Me, Alex Rance & Luke Surace

On Wednesday 15th March, I met with two very passionate and impressive men who have put their talents together to come up with a school for students passionate about AFL called The Academy.

Current AFL Player Alex Rance from the Richmond Football club and his business partner and close friend Luke Surace have teamed up with a few others to make The Academy a reality.

The aim of the school is to provide students with opportunities in sport outside of the traditional pathways. Graduating students from The Academy earn a Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL Certificate) as well as a rich source of life skills to equip them with for a a future with or without an AFL career.

Alex and Luke shared with me some of the frustrations they have had and seen with the general education system and the strong focus on the ATAR (The Australian Tertiary Admission Rank ) and other standardised testing and puts so much unnecessary pressure on so many young people. They set up The Academy as an alternative, with a particular focus for students with a passion for AFL football.

All the students at The Academy have iPads and the general workflow, according to Alex & Luke, is as paperless as possible. Luke is from a learning design background and Alex has had experience developing apps so they are familiar with what Adobe has to offer. It was my pleasure to show them how the Adobe Spark Apps are making a difference in classrooms around the world and how other Adobe iPad touch apps such as Premiere Clip can be used to help student develop their video literacy and general communication skills.

I’m looking forward to keeping in touch with Alex & Luke and supporting them in this exciting venture into the world of education & training.

Click here for a great article by Emma Quayle from The Age about The Academy

On Tuesday 14th March, I had the pleasure of spending most of the day with all the Year 7 students at Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School in Melbourne with an aim to get them familiar with the Adobe Spark products on their iPads.

The girls began each session learning how to make quick digital posters with Spark Post. Then they mastered Spark Video to make short video stories and with the remaining part of each lesson, they were shown how to put a Spark Post & Video into a Spark Page.

It was a joy to see the way the girls engaged with the software and very quickly built creative and entertaining posters and stories. The concept behind the Adobe Spark tools is to get content out there quickly and not be too worried about design concerns. Unlike some of Adobe’s professional tools, these tools are easy to master and a great way to be introduced to the world of digital creativity with Adobe.

Find out more about Adobe Spark via https://edex.adobe.com/spark and/or watch the following videos …