The Big Day In came to Hobart, Tasmania on Wednesday 22nd May, 2019. About 400 students from around the state visited the University of Tasmania who hosted this wonderful event.

The Vice Chancellor,  Professor Rufus Black opened the event and shared with the secondary students about the importance of encouraging students to start up their own tech companies to assure their and Australia’s future.

I was the first of the keynote presenters with the topic, skills to thrive in the future.

Katy Cooper, Founder StartSchool & DisruptiveCo was next with the  topic The Driver, The Curator & The Expert – Preparing for the Age of the Individual

Other presenters included:

• Dennis Prior, Department of Human Services – Cyber Security & You
• James Ewan, ISW  – A Software Developer’s Journey
• Nick Rudenno, Senior UX Designer, Handbuilt Creative – Passion, Persistence & a Fair Amount of Luck
• Dr Paris Buttfield-Addison from Secretlab.com.au & Mars Geldard  Paris from  Buttfield-Addison

Tasmanian Senator the Hon Eric Abetz also visited for a brief presentation about how both the state and federal government are supporting a range of STEM related activities to encourage students to develop skills in coding and ICT.

Tasmania is such a beautiful part of Australia. It really was a pleasure to be back there  again to meet and work with these amazing students, teachers and IT  professionals.

On Thursday 16th May, Camberwell South Primary (in Melbourne’s east) hosted a day of digital creativity based around the use of the Adobe Spark apps. This was organised by the school’s STEM Specialist Joel Aarons who is also an Adobe Education Leader.

All the Year 4, 5 & 6 students rotated through three activities based on each of the three Spark apps. Joel ran a workshop on making a webpage with Spark Page, his colleague Liz Hein ran a session based on making digital posters with Spark Post and I showed the students how to make simple videos with Spark Video.

The theme of the Spark Video productions was the student’s passions.

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In the afternoon, the Camberwell South Primary staff took part in a special Adobe professional learning event based on the educational use of the Spark apps to enhance creativity in the classroom.

I would like to thank Joel and Liz for their help this this day.

If anyone is interested in finding out more about how Adobe Spark is making a positive difference in education around the globe, I encourage them to look up https://edex.adobe.com/spark

I was invited to Blackburn High School in Melbourne’s east on Wednesday 15th May to introduce two Year 9 classes of media students to the wonders of Adobe Premiere Pro for their future video productions.

Premiere Pro is the standard in most of the world of video, TV production and it has also been the cutting tool of choice for Marvel Studios over the past few years. It is always such a pleasure to introduce this tool to film makers and video producers of the future.

It didn’t take long for the students to get the basics and start cutting their own stories with footage that I provided for them.

The Victorian Department of Education and Training have had an agreement with Adobe for about 3 years to allow all their secondary students access to this amazing industry standard software to help them construct their learning and prepare for the next step when they leave school and enter the workplace.

Special thank you to teachers Tameka Carter & Pei-Yu Hsu for organising this incursion for their students.

Blackburn High have entered a number of videos into past Adobe Have a Voice projects over the years. Here are some samples of the work their students have produced.

On Tuesday 14th May, I worked with a group of final year pre-service teachers at the Monash University Faculty of Education to help them enhance their digital story telling skills with the help of Adobe Spark.

Prior to my visit, students collected photos and videos from a field trip to a farm specialising in composting and Aboriginal Garden native foods. My brief was to help them turn their image and footage into a in interesting digital story.

Adobe Spark Video was the tool of choice for this exercise because it is so accessible and easy to work with either via an iPhone, iPad or on an Internet browser via Spark.adobe.com.

In less than 1 hour, the students has produced some very creative short stories and felt confident working with Adobe Spark in the future.

As final year Pre-Service Teachers, it was my pleasure to introduce them to software that they can use with their future students when they get into Victorian classrooms in 2020 as first year out teachers.

On Monday 13th May, I spent the day at Koonung Secondary College in Melbourne helping to advance the Photoshop skills of a number of students who were studying a range of art and communication subjects.

For the past three years, Adobe has had an enterprise agreement with the Victorian Department of Education and Training which has provided a wide range of Adobe applications to all their secondary schools.

It is always such a pleasure to see Adobe applications like Photoshop being used in schools, especially in subjects that are not necessarily directly related to digital technologies.

I see Photoshop as an essential digital tool  in education. Every day, and in most curriculum areas, teachers and student are taking and using images to help communicate and construct learning. Adobe Photoshop is the world’s most well known and functional image manipulation software. Some of the basic skills that everyone involved in education should know what to do with Photoshop include:

• compressing large image files into low resolution files for online use that still look amazing
• cropping images
• removing unwanted objects from an image with the various content aware tools
• enhancing colours with the simple filters found in Photoshop

A great resource of beginners and advanced tutorials on Photoshop can be found via The Adobe Help Centre.

On Thursday 9th May, North Metropolitan TAFE Perth was the venue for a couple of Adobe events. The first was a session with a number of students and teachers who were interested in finding out what is new in the Adobe Creative Cloud.

The second was a 4 hour Inject Creativity into the Curriculum with Adobe event for teachers from around Perth.

Over 40 teachers from 23 differenet school registered for this event whiched featured two sets of workshops with the help of Adobe Education Leaders Darren Smith, P.J Bryans and Drew Mayhills.

