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.

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!