About 2000 teachers from across Australia (and internationally) have been in Melbourne this week for the 2017 EduChange event at the Royal Exhibition building.

Congratulations to Dave Faulkner, Aaron Tait, Summer Howarth and the eC team for putting together such as a great event.

It was lovely to catch up with Peter Hutton, current Co-Principal of Templestowe College who recently publicly announced his campaign to revolutionise education and scale the amazing results he has been getting at his school by allowing students to take much greater control of their own learning. Note the symbolically revolutionary outfit …

If you would like to support Peter in this quest, fill out the form via this link:

http://edrevolution.hutton.education

Special thank you to QLD Adobe Education Leader Rose Duggan who flew down to Melbourne to be involved in this event and was a great help at the Adobe booth.

The APAC Adobe Education Community Leadership Summit for 2017 was held from 25th to 27th September at the Adobe Sydney office in Darling Harbour. This is the third Summit of its type this year, European event was held in Germany this year and the Nth American Summit was held at the Adobe mother ship headquarters in San Jose, California.

Click here to watch the live recordings.

About 30 Adobe Education Leaders and Adobe Campus Leaders from all over Australia made their way to Darling Harbour Sydney for just over two days of creative presentations, workshops and networking.

The event began with a delightful evening event at the Adobe office…

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The first full day of activities commenced with a welcome and some get to know you activities before we went live to air via Livestream Australia and Wilkar Productions and welcomed other educators from around Asia Pacific and other countries.

Tacy Trowbridge (Adobe’s Global Education Programs Lead) flew to the event from San Francisco and provided us with am overview of Adobe Education Programs.

Matt Neimitz connected in from the US to give us all an Adobe Education Exchange Update.

Dan Haesler, Director of Cut Through Coaching & Consulting was the main keynote presenter. He provided us links between creativity, mindset and authentic engagement.

Day 1 networking images …

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Following Dan, we commenced the first of a series of Creative Catalyst Talks, short presentations aimed at stimulating creative thinking and action for educators.

Click here to watch the live recordings.

Queensland Adobe Education Leader, Larissa Warren kicked off with a presentation titled No Boundaries, the analog/digital classroom.

Adobe Education Leader Kev Lavery presented his CC talk titled Such Content Very Engage, a focus on the effective use of animated gifs.

Adobe Campus Leader Jessica Peade presented the topic Scope and Sequencing-Successful PBL for the Curious Tech Student.

Click here to watch the live recordings.

Adobe Education Leader Andrew On Yi Lai presented his Creative Catalyst Talk next titled Surprise Me focused on engaging, motivating and heightiung the expectations of our students.

It was great to have William & Robyn from Wilkar Productions with us again this year to capture the live feed, record the live sessions and and also record a series of video interviews.

Click here to watch the live recordings.

Between creative catalyst talks, we enjoyed some networking time as well as a set of Adobe workshops. Susan Bell ran an Adobe Spark workshop titled – Creating engaging materials with Spark. Chris Woldhuis ran an Adobe Premiere Pro workshop titled Fast turnaround video editing.

After the lunch break, Susan Bell (one of Australia’s first Adobe Education Leaders) did a CC Talk titled How Adobe Spark revolutionised student engagement at University of Tasmania

Eden Carey, AEL from WA, presented her talk titled iPad apps in the classroom

Click here to watch the live recordings.

We welcomed QLD educator Heath Henwood to our community with his presentation titled Turning Students into Independent Thinkers.

NSW AEL Tim Creighton did his talk titled Creating student pride in your school

We also welcomed Victorian AEL  Max Schleser to the Adobe Education Leadership community with his presentation titled Smartphone Filmmaking – New Trends & Directions

Click here to watch the live recordings.

The next networking session involved workshop options from Max Schleser titled Smartphone Filmmaking & Mobile Social Media Content Production & Chris Betcher titled Adobe Comp to InDesign.

At the end of Day 1, we enjoyed a wonderful dinner cruise on the iconic Sydney Harbour.

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The final day of the Summit commenced with a fresh set of Creative Catalyst Talks. QLD Adobe Campus Leader Juliette Bentley presented her session titled Lifting Words From The Page.

WA ACL Alison Blackwell was welcomed into the community with her CC Talk titled Building Creative Capacity with Murals.

NSW AEL Darcy Moore presented next with his talk titled International Exchanges: Connecting Creatively

And NSW AEL Emeritus Chris Betcher, presented his CC Talk titled Left Brain, meet Right Brain.

Click here to watch the live recordings.

Later in the morning of the final day we met the BuzzyTV Games team who shared how their interactive games solution is becoming very popular in schools across Australia.

JB Tinker from Certiport shared with the educators the value of Adobe Certification.

If you are interested in finding out more information about Adobe Certification, please contact JB Tinker – jb.tinker@pearson.com

That was the end of the live sessions. Click here to watch the recordings.

The afternoon was spent with the BuzzyTV team as well as Adobe Solution Consultants Brian Chau & Jane Chen. Brian ran two workshops on Adobe Character Animator and Jane’s workshops were about Adobe Experience Design (XP).

Special thank you everyone involved in the 2017 APAC Adobe Education Community Leadership Summit. We are looking forward to next year.

On Thursday 7th September, a group of students from Davidson High School visited the Adobe Sydney office for an Adobe day.

Adobe Days are when a group of students work with an Adobe expert to help develop their 21^st century communication and creativity skills. In this case, the focus was on Video literacy with Adobe Premiere Pro.

Some of the students had previously worked with Premiere Pro but, for the majority of these students, this was their first experience with the software.