Some of the  comments from the feedback included:

• A highlight was that Tim Kitchen clearly knows his ‘stuff’ and delivers it in a fun introductory way  that everyone can understand and get excited about to then experiment with after the PD.
• Learning about the new apps and Adobe Campus Leader Program
• I liked the PD I just felt that the sessions were a little short and I wanted more time.
• Loved seeing what else is out there in terms of free Adobe programs for other devices.
• A highlight was getting a snapshot of the Adobe products and how to apply them specifically in education
• The content blew my mind, I am so happy to have someone help in the initial stages. Having someone help is far more effective initially than trying to struggle through purely virtually.
• Absolutely fantastic. Will attend again
• A highlight was being introduce to the Adobe applications I hadn’t used before like Character Animator
• Character animator was great!

Special thank you to Adobe Campus Leader Chris Schnell (Head of Program Higher Education Art and Design – North Metropolitan TAFE) who organised this event.

On Wednesday 8th May, Churchlands Senior High School in Perth, was the venue for a range of Adobe digital creativity activities.

The first activity was during the afternoon with a talented group of students who were keen to enhance their skills with Adobe Photoshop.

Later in the afternoon, the school hosted an Inject Creativity into the Curriculum event that was registered by 46 educators from 19 different schools and education groups.

Comments from the feedback included:

Special thank you to Adobe Education Leader Alison Blackwell who organised this event.

Also, thank you to Darren Smith and Peter Bryans who helped run an Adobe workshop breakout session.

All my resources for this event can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via: http://bit.ly/adobe8May19

About 750 Year 10 to 12 students took part in the Perth Big Day In event which was this year hosted by Murdoch University.

Two giant marquees were  organiused by the university to house this event. One for the presentations and the other for the expo area.

Professor Tony Watson, Chair, WA Chapter & Director, Australian Computer Society (ACS) Foundation opened the event along with Professor Kylie Readman, Pro Vice Chancellor Education, Murdoch University.

They both emphasised the importance of this type of event to help  students with their decision making as they complete their secondary schooling and plan the next stage of their lives.

The Hon Kate Doust MLC, President of the Legislative Council then addressed the audience about  how the WA government are working to help provide opportunities for young people to thrive in a technology rich world.

Michelle Sandford, Evangelist for Microsoft and Chairman of ACS WA is a former TedX speaker. She is a strong advocate for STEM, the Games Industry & Developers and shared how the IT industry is not just about coding and how many places there are for women. She also shared how important developing creativity skills is for anyone wanting to work in IT.

I was the second keynote presenter for this event and was very pleased to complement Michelle’s presentation with some of the research about the importance of creativity.

Other presenters at this event included:

• Dennis Prior, Department of Human Services – Cyber Security & You
• Bankwest Graduates – Technology, Pathways and You!
• WiseTech Global – How To Be Your Best You
• Ben Leane, Avanade – Finding Your Dream Job In IT
• Stephane Bullier & Jake Chance, Technology One – How You Can Shape the Next Generation of Enterprise Software
• Charlotte van der Meulen, Westpac – he Coolest Jobs in Technology Right Now & Where to Find Them
• Captain Kaitlin Gilbert & Captain Chloe MacLachlan, Defence Force Recruiting – ADF ICT Career Opportunities
  

The expo marquee was very active with lots of offerings from Murdoch University as well as a range of vendors and other education groups.

I was particularly impressed with the Photoshop and Wacom demonstrations from the Murdoch University Graphic Design and Media representatives.

I also loved the large wall that students were encouraged to write on  based on the topic My tech dream is …

Here are some of my favourite responses …

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and especially …

Special thanks to John Ridge and Kerrie Bisaro from the Australian Computer Society Foundation for inviting me to present and all the hard work they put into these events.

Also, thank you to Oakley Hand from Upper Hand Designs for taking  many of the  great images above.

Here are all the sponsors that helped put this event together

The Inject Creativity into the Curriculum roadshow continued this week in Melbourne when about 40 teachers from 13 schools and universities registered for this special professional learning event hosted by Camberwell Girls Grammar School.

This session began with an overview of the how a range of Adobe applications are making a positive creative difference in education. This included some demonstrations and activities with Adobe Character Animator, Premiere Rush and Adobe Spark.

It was great to have Michelle Dennis (Adobe Education Leader from Strathcona), Justin de Lacy (Adobe Campus Leader from The Woodleigh School) and Paul Cifone (Adobe Campus Leader from Eltham College) running the following breakout workshop sessions …

• Adobe Illustrator in the classroom for beginners and intermediate users
• Adobe Photoshop tips & trips for educators
• Adobe Premiere Pro, taking video to the next level

Highlights of this event, according to the feedback included …

• Practical, easy to follow, good to see connection between tools and good overview of the various tools & their purpose
• Seeing students demonstrate creative thinking during the day and then hearing about industry applications of Adobe software this evening.
• Learning new shortcuts
• Applying Rush features and Spark
• Age-appropriate programs, catered to all educational levels. I’m looking forward to seeing what programs are free and can be used by my students straight away! Also looking forward to keeping and using the Education Exchange.
• Workshop – Hands-on experience
• Having a snapshot of some of the different apps including Character Animation.

It was lovely to catch up with a former mentor of mine at this event, Kim Perkins. Kim and I worked together at Strathcona for about 9 years before he moved to Camberwell Girls. I introduced Kim to the participants as Aussie EduTech Royalty because back in the year 1990s, when the Internet was was being introduced to the world, Kim set up one of Australia’s first school websites at the school he was teaching at in is home state of Tasmania. He was an educator ahead of his time and I learned a lot from him during our time together at Strathcona.

Prior to this after school teacher event, I had the pleasure of doing an Adobe Spark workshop with all the Camberwell Grammar Year 6 students as well as a class of Year 7s. I was very impressed with the creative digital posters and videos that these students made about their passions.

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Special thank you to Dr Charlotte Forwood, Felicity Carroll and Kim Perkins from Camberwell Girls Grammar who helped to make this day such a success.