On Thursday 27 November 2025, I had the pleasure of doing the opening keynote address at DigiCon in Melbourne, a fantastic conference jointly run by ACMI and DLTV. It felt a bit like coming home. I bumped into so many familiar faces, people I’ve known since my days as the inaugural VP of DLTV and VP of VITTA.

At the same time, it was wonderful meeting a whole range of new educators, all buzzing with ideas and just as passionate as ever about strengthening digital literacy and creativity in their classrooms.

A real highlight was spending some time with the lovely Paula Christopherson, who was recognised as a Life Member of DLTV. Seeing her honoured for her dedication and contribution over so many years was truly special.

There was a lot of interest in my book and a number of teachers has purchased it previously and shared how much they enjoyed reading it.

I would like to thank the conference committee and especially Jacqueline Manison, the current President of DLTV for inviting me.

On Saturday 1st November, a wonderful group of media and arts students from St Philip’s Christian College in Newcastle visited the Adobe Sydney office as part of a city experience camp.

The aim of this event was to spend 4 hours getting to know more about Adobe Premiere Pro to help prepare the students for a range of media projects and for a future life of video communication.

Learning Adobe Premiere Pro is a great way for students to build powerful communication and video literacy skills. In today’s world, video is one of the most engaging ways to share ideas, tell stories, and make an impact — and Premiere Pro gives students the tools to do just that. As they plan, film, edit, and produce their own videos, they learn how to communicate clearly, think critically about visual storytelling, and collaborate creatively. These are skills that go far beyond the software — they’re essential for success in any modern career.

It was a pleasure to work with Adobe Creative Education (ACE) Belle Holliday-Williams (Leader of Student Media) at St Philips to make this experience possible for her students.

On Friday, 31 October, I had the pleasure of joining the 50th anniversary celebration of the Careers Advisors Association of NSW & ACT at their annual conference in Sydney. It was a fantastic event at the Sheraton Grand Sydney Hyde Park, with around 500 careers advisors, partners, and vendors all coming together to mark this special milestone.

The delegates included teachers from Government, Catholic, and Independent schools across NSW and the ACT, along with career development professionals from a range of sectors. Their work plays such an important role in education — helping young people make sense of their options when it comes to study, training, and future careers.

I was invited to the event as an author and education consultant. My session wasn’t focused on Adobe’s education solutions this time, but rather about the key skills students will need to thrive in the future — a topic that really connects with the work of careers advisors everywhere.

I also had the chance to do a book signing and loved chatting with so many passionate educators who are deeply committed to helping students discover their paths.

It was an absolute pleasure to deliver the opening keynote at the Victorian It Takes a Spark! STEM Conference, held at The Knox School in Melbourne on Thursday, 23 October 2025. The event brought together approximately 520 students and teachers from over 20 schools across Victoria, creating a vibrant and collaborative atmosphere.

This inspiring conference is held annually in Victoria, Western Australia, and Queensland. I was also fortunate to lead a workshop at the WA event in Mandurah this past September.

What sets It Takes a Spark! apart is its unique focus on both educators and students. Throughout the day, participants engaged in a range of interactive sessions including a Digi-Design Mini Workshop, a Problem Solvers Design Challenge, and keynote presentations. Teachers also had the opportunity to attend exclusive Mini Masterclasses and networking sessions, which featured Adobe Creative Educator Level 1 and 2 micro-credential courses.

I would like to thanks Dr Adrian Bertolini for inviting me to be involved.

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The 2025 Adobe Educators’ Conference was a live and on-demand professional learning event run by the ANZ Adobe Education Team aimed at K-12 & Higher Ed teachers with a focus on encouraging creativity in the teaching & learning process with the use of a range of Adobe applications.

Just over 4,000 teachers viewed the Conference site in anticipation of this event with hundreds registering to watch sessions live or on-demand.

Click here to see the recordings of each session

Most of the workshop/presentation sessions were run and moderated by Adobe Creative Educator (ACE) Leaders and Innovators.

Conference opening video

Opening plenary session

K-12 Keynote 1

Improving Student Outcomes with Adobe Express for Education with Therese Adams (Global Adobe Edu Team)

HED Keynote 1

Future-Ready Learners: Embedding Digital and Transferable Skills in Tertiary Education with Cherie Diaz (Western Sydney University)

K-12 Keynote 2

An AI Odyssey: Navigating the Future of Education with Brett Salakas (HP Education Ambassador)

HED Keynote 2

Storytelling as a Skillset: Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Digital Fluency in Action with Manuela Franceschini (Adobe Senior Business Developer – Education)

Final plenary session

View all sessions here

Feedback

• 93% agreed that the overall quality of this event was excellent. 
• 95% agreed that the content of this event met their expectations.
• 93% agreed that they will be able to apply much of what they learned in their work.

