On Wednesday Oct 23, I was invited to spend a few hours with a number of Haileybury College teachers from a few of their campuses to introduce them to the Adobe Spark tools as well as Adobe XD and Adobe Portfolio.

Haileybury is one of the largest schools in the Southern Hemisphere. It has six campuses  in Keysborough, Brighton, Berwick, Melbourne (City), Darwin and Beijing.

They are running a multi-campus interdisciplinary design thinking program where Adobe XD and Spark will play a prominent part. It was a pleasure to work with these passionate educators who represented a range of curriculum areas.

A special thank you to Dr Kyi Muller, Haileybury’s Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (Keysborough), for inviting me to be part of their school for this event.

The resources I shared can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via – https://bit.ly/adobe-haileybury19

Adobe will be back at Haileybury (this time their city campus) again in 2020 on May 26 for an Inject Creativity into the Curriculum with Adobe event.

It was great to be back at the Technology in the Tropics education conference in Cairns, Nth Queensland on Monday October 21.

About 200 teachers were invited to hear from about 30 technology and education experts and take part in about 40 elective workshop sessions.

I was asked to do a keynote session that focused on preparing young people for a future automated workplace.

My slides for this session can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-tropics19

Following the keynote, I was also asked to run an Adobe Spark workshop that was dominated by teachers who had never use the Spark tools before.

It was also great to catch up with the wonderful Andrew Fuller who was also presenting at the event. We seem to regularly run into each other at education events and airports around the country.

I also enjoyed catching up with my friends and fellow Edu Conference junkies Sue Carter and Leanne Cameron who were also both presenting.

Special thank you to QLD Adobe Education Leader Leigh Howser who was one of the coordinators of this great event.

I was privileged to work with about 50 educators from 20 Malaysian universities who traveled to Kuala Lumpur for a two-day Adobe Creativity workshop.

We began the first session with an introduction Adobe in Education then moved to a series of Adobe Spark activities.

The educators were encouraged to create a Spark Page, a Spark Video and some Spark Post graphics via their laptop browser and mobile devices.

Following the Spark activities we looked at Adobe InDesign and Acrobat as a way of creating and manipulating PDF documents.

Then we had some fun with Adobe Premiere Rush and Adobe Character Animator to finish of the first day.

The second day began with an Adobe XD workshop.

Many of the educators were very excited to discover the possibilities that Adobe XD provides in relation to designing, prototyping and sharing.

The rest of this day was all about discovering resources such as the Adobe Education Exchange and the Adobe Help Centre.

The main resources shared during this event are available on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-MalaysiaOct19

Some of the feedback responses included …

• I am very happy with the Adobe training organized by Dr. Tim Kitchen. This training is very useful for me to support learning in school. Thanks for all….
• Awesome workshop
• Thank you for your superb knowledge and experience sharing.
• Good workshop and showcase on the use of adobe application. It will be beneficial for the academic as well as research
• Thank you so much for the inspirational and concise updates on the Adobe software
• Very impressive training session and helpful resources for teaching and learning materials.
• Thanks for the 2 days sessions adobe! really great new knowledge and really hope can bring Dr. Tim Kitchen to my Uni for some lecturer talks.
• Hopefully I will be able to implement all new things learnt during these 2 days into my teaching materials

Special thank you to Adobe Account Executive Sandra Otero for organising this event with Adobe’s Malaysian education sales partner Prestariang.

Over 600 Indonesian teachers applied for 25 places at this week’s Adobe Creativity Challenge in Jakarta. The lucky 25 were a mix of media, IT, mathematics, science and humanities teachers from all over the country. The Indonesian Ministry of Education flew them into Jakarta and paid for their food and accommodation so that they could make the most of this two-day professional learning opportunity that was organised by the Indonesian Ministry of Education,  Teknologika and the Adobe Singapore office.

