On Thursday 26th April, I ran a twilight professional learning event in Melbourne hosted by ISV (Independent Schools Victoria).

A group of teachers from a range of independent schools around Melbourne enjoyed learning how to apply the three Adobe Spark tools to enhance creativity within their subjects.

One of the teachers found that Spark Video was a great way to enhance the teaching of Japanese. The use of images, text and voice overs is an ideal way to reinforce correct pronunciation.

As it turns out, the teacher (Louise) was a family friend who I had not seen since we were children.

The resources I shared with these teachers are available on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-26April18

Montmorency Secondary College in Melbourne’s north-east, was the venue for an Adobe Day and professional learning session run by Brian Chau and myself on Tuesday 24th April.

Brian spent the afternoon with the Year 11 Computing class teaching them some of the ins and outs of Adobe Dreamweaver.

Adobe Dreamweaver CC is a design and development application to build website and mobile applications. It codes in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

While Brian was working with the Year 11s, I spent the afternoon with the Year 10 Photography class and ran a workshop on Adobe Photoshop.

It was interesting to note that most of school computers that the students were using had installed the 10 year old CS4 version of Photoshop even though the most recent versions have been available to all Victorian Government Secondary Schools since last year thanks to an enterprise agreement with Adobe.

Some of the students did have an updated version installed on their personal laptop so the word is getting out about the free access to Victorian Government secondary students.

After school, both Brian and I worked with a number of the Montmorency teachers and some visiting teachers from around Melbourne. We did a group activity with the Adobe Spark tools then Brian ran a Photoshop workshop and I ran a session on video editing with Premiere Clip & Premiere Pro.

Click here for more information about Vic Department of Education Secondary schools free access to the Adobe Creative Cloud applications.

Check this video about the Adobe Have a Voice Project that we are running with Victorian and NSW Government schools.

Dr Tim Kitchen (Adobe), Professor Sherman Young, Dr Ronika K Power, Professor Gary Fallon and Sasha McQuaid (Adobe)

The Ancient History Department at Macquarie University invited the Adobe Education Team to help them use some of Adobe’s video solutions to rethink and change the way they do formal assessment.

Educational assessment is a bit like death and taxes, it is an unavoidable part of the education process. However, it doesn’t always have to be a tedious, dry and boring process. Assessment of students is about showing evidence of knowledge gained with an aim to help enhance a student’s learning and capacity. Assessment can be a very creative and exciting process, especially if technologies such as video production are involved.

Dr Ronika K Power, Senior Lecturer in Bioarchaeology is passionate about teaching ancient history. She is a strong advocate for the use of modern technologies to help tell ancient stories and share student’s knowledge. On Tuesday 17th April  she invited the Adobe Education team to work with her staff and help train them in the art of video story telling as a form of assessment.

We began the day with some work-shopping on the use of Adobe Premiere Clip, a free and simple video editing app for iOS or Android. The teachers were impressed with its simplicity and the fact that they could make a quality video production without much if any experience as video makers.

We then moved to Adobe Spark Video, and encouraged the teachers to use  mix of both Premiere Clip and Spark Video. Both have their limitations, but by starting with Clip and finishing off the production with Spark Video, they were able to achieve most of what they needed to make a quality video story including voice overs, transitions, music, still images, moving images and text.

During the day we also filmed a series of interviews with key people from Macquarie University and Adobe. We used this footage to learn how to use Adobe’s professional video editing solution Premiere Pro. The free mobile apps are great for quick, short clips that don’t require a lot of production value. Premiere Pro is the ultimate video editing solution because it has no real limit to what can be created. It is the standard for the TV & video production industry and is even use in Hollywood film making.

Premiere Pro is relatively simple to use when it comes to stitching together clips and  layering titles and audio. It can get a bit complicate when adding filters and doing special effects, but after a couple of hours, most of the Macquarie History teachers were getting their heads around the basics and were very excited about the potential of what they can now achieve in terms of their own teaching and, most importantly, how they can encourage their students to construct their learning more creatively.

Professor Sherman Young, the Pro Vice-Chancellor Learning and Teaching at Macquarie University was interviewed. He said that allowing access of Adobe software to Macquarie students and exposing them to these industry standard tools is important.

Dr Power interviewing Professor Young, Vice-Chancellor of learning & teaching at Macquarie University

Professor Gary Fallon, Professor of Digital Learning in the Department of Educational Studies was also interviewed by Dr Power. He said that he sees the Adobe products as a very interesting platform for self expression, creativity and for the developing of original products and collaboration.

Dr Power interviewing Professor Fallon

Stay tuned for the video story about this day which will soon be published on CreateEdu TV.

If you are interested in having the Adobe Education Team visit your campus for some professional learning or a student incursion, please contact us via – http://bit.ly/book-adobe

Teach Tech Play is one of my favourite annual professional learning events because it is genuinely organised purely by full time teachers who give up their valuable time to provide learning opportunities and inspiration for other teachers.

Eleni Kyritsis (Strathcona BGGS), Corey Aylen (Haileybury) & Steve Brophy (Ivanhoe Grammar) run Teach Tech Play. They do a great job each year organising this event.

Kasey Bell, Tom Barret & Emily MacLean were the main keynote presenters. They all had a wealth of experience to share.