Highlights (key comments)

• The Adobe session was definitely well presented, engaging, and very informative. The presenters explained concepts clearly, and I learned valuable strategies that I can apply in my work. Overall, it was a great and inspiring online session. 
• All the sessions that I attended were very well-presented with hands-on demonstrations and plenty of interaction. 
• The range of seminars covering range of creative digital elements that can be applied in a classroom – so inspiring – love the mini workshops and useful links provided 

Other comments

• This is a brilliant initiative which brings like-minded educators of the future together to learn and share ideas.
• Thank you very much appreciate being able to attend and be inspired
• The information gathered from both sessions will enable me to effectively help my students use Adobe Express and support my colleagues through teaching and knowledge sharing.
• I needed this PL to give my teaching some more flavour and to answer some of my concerns about AI 

Special thank you to the ANZ Adobe Education team

About 30 educators from South Australia traveled to the spectacular Adelaide Botanic High School for the Adelaide Adobe Content Creation Seminar on Tue 30th September.

Lachlan Mooney from the SA Department for Education set the scene by sharing some of the work they have been doing to link digital technologies to pedagogy. This aligned nicely with Molly Turner’s introduction about the value of working with Adobe Express in K-12 & in the TAFE sector.

The new Adobe Express classrooms features was highlighted within an overall tour of Adobe Express and the teachers were encouraged to explore some of the various features that were most relevant to them.

Molly ran a session on Express Classrooms and I ran a session on animation & video with Adobe Express. The the teachers were given time to apply this new knowledge and create some resources that they could use in the classroom next term and throughout 2026.

The teachers all worked through the requirements of achieving the Adobe Creative Educator s(ACE) Level 1 & 2 micro-credential.

Feedback highlights

• Getting some more in depth instruction for creating videos and adding layers.
• Learning about all of the new tools within Adobe Express. The way that we can animate characters, create more powerful presentations, it was all brilliant!
• Being able to create a video and use the animate tools
• Seeing the practical applications of systems was the biggest highlight.
• Presenters were helpful
• Obtaining my ACE level 2 Badge
• Getting to actually work on the video while we learned
• Making my own projects that I can see being useful in my work and for personal interest. Getting an accreditation was a bonus too.
• Overall content was great . Especially the website for presentations will use this in my role.
• All activities were great and useful.
• Wonderful seminar
• Getting to know the hidden features

Other feedback comments

• Thank you for coming to Adelaide! It was great to be able to attend a session in person and to learn about all of the new amazing updates and offerings from Adobe Express.
• I really appreciate that the program was not necessarily targeted towards people with no prior knowledge of Adobe systems.
• Bring Dr Tim Kitchen back to Adelaide for another F2F session for TAFE SA lecturers.
• Thank you for your expertise.
• Want more!
• Great day, thanks so much for your time and efforts. Would love to see more like this in the future.
• I used Adobe education products a while ago (maybe 5 years ago) … this has renewed my interest in the Adobe education suite again. Thanks.
• I really enjoyed the session and having time to play with the different features.
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Special thank you to the staff at Adelaide Botanic High for kindly offering the use of their facilities.

On Friday 26th September, 2025 a fabulous group of teachers (TAFE & K-12) from around the Brisbane area took part in Adobe’s first ever Content Creation Seminar hosted at TAFE QLD, Southbank. This was part of the 2025 Adobe Educators’ Conference.

This was an opportunity for teachers to join a hands-on day of creativity with Adobe Express and build curriculum-aligned, multi-modal content that fuels digital literacy and fluency – setting students up for success in learning and life.

Molly Turner from the Adobe Edu Team set the scene at the start of the session linking Adobe Express solutions to the Australian Curriculum as well as TAFE priorities.

With expert guidance from ACE-Leaders/Innovators Erin Raethke, Nalin Naidoo as well as Adobe Edu team members Al Briggs, Molly Turner and myself, the teachers were shown how to use Adobe Express to create curriculum-aligned resources that spark curiosity, build digital literacy and fluency, and set students up for lifelong success.

