School.

Chris Woldhuis is an Adobe Education Leader (AEL) and one of the Assistant Principals at Northern Beaches Christian School (NBCS) in NSW.  Abi Woldhuis is an Adobe Campus Leader and on the Junior School Executive – Teaching and Learning Innovation at Roseville College.

Abi shared how Roseville College is working creatively with a range of Adobe products with a focus on Adobe Voice & Slate.

Chris talked about the amazing camp program at NBCC that he coordinates. Over 20 camps all at the same time, one of them being a media camp where the main task has been to record the workshops and keynotes at the AIS conference with the help of Adobe Premiere Pro, Bridge, After Effects and Photoshop. Here are some photos of the crew in action …

Stay tuned for a video story about these students in action on CreateEdu TV.

Here is a sample of some of the work by the NBCC Media team

Laurel Papworth, during her keynote presentation titled Utilising Social Networking successfully in your school was very informative. She had a great incite into the depth of social media and how it affects everyone’s lives; often in ways we are not aware.

It was great to be involved with this conference and share how Adobe tools are making a difference in schools around the world. Here are some more pics …

Me and comedian Peter Berner who did the after dinner speach

Pre-Conference dinner at the Australian War Memorial

Pre-Conference dinner at the Australian War Memorial

The Big Day In came to The University of Newcastle this week to meet with about 550 students and encourage them to consider a future in the IT industry.

It was lovely to work with Priyanka Chitnis (former UNSW Adobe student rep) for this event. She inspired and encouraged the students to develop their IT and design skills while they are at school to help prepare themselves for future employment.

Have a look at some of what Pri has been making since graduating via: http://www.unfoldingadventure.com/

Next stop for the Big Day In is Canberra on 2nd June.