Today I had the pleasure of presenting a two hour digital creativity workshop with teaching staff and pre-service teachers at Monash University’s Faculty of Education. Monash is considered one of the world’s top 20 universities with a national and international reputation for excellence in teaching and research.

Dr Michael Henderson, Associate Professor in Educational Technologies and lecturer Dr Michael Phillips helped to drive this event with an aim to provide the students with a better understanding of Adobe’s amazing creativity and productivity tools, with a focus on online publication.

Dr Michael Henderson, Dr Michael Phillips, Me, Dr Amber McLeod & Roland Gesthuizen

We started with one of my Adobe quizzes to give everyone a better idea about the company and what we provide. This involved a brief look at new features within Adobe Photoshop and introduction to Character Animator and a overview of the reach of Premiere Pro within world of film and TV.

Then we had a play with Adobe Spark Post and everyone built posters about why they want to become educators. I also demonstrated how Spark Post can link nicely with Adobe Photoshop Sketch to layer extra images within the Spark posters.

We then played with Spark Video and learned how to make a Spark Page that embedded a Spark Video and Post.

One of the highlights was showing the value of Adobe Premiere Clip as a very simple and accessible video production and editing tool.

It was lovely to catch up with my friend (and well known Australian educator) Roland Gesthuizen who began teaching at Monash at the start of this year after a great career as a pioneering Science & IT teacher in Victoria since the early 1990s.

A particular personal thrill for me was catching up with my nephew Trent Adams who has recently started at Monash as a student teacher.

It’s always a privilege to encourage the next generation of educators. As I said to them all at the end of today’s session, being a teacher is one of the most important jobs there is.