About 50 lecturers from universities all over Malaysia traveled to Kuala Lumpur for two days of Adobe creativity last week thanks to Adobe’s Malaysian partner Prestariang.

Having lots of quality time with so many interested educators, created a wonderful opportunity to share the value of many Adobe applications to help engage students and prepare them for this digital age.

We work-shopped a number of techniques within the following applications:

• Photoshop
• Spark Post
• Spark Video
• Character Animator
• Premiere Rush
• Premiere Pro
• InDesign &
• Acrobat

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We also looked at some of the research behind the importance of encouraging creativity in education. We discussed how school systems and universities across the globe are revising their curricula with an increasing emphasis on experiential learning, interdisciplinary approaches and an array of literacies to help better prepare their students for the future.

The aim of the event was to help demonstrate how Adobe applications help extend literacy traditions into new contexts, with an emphasis on creative problem solving through writing, speaking, presenting, making & storytelling.

The teachers were encouraged to keep a record of their learning through the development of an ongoing Spark Page.

In the feedback, overall comments about highlights of the workshop included…

• Using spark to make video as I am teaching biochemistry and genetics. So making a video to explain the difficult concept is useful in my teaching.
• Super cool! Definitely using all the resources & tips with my students
• I’m an E-Learning trainer and looking for good softwares for developing E-Contents. Glad that Adobe has got lots of softwares for it. Thank you for the introduction to them.
• I’ve learned faster way and appropriate tools in doing thing via adobe software especially Photoshop.
• A splendid and fruitful training program.
• Tips and tricks will lots of Adobe products.
• Spark Post and Character Animator are two apps that are extremely wonderful and useful for digital education.
• Introduction to new features available in latest Photoshop, Premiere. Introduction to Spark, Premiere Rush and a lot of Adobe product for mobile.
• Really enjoy this workshop. i got new info/features from adobe like Adobe Spark, Behance, Premier Rush CC, also learn about adobe apps which is we can create video and editing using smart phone and of course will share all the tools that i learn today with my students.

Other comments

• I wish we could have more time.
• Looking forward for more programs like this. WELL DONE
• Love it!!!
• I already join Adobe Education Exchange & follow Dr Tim. Target for this year to get more than 300 points and join the Adobe Campus Leaders Program. Hope can get more info from Adobe. Thanks to Dr Tim Kitchen. You give a lot of info today.
• Do it again next time
• Thanks a lot to our instructor and organizers.
• Dr. Tim Kitchen rocks!

Special thanks to our partners at Prestariang and to Adobe Account Executive for Malaysian Education Sandra Otero for her help and support.

Fifty Indonesian Vocation Education Teachers were selected to take part in a special professional learning event on Tuesday March 5. Earlier this year, I ran a webinar with over 200 of these teachers and this was a special follow up face to face activity.

It was a delight to spend an afternoon with these creative educators and provide them with some Adobe magic. The aim was to inspiration them and provide them with ideas to engage their students and help them develop some practical digital creativity skills.

At the end of the event, for some reason, a number of the teachers wanted to get a photo with me. I felt like a celebrity.

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About 40 lecturers representing universities throughout Indonesia joined me for digital creativity workshop/presentation in Jakarta on March 4, 2019 focusing on Adobe apps in education.

Some of the messaging during this session included that today’s students are immersed in a range of digital realms and they want to produce media, not just consume media. It is important that educators acknowledge this and allow their students time to construct their learning in creative ways with a range of  digital technologies.

Students are engaged more in formal education when they are encouraged to work with digital creativity tools. Digital is how thinking and learning are increasingly happening across the whole curriculum.

I showed these lecturers some of the work we are  doing with the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University as they are moving towards using video as an important  part of the assessment process. Click here to see a video about this.

One of the themes we discussed was that traditional education systems are not designed to enhance creativity. Students are rewarded for memorising facts for a test, not for imagination, creativity, resourcefulness, collaboration & problem solving.

I suggested that one of the reasons we have to think differently about education is that the world our students are living in is so different from the one that most educators grew up in yet many are still teaching the way they were taught and most likely the same way their teachers were taught.

Sharing some of the practical solutions available via the Adobe Creative Cloud is always a pleasure. I never cease to enjoy seeing the delight in the faces of educator as they discover the joys and educational potential within the Adobe apps.

It was great working with Adobe Account Executive Greg Sisk our Indonesian partners on this event.

The first of a series of events throughout Indonesia & Malaysia happened on the morning of Monday March 4 in Jarkarta, Indonesia.

Indonesia’s Association of National and Private Schools (ANPS) invited Adobe to present to representatives from a wide range of International & Independent schools throughout their country with a focus on how Adobe’s creativity software can help enhance digital literacy and creativity skills .

I was asked to run a 3hr workshop/presentation and enjoyed watching these educators and administrators warm to a wide range of Adobe applications, especially Adobe Spark.

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It was delightful to get such an enthusiastic response from this group of teachers who are now tasked to share what they learned to the teachers and students back at their schools.

On Friday March 1, a team from Adobe Education helped TAFE NSW launch their 2019  Creative and Design Ideation SkillsPoint week of activities in Parramatta.

I had the pleasure of sharing  some of the new technologies that have recently been developed by Adobe as well as resources such as the Adobe Education Exchange to an audience of NSW TAFE teachers & students.

It was also great to be invited to be part of a panel of experts from a range of industries such as music, fashion and art for an interesting discussion about the importance of  creativity in today’s society.

One of the panelists was Steve Bull who is a TAFE NSW SkillsPoint Industry Relationship Lead for Creative and Design Ideation. Steve has had a wealth of experience in the music industry as the bass player for the Aussie rock band Icehouse.

Here are some other images from this event …

This was the beginning of a week of activities which included some Adobe workshop sessions from our NSW based solution consultants.

Special thank you to Sandi Lucock, Industry Relationship Lead, Creative and Design Ideation SkillsPoint, for inviting us to take part in this launch.

Thursday February 28 was a very special day at Maria Regina Catholic Primary School in Avalon, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. It was the day that Dr Bronwen Wade-Leeuwen (Macquarie University) and I worked with the whole school on a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Mathematics) project titled Bring back the Arts.

Here is a reflection from Dr Wade-Leeuwen …

The primary school students (approximately 110 children) loved creating their street chalk artworks around the school’s theme of ‘Love’ on the playground area.

They enjoyed being collectively photographed in their year groups by you together with their street chalk artworks. 

A wonderful example of how ‘Bringing back the Arts’ through STEAM approaches can generate critical and creative thinking in contemporary active learning environments. The school’s theme of ‘Love’ directly supports the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of working collaboratively with industry and institutions (school and university) towards ‘Partnerships for the Goals’

The final session for the day was with the senior students (Years 4-6), this session showed the students courage, creativity and determination to quickly learn new skills using Adobe Spark technology through the planning and engineering of their artwork images, videos and voice recordings into amazing professional productions to share with others.

The day began with a Big Draw exercise based on the theme of LOVE and the Sustainable Development Goals as set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015.

Each grade level had a set of goals to learn and draw about.

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The Grade 4 to 6 students documented their drawings with their iPads by taking a range of photos and videos.

In the afternoon, I worked with the the older students to help them turn their images and videos into video a range of video stories using Adobe Spark Video.

It was great to see how quickly the students mastered the app and developed a range of creative stories.

Special thank you to Kathy Gee, the Principal, her teaching staff and Dr Wade-Leeuwen for making this day a possibility.

Stay tuned for a video about this day on CreateEdu TV.