Adobe Premiere Pro is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of software which is provided by the NSW Department of Education to all their teachers and students. Earlier this year, the Victorian Government followed the lead of NSW and provided the Adobe Creative Cloud to all of its secondary school teachers and students. Most other school and university systems around Australia also have access to the Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Days are a great way to share the value of this amazing creativity software.

During this particular Adobe Day, three of the students and their teacher Jessica Peade were asked to share their experiences with Adobe software to all the Adobe staff throughout Australia & New Zealand during a special meeting. They were also told about the Adobe in Education Active use program and how between January & August in 2017, the program has reached an impact of over 240,000 teachers and students in Australian & New Zealand.

The Adobe staff were pleasantly surprised with the impact Adobe software has been making in education and very impressed with the contribution of the Davidson High School.

Jessica Peade is an Adobe Campus Leader which is a global leadership program for educators who are passionate about working with Adobe applications to enhance creativity in their classrooms.

Earlier this year, at one of the Big Day In events, I met Raymond Ho from 1Scope and we started planning a digital creativity event for some schools in Sydney.

1Scope is a unique company that provides options for students aged 12 to 25 to search and apply for skill building opportunities provided by top companies, start-ups, charities, universities and government organisations.

Raymond organised a group of students from St George Girls High School and Randwick Girls High School to visit the Adobe office in Sydney and rotate through three Adobe based workshops.

Jane Chen & Jason Grant very kindly donated their time on this day. Jane ran a workshop on Adobe Photoshop, Jason show the students a range of Adobe Illustrator techniques and I gave them and introduction to video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro.

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Special thank you to Raymond Ho for organising this day and also thank you to Jane and Jason for sharing their expertise. We are looking forward to partnering with 1Scope again in the future.

On Tuesday 5th September I had the pleasure of working with a delightful group of Year 10 students from Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College, Burraneer near Cronulla in Sydney.

Each student has access to Adobe Premiere Pro on their laptops so the aim of the day enhance their video literacy skills.

I informed the girls that video production is now considered a literacy and that these days it is almost as important to be able to make a quality video as it is to be able to write a quality essay. Some are predicting that by the end of 2017, 70% of all Internet traffic will be via video.

By the end of the day, the students had gained a wide range of video editing skill & techniques including how to key-out a green screen and replace it with any other image.

At the end of the day, I worked with a number of teachers from the school and some visiting teachers from other schools and showed them how to use a variety of Adobe applications to enhance their creativity and 21st-century communication skills.

One of the highlights of this session was teaching teachers how to use Adobe Character Animator to bring to life digital puppets made in Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator.

The following video was produced for a recent meeting to all the Adobe employees from Australia & New Zealand. It features most of the highlights of the Adobe in Education active use program from January to August, 2017.

Special thanks to my Nephew Archer Mason (Yr 6 – Yackandandah Primary School, Victoria) for producing the sound track used in this video.

On Thursday 31st August, I took a road trip to Phillip Island in Victoria to visit the Cowes Primary School students who are taking part in this year’s Adobe Have a Voice Project.

The aim of this program is to provide Victorian students in Years 4 to 9 with an opportunity to have a voice about something that is important to them and enhance their 21st century communication and creativity skills.

The students need to work in a group with at least one Adobe product to produce either a video story (maximum of two minutes), animation (maximum of one minute) a website/web page or poster about a topic or issue that is important to the group.

Here is a video about the Adobe Day and the involvement of the school in the Adobe Have a Voice Project.

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After school I worked with the staff and introduced them to the educational potential of the Adobe Spark tools.

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Adobe Character Animator helps bring digital puppets made in Photoshop or Illustrator to life by tracking your facial feature via a webcam.

On Tuesday 29th August, I had the pleasure of working with all the Year 6 students from The Geelong College in Victoria and introducing them to the joys of animated storytelling with Adobe Character Animator.

Rather than building a puppet from scratch, the student were all provided with a  character that they then manipulated in Photoshop to feature their school logo. They then imported it into Character Animator and brought it to life via their own facial reactions.

Later in the day the students were all taught how to use Adobe Spark to help communicate their stories via posters, videos and web pages.

I was very impressed with how quickly these students adapted to the new software and how creative they were with their storytelling.

The Sunshine Coast in QLD is a great place to be at any time of year, especially in the later days of winter. On Thursday 24th August, I had the pleasure of working with students and teachers at Caloundra Christian College.

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We focus on enhancing the student’s skills with the Spark tools and Adobe Photoshop. I was impressed with the InDesign skills of the Year 12 students who showed me the school magazine they are producing as an assessment exercise as well as for the school community.

I enjoyed working with a range of teachers after school, showing them some creative ways to engage their students with Adobe applications.

Special thanks to Paul Miller for organising this visit.

John Paul College (JPC) in Queensland is located about a 30 minute drive south of Brisbane in the suburb of Daisy Hill. It is a very large co-education, independent day & boarding school with about 2,500 students.

JPC is renowned as the second school in the world to start a 1:1 laptop program, following the lead of MLC in Melbourne in the early 1990s. Since then, it has been a leader in effective ICT integration throughout the whole curriculum from K-12.

On the 23rd August, I had the pleasure of spending a day at JPC working a number of junior & senior school classes, with a focus of celebrating and enhancing their use of Adobe’s creativity software.

I enjoyed meeting Janette MacNamara (Director of ICT)  and Liam Waldie (Head of E Learning Pedagogy) who organised a number of classes for me to work with throughout the day.

A particular highlight was meeting the senior media students and enjoyed showing them a range of new video editing techniques and tools now available via Premiere Pro.

I am looking forward to visiting JPC again in the future and helping them make the most of their Adobe applications to further enhance their 21st century communication skills.