On Thursday 28th November 2024, I was invited to work with the Year 4 to 6 students from Heathcote East Public School in NSW to help them make the most of their access to Adobe Express.
All NSW Department of Education Students get access to Adobe Express for Education through their school portal.
I challenged the students to work in small groups create a short animated video with Adobe Express about how to make the world a better place that featured the following:
at least 4 scenes
at least 3 animated characters
a voice over recording
at least one Gen AI image
at least one video background
at least one image from Adobe Stock
a sound track
lots of creativity
I was so impressed with what they came up with.
Special thank you to Teacher/Librarian Julie Gander for organising this event for her school
On Wednesday 27th November, a group of educators from the ITE Conference spent the day with Jason Eddie and myself learning about a wide range of Adobe products and how they can be used in education.
Jason offered training in a number of Adobe’s Creative Cloud apps such as Photoshop, Illustrator and Animate. I ran the teachers through the Adobe Creative Educator Level 1 & 2 courses.
Feedback highlights
Depth of knowledge of presenters. New generative AI uses
Understand how easy adobe has become
Great presentations, content and assistance provided. Informative and engaging. Thanks!
Depth of knowledge of presenters. New generative AI uses
Learning that Adobe express is available to everyone for free… And then learning how to use is!
AI possibilities in Photoshop, Illustrator etc intro projects to get students started with animation.
On Tuesday 26th November, 2024 I had the pleasure to work with all the Year 5 & 6 students at Arden Anglican School. We started by chatting about three really important skills that help people to thrive:
Problem solving
Collaboration
Creativity
Then we applied these three skills by having the students work together in teams to create a short video animation with Adobe Express describing things that could make the world a better place.
The Melbourne Big Day In Junior event on Thursday 14th November 2024 was perfectly timed, taking place just a day after Adobe Express for Education became available to all Victorian Government School students.
The students and teachers from Hampton Primary and East Bentleigh Primary were very excited about the new way they could tell stories through animation, video and text as well as access millions of K-12 friendly Adobe Stock images and other multimedia assets. There were particularly exciting about the Animate characters feature.
They are looking forward to using Adobe Express throughout the curriculum for many years to come to enhance their digital literacy and creativity skills.
Kylie Pearson, the Teacher Librarian and High Ability Practice Leader at Box Hill High School in Melbourne organised an Adobe Day on Tuesday 12th November for me to work with 70 high-ability students from Year 7 to 9 with a focus on video story telling with Adobe Premiere Pro.
The day prior to my visit, the students collected a range of shots from around the school based on a story that they had pre-planned. Most of the student were new to Premiere Pro so I was able to introduced them to some basic editing techniques and open them up to the endless potential of this industry standard application.
It was wonderful to be able to spend a whole day with these talented student and see what they were able to achieve.
After school, I worked with a group of about 20 teachers and guided the through the Adobe Creative Educators Level 1 micro-credential.
Braybrook College in Melbourne’s west was invited by ABCN and Adobe to bring a group of students to the Adobe office in South Melbourne for a My Career Rules program.
Adobe Customer Success Manager Kim Flowers and I were interviewed by the students with an aim to find out more about what it is like to work in the It industry.
The students enjoyed an activity using Adobe Express to find out more about Adobe as a company and also a Character Animator demonstration.
On 24th October, a group of students from Mitchell High School in Sydney’s west visited the Adobe office in Darling Harbour as part of an ABCNMy Career Rulesprogram.
The Australian Business Community Network (ABCN) collaborates with Aussie businesses to break down barriers for students from low socio-economic schools by offering structured, workplace-based mentoring programs. These programs are designed to raise aspirations, build essential skills, and expand students’ horizons.
The aim of My Career Rules is to provide students the opportunity to meet and engage with professionals from various industries, expanding their awareness of careers that align with today’s workforce. By bridging classroom learning with real-world work experiences, the program reinforces the importance of the skills and mindsets essential for a successful future career.
Katrina Thornton interacting with students from Mitchell High School
It was delight to have Adobe Vice President and Managing Director, ANZ Katrina Troughton involved in this program. Katrina’s involvement provided the students a rare opportunity to engage with a a senior company executive and ask her questions about her career path.
It was lovely to catch up with Michael Turner, the careers advisor at Michell High. Michael has been part of the Adobe Education Leaders program for many years. Last year, he invited me to run the Adobe Creative Educators Level 1 micro-credential course for all the teaching staff at Michell High – click here to see more.
It was also a delight to provide the students with a demonstration about the value of Adobe Express for Education and how it can be used to enhance learning in a range of curriculum areas.
Special thank you to Olivia Yeates from Adobe for coordinating this event, all the Adobe mentors, the ABCN staff, Michael and (most importantly) the students for making this such a successful day.
Dr Tim Kitchen's Journal (CTL - Creative Teaching & Learning) 