There was a dedicated Adobe workshop room for the two days of the conference where participants were able to choose from a great selection of topics.

Day 1

• Sparking Creativity with Adobe Spark – Dr Tim Kitchen
• Teaching Media Art Using Adobe Mobile Tools – Joel Aarons (AEL)
  
• Smartphone Filmmaking – Dr Max Schleser (AEL)
  
• Making cool HTML websites without coding – Dr Tim Kitchen

Day 2

• Amplify your legendary status by becoming a ‘Classie’ designer – Andy Hair (ACL)
  
• Make Photoshop Puppets come alive with Adobe Character Animator – Dr Tim Kitchen
• Enterprise and Digital Technologies: Social Media Marketing using Adobe Tools – Michelle Dennis (ACL)
  
• Photoshop Tips & Tricks – Dr Tim Kitchen

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Stay tuned for a video about this conference, coming soon to CreateEdu TV.

The close relationship between Adobe and Microsoft continued last week when the Microsoft’s Sydney flagship store in Pitt St was the venue for a special educator’s professional learning event titled – Animating with Adobe Character Animator.

The teachers who attended this event, were introduced to Adobe Character Animator as a tool for doing real-time animation of 2D puppets made with Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop.

These teachers (who were all from the NSW Department of Education)  were shown how to personalise a puppet with Photoshop, prior to animating it. Then they had fun recording a short animation by tracking their facial movements via the webcam.

They exported their animations with Adobe Media Encoder and imported them into Adobe Premiere Pro to add special effects and enhance their clips.

Special thanks to the community team at Microsoft for helping to put this session together.

A number of senior secondary students from Arthur Phillip High School in Parramatta visited Adobe’s Sydney office for an Adobe Day.

Rob the robot made a special appearance to help quiz the students on their knowledge of Adobe as a company.

Then the students were introduced to the Adobe Spark tools (Spark Post, Spark Video & Spark Page) with a focus on producing a Spark Video about what they have learned about Adobe as a company.

The students had a tour of the office.

And met some interesting Adobe staff

Following the tour, we went through a range of video editing techniques with Adobe Premiere Pro.

It was great to see what these talented students were able to produce in just a few hours of work-shopping with this industry standard application.

Special thank you to Media teacher, Jesusa Mercado for organising this event for her students.

Click here to find out more about Adobe Days.

A group of media students from Ceders Christian College, near Wollongong, NSW got up early on Wednesday 4th April and made their way to Adobe’s Sydney office for an Adobe Day focused on video literacy with Premiere Pro and Photoshop.

Adobe Days usually involve students either on an excursion to the Adobe Office or an incursion when an Adobe expert visits a school or university to help student enhancing their digital literacy skills.

The students were very impressed with the views of Sydney from the 27th floor. It is always exciting to give students an aim to reach for, especially for those interested in working for a multi-national company in the future.

We started the session by looking at the way Adobe Character Animator can be used to animate a puppet by tracking facial movements via a webcam. Character Animator became a fully fledged part of the Adobe Creative Cloud in October last year.

Then I introduced the students to the power and potential of Adobe Premiere Pro as a communication tool. They learned a wide range of video editing techniques with this application that is now considered the industry standard in the world of TV and video production.

After the morning tea beak, the students went on a tour of the Adobe office. A couple of the students enjoyed a short game of table tennis with me and they had the opportunity to meet some of the Adobe staff, including (Adobe Founders Award winner, Michael Stoddart).

By the end of the day, the students each developed a video story with both Premiere Pro and Photoshop.

Adobe’s agreement with AISNSW has allowed independent schools in NSW (and also in other regions) the opportunity to access Adobe software for their students and staff. With video production now being considered as important as reading and writing, these students have developed some communication skills that will benefit them in the future.

Special thank you to Ceder’s media teacher Jessica Barsenbach for organising this excursion.

Stay informed about future Adobe in Education professional learning opportunities for teachers in Australasia via:


 http://bit.ly/adobeEDU-events




If you haven’t already, please join the Australasian Adobe Professional Learning Group on EdEx to stay in touch with Adobe in Education – 
http://bit.ly/adobe-edu-updates

Also, keep in touch with the APAC Adobe in Education active use program via the CreateEdu TV Channel on Vimeo – https://vimeo.com/createedu

All 95 Year 9 & 10 media students at Our Lady of Mercy College had an all-day incursion with me this week focused on enhancing their video literacy skills with Adobe Premiere Pro.

The girls used a mix of footage that I provided for them and footage that they captured themselves to create a video story. They learned some of the basic editing tools within Premier Pro as well as some of the more advanced techniques that help add to the quality any video production.

I shared with them that video is now considered a literacy and that 70% of all Internet traffic today is via video thanks to sites like YouTube and Vimeo. I told the girls that, these days, it is almost as important to be able to make a quality video as it is to be able read & write.

For just about all of these students, it was the first time they have used Adobe Premiere Pro, so I was very impressed with what they were able to achieve with just one days training.

Special thanks to Mrs Kristy Treloar and the multimedia teachers at Our Lady of Mercy College for organising this incursion. I am looking forward to visiting again next year and seeing what the students have been able to achieve with their new video literacy skills.