The new Learning and Teaching Building at the Monash University Clayton Campus was the venue for an Adobe professional learning event for Monash teachers on Thursday 21st June, 2018.

Over 20 lectures and support staff from a range of faculties registered for this event. Some were experienced Adobe users keen to refine their skills. Others were brand new to the world of what Adobe offers to educators.

We work-shopped and demonstrated a range of useful Photoshop techniques that are helpful for teachers such as:

• compressing large image files for online use
• batch compressing lots of large images file
• using the content aware fill tool to take out unwanted objects on an image
• working with the perspective warp tool to adjust the perspective of individual image layers

We did some Adobe Spake activities and made a short video with Spark video. The Adobe Spark video were new to most of them.

I did a demonstration of Character Animator and we discussed how a range of the Adobe Creative Cloud apps and Adobe’s mobile apps are used in schools and universities around the world.

I also had the pleasure of introducing the new beta version of Project Rush, Adobe’s most resent video app that is now available to try.

The Adobe for Academics site on the Adobe Education Exchange was promoted. This is a great portal of resources for for those wanting to make the most of their Adobe tools in higher education.

My friend Roland Gesthuizen, who is a lecturer in the Education faculty at Monash, very proudly gave me a tour of the new Learning and Teaching building that was opened at the start of this year.

I was very impressed with the architecture and the emphases on student focused, collaborative learning spaces, rather than the traditional teacher centered approach i see in so many schools and universities around the world.

The main lecture theatre space looks more like a restaurant than a lecture theatre. Its open plan circular design and focus on small group interaction is a refreshing change from the traditional approach. Students are encouraged to interact with the concepts being taught and when a more didactic approach is required, the technology in the room is such that attention can be on the lecturer and the screens.

Here are some more images I took of the learning spaces and the building …

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The following video gives you a better understanding of the architecture of this outstanding building …