Erin’s webpage summary (Thank you Erin)

Feedback highlights

• Use of websites for assignments
• Being able to adapt to my current projects
• I really enjoyed the videos element.
• Being able to easily add an Auslan interpreter and captions to a video. It was much simply than other platforms that I’ve tried.
• I really liked learning about classrooms and the guided activities
• It was great getting a refresher of the tools learned in the ACE Level 2 training.
• Seeing Adobe Express
• Discovering the new updates every time I get into Adobe Express.
• Time to explore and people more knowledgeable than me to ask!!
• Appreciated the time to immerse into Adobe Express
• Improving knowledge of tools
• Just the support- I did not feel inadequate or stupid – I am confident to take this back to my classroom.
• The handson aspect of the workshop – experiential learning is everything! Jumping into Adobe express and trying this out.
• Having already done the Adobe Educator Level 1 training, it was great to extend my skills. Top highlight: adding captions to videos and importing existing presentations to make them better in Adobe Express
• Working through the guided activities with help.

Other feedback comments

• Thank you for a great day.
• Great holiday opportunity
• Looking forward to next learning opportunity
• Great work all
• Please do a presentation at the Queensland Art Teachers Association conference in July 2026 in Brisbane.
• Thanks so much team!
• The templates provided by Molly and video examples were great examples I could incorporate in classroom activities.

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On Tue 16th September, I had my first experience of an It Takes a Spark STEM Conference. This was at Fredrick Irwin Anglican School in Mandurah, Western Australia, about 1 hr drive south of Perth.

These conferences provide a valuable opportunity for teachers and students to collaborate while developing a wide range of STEM skills. According to the organisers …

The It Takes a Spark! STEM Conference inspires and engages forward thinking students, teachers and leaders in STEAM.

Established in 2017 by engineer, education consultant and author Dr. Adrian Bertolini, together with event specialist Rachel Manneke-Jones, the conference has since made a direct and positive impact on more than 8,220 educators and students. In 2025, events will be hosted in Queensland, Western Australia, and Victoria.

At the WA conference, I was invited to deliver an Adobe Express workshop. Looking ahead, I am honoured to have been asked to present the keynote address at the Victorian event on Thursday, 23 October.

The Queensland Education Department (QED) hosts an annual ICT in Education conference called i-Educate at the Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre. Adobe was delighted to collaborate with Data#3 for this event. This year, the conference took place on the 8th and 9th of September. Under the leadership of Michael O’Leary (Assistant Director-General, Department of Education) and the Information and Technologies Branch, QED stands out as the only K-12 education system in Australia that organises such an event.

This year’s conference involved about 500 school leaders, teachers, IT professionals, administrators, and support staff from across the state and about 100 presenters & industry vendors from around Australia for two full days of inspiration, learning, and collaboration.

I was particularly impressed with the sessions ran by Adobe Creative Education Leaders Mel Muller from Mountain Creek State High School and Melanie Craig from Cairns School of Distance Education who presented the following two 1.5hr workshop sessions.

• Mel Muller – Adobe Express Across the Middle School
• Melanie Craig – Innovating Learning and Assessment with Adobe Express

Most of the teachers who took part in these sessions also earned the Adobe Creative Educator Level 1 micro-credential.

Adobe Express has become very popular in QED schools ever since it was linked their single-sign-on system allowing very simple free access to every student & teacher.

Another highlight was when Brett Salakas (HP’s Education Ambassador), David Waine (Data#3 National Practice Manager – Education Sector) and I were introduced to the QLD Minister of Education The Hon John-Paul Langbroek MP by Michael O’Leary.

I would like to congratulate Amy Whitehouse for all the work she (and her team) put into make this event such a success. I’m looking forward to i-Educate 2026.

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Every time I have the opportunity to work with John Penn II, I am inspired and proud of the contributions Adobe is making to the field of law enforcement. On Wednesday, 3rd October, I had the pleasure of introducing a group of students from Braybrook College to John at the Adobe Melbourne office during his visit to Australia.

John Penn II serves as Adobe’s Senior Architect for Law Enforcement Technologies. His unique role involves being on call 24/7 to assist law enforcement agencies worldwide in solving crimes using Adobe’s technologies, such as Photoshop and Audition. Before taking on this role, John was a developer on the Photoshop team and previously worked for Apple.

Since John began this role, over 40,000 children have been rescued from abduction and other crimes, thanks to the power of Adobe’s software. You can find out more in a recent webinar I recorded with him here.

This particular session with Braybrook College was organised by the Australian Business Community Network (ABCN) who have partnered with Adobe for several years to provide students from economically disadvantaged areas with opportunities to engage with industry mentors.

The students had some very insightful questions for John, and we were also joined by Cristina Fletcher from Adobe’s PR & Communications team on the panel.

John shared some examples of how Adobe’s tools