Their challenge was to work in a small team to produce a 3 minute video on the topic – A Promising Creative Industry for the Digital Native.  The criteria included:

• Edited in a mix of Spark Video & Premiere Rush
• Character Animator should also be featured
• At least one image manipulated in Adobe Photoshop should be used
• About 3 minutes
• All images and audio must be original or royalty free
• If in Indonesian, must have English subtitles

With the help from my translator Sonny Adi Purnomo, we started the event by introducing the group to Adobe Spark Page and encouraged them all to create a Spark Page that they could use to record and reflect on all their learning. Then we encouraged them to join the Adobe Education Exchange and explore some of the amazing resources that are available to enhance their ongoing digital creativity skills.

Adobe Spark Video was then demonstrated an work-shopped.

Then we looked at Spark Post as a way of making graphics for our video as well as short animations via the Android & iOS version.

Following a morning of Adobe Spark activities, I introduced the teachers to Adobe Premiere Rush. They were so impressed with the power, yet simplicity of this video editing tool and the versatility of working with it on a phone, tablet, laptop or desktop.

The afternoon of the first day was all about Adobe Character Animator. The teachers were encouraged to manipulate and animate some of the built in puppets and reflect on who this tool could help enhance student voice and engagement. They loved the Characterizer plug-in to Character Animator that enabled them to create a puppet based on their own face.

The rest of day 1 was based on enhancing their Photoshop skills with a range of techniques such as:

• image compression
• camera raw filter
• cropping & straightening
• content aware fill
• clone stamp tool
• spot healing brush

Day 2 was all about the challenge. They had about 3 hours to work with their team to plan, film and edit their video story.

There were 6 teams and each interpreted the topic in different ways. All groups did a great job at applying everything they learned the previous day.

Here are a couple of examples of the films that were made …

I would like to give a special thank you to the Indonesia Ministry of Education, Lili from Teknologika, Sonny for being such a great translator and Greg Sisk from the Adobe Singapore office for inviting me.

Adobe came to Monash today for a a great day of professional learning and active use engagements with a wide range of staff and students.

The day began with an Adobe Spark event involving a number of Education students. For most of them, it was their first time being exposed to the amazing Adobe Spark tools. It was so pleasing to see their smiles as they started creating and saw the possibilities of this software in action when they hit Victorian classrooms as future teachers.

The afternoon was spent with a number of Monash teachers from a range of faculties rotating through sets of the following workshops:

• Creating podcasts using Adobe Audition
• Design Thinking with Adobe XD
• Video for Everyone with Adobe Premiere Rush
• Storytelling using Adobe Spark

Special thank you to Adobe Solutions Consultant Anna Nakao for helping to organise this event and for Brian Chau and Matt Davis for their expertise in the workhops.

There were some very excited Swinburne Science students who yesterday discovered that they will be getting the Adobe Creative Cloud next year, just because they are at Swinburne. This was recently announced by Adobe and Swinburne making the university Australian first Adobe Creative Campus, a program involving over 20 universities in the USA.

Click here to find out more.

One of the many events I do at Swinburne each year is a lecture to Science students to give them some tips and tricks on how to make their presentations more creative.

I am looking forward to many more engagements at Swinburne in 2020 to help them make the most of their new access to the amazing Creative Cloud applications.

One of the first Creative Campuses was The University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). Have a look at this video to see what they are been doing …

Adobe and Swinburne recently announced that all Swinburne student are soon to have full access to the teh

On the morning of October 3, 2019 a group of NSW educators gave up a morning of their school holidays to work with a group of Adobe Education Leaders and Adobe Campus Leaders who had stayed on an extra day from the Adobe APAC Education Summit that was held two days prior.

About 50 educators registered for this event which involved a set of application tasters including Character Animator, Premiere Rush and Spark video followed by some small group deep-dives and then an overall wrap up session.

The first taster featured the Adobe Character Animator app based on real-time animation. This also included a taster on the Characterizer app that enabled the creation of a puppet based on a person’s image.

The second taster involved a look at the Adobe Premiere Rush video editing solution for phone, tablet, laptop & desktop.

The third taster involved a quick demo of Adobe Spark Video

The deep-dives involved a TeachMeet process where the AELs shared a passion of theirs and the teachers gravitated to what they were keen to learn.

A very special thank you to the Adobe Education Leaders and Campus Leaders who stayed on an extra night after the Summit to help us with this event.

Wow! is the best way I can describe the last two days of inspiration, learning and hard fun. In total, 35 Adobe Education Leaders (AELs) and Adobe Campus Leaders (ACLs) from all over Australia, NZ (and one from the US) were at the 2019 APAC Adobe Education Summit face to face and (within 24hrs) over 600 teachers have viewed the live feed and recordings.

On Monday Sept 30, the Summit commenced with an opening reception dinner. This was a great opportunity to welcome the 13 members of the Adobe Edu leadership community who had never been to the Summit before.

Clara Galan from the Adobe Edu team in San Francisco welcoming Emma & Nena from New Zealand

It was also a great opportunity for some of Adobe’s senior management like Brent Irwin (Adobe’s Director – Digital Media, ANZ) to thank the teachers for the way they empowering their studenst  to be digitally literate and creativity with Adobe’s amazing tools that are in most schools.

Global overview of Adobe in Education

The first full day of activities started early on Tuesday October 1 with an overview of Adobe’s global education programs from Clara Galan as well as a live link to hear from Global Leader Tacy Trowbridge and Matt Niemitz who manages the Adobe Education Exchange out of the USA

• Click here to see Clara’s presentation – Adobe Education Programs Global Overview
• Here to see Tacy’s session
• Here to see Matt’s update on the Adobe Education Exchange

Creative Catalyst Talks

We then commenced a series of amazing Creative Catalyst Talks from some of our AELs & ACLs. The first set involved the following topics:

• Craig Daalmeijer-Power – Engaging staff in Adobe Edex
• Michelle Dennis – #coLAB: Collaboration and design thinking in Middle Years
• Eden Carey – Adobe Apps 2 Go
• Trevor Milevskiy – Adobe in the Tropics (Top 10)

The second set of Creative Catalyst talks featured:

• Emma Wise – Kerikeri High School (NZ) & Adobe
• Dean Utian – Seeing differently through a cinematic lens
• Jason Carthew – From little things
• Brett Kent – Creativity in an education that measures sameness

Workshops & Creative Jams

Following the Creative Catalyst Talks it was workshop time. Craig Daalmeijer-Power ran a session on Adobe Rush, Adobe Solution Consultant Jane Chen did a session on Adobe XD and Adobe Solution Consultant Brian Chau ran a session on Adobe Dimension.

The workshop sessions were in preparation for two coinciding Adobe Creative Jams, one based on building the design on an app with Adobe XD and the other to create a silent film with Adobe Rush. The teachers established small production groups and had about 3 hours to build their solutions in preparation for a showcase the next morning.

The Sydney Harbour Cruise

The evening of Day 1 involved a cruise & meal on the beautiful Sydney Harbour. This experience never fails to produce outstanding images …

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Day 1 Summary from Rob & Dr A

Summit – Day 2

Day 2 of the Adobe APAC Education Summit commenced with a greeting from Christian Ridge, Adobe’s Head of Customer Success for APAC.

Then we moved into the Creative Jam showcase session where each of the Rush & XD groups shared what they produced the day prior.

Click here to see the results of the Creative Jam

David Dodds

Following  the showcase, our final Creative Catalyst Talk was from David Dodds who came all the way from Los Angeles, California to be with us in Sydney.

Product demos – Substance & Project Aero

Alwyn Hunt and Chris Hanson from Adobe joined us to demo the new range of Substance by Adobe tools and how they link nicely with Adobe’s Augmented reality offerings within Project Aero.

Click here to see the live recording of their presentation

STEAM Project

After the morning tea break, I had the great pleasure to interview Dr Bronwen Wade from Macquarie University. Dr Wade is an expert in creativity in education. From her PhD in this area she wrote the book Out of the Shadows which looks at lots of the research around the importance of teaching and encouraging creativity and the stages of creativity that can be worked through.

• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Tim’s poem – The Enemy of Creativity

More workshops

The rest of the day was based about a Character Animator workshop by AEL Craig Daalmeijer-Power  and a Mobile apps (including the new Adobe Fresco) by Adobe Solution Consultant Jane Chen.

Feedback

Some of the comments on the feedback form about this event included …

• Emma Wise’s Creative Catalyst Talk was a highlight – the works she showed by her students was excellent!
• The opportunity to meet and collaborate with Adobe educators from across the world was the greatest highlight. There is something powerful about having so many creative, exciting educators in the same place a the same time. I have lots of new ideas and opportunities for the future – I can’t wait to put them into action.
• The Adobe Substance and Aero demo was particularly great – I really appreciated the opportunity to ‘push’ myself beyond my current knowledge – workshops and demos at this level are difficult to get, so I really appreciated it.
• Highlight for me was the catalyst talks and the cruise. As well as the new friendships and connections made.
• Massive thank you for the opportunity to attend. It’s conferences like this that invigorate me again with my passion for education and my students.
• The highlight was listening to Craig speak about his kick start program. I have discussed further with him and will go back and implement my own version locally in my region then state wide.
• I enjoyed talks from the group and Adobe experts as it has given me lots of ideas to incorporate into my own practice and hopefully have a ripple effect on PD I run in the future.
• The networking opportunities were a highlight. Being able to talk directly to others in similar workplaces in a face to face capacity cannot be underestimated. It has given me new ideas to take back to the workplace along with potential solutions.
• The whole event was a magnificent experience. Really well structured days of learning along with fun events and amazing accommodation.
• The creative jam was a wonderful experience as it involved collaboration, getting to know new people and producing something together.
• The event was very well organised and had a good variety of talks, workshops and activities.
• Michelle’s session was inspiring, as was Brett’s.
• Craig and Eden gave excellent practical tips on using Adobe tools, and also in promoting the use of the tools for other teachers.
• Craig ran an excellent workshop on Adobe Character Animator. I now feel more confident in using this tool.
• David Dodds of course was inspiring. Much of his content I could personally relate to, and I have taken note of many of his inspiring ideas. Time to put them into practice!
• The Creative Jam session was a lot of fun, and a very good way to get to know and work with other colleagues at the Summit. Thank you to Tim and Adobe for the wonderful hospitality.
• The Creative Jam project was brilliant and allowed for authentic learning and team work. We loved the practical work and networking.
• Creative Jam was thrilling, getting to know the fantastic community and becoming a part of it, excellent structure and organization of the event, 100% engagement and participation, getting to know Adobe up-close and personal and wonderful Adobe Team members from US, Melbourne & Sydney, finding out about excellent Adobe products, resources and seeing how they are being used by top professionals & educators. INSPIRING
• I really enjoyed the creative jam, getting us to work under pressure sort of lifted the game. Was REALLY impressed by the Adobe Substance.
• Fantastic collaborations in these two days of workshops at the Adobe APAC Summit 2019-especially enjoyed learning about Adobe Rush & Character Animator and latest software such as Adobe Fresco. Cool meeting new friends David Dodds- from across the world and thanks Dr Tim Kitchen for his humour, organisation and making learning fun!
• Looking forward to interacting with new friends more and learning Adobe products so I can teach them in primary education K-6 as well as adult and teacher education at university and TAFE.
• The opportunity to have face to face discussions with educators from around the globe has been a real highlight I have really enjoyed being able to bounce ideas of others who work in different environments.
• Being able to share my students work and then gathering feedback from other educators to take back to them has been awesome – such an amazing opportunity to have their work viewed outside of our small community, thank you!
• Thank you for the invitation and for providing the opportunity for those of us outside of Australia to attend this event, it has been such amazing professional learning.
• Working collaboratively at the Summit is always amazing, but was even better this year with a creative aspect.
• Each year is a highlight that refills my creative soul and inspires my practice as an educator and a creative professional.
• Thank you to Tim and the team for a fantastic event! I’m looking forward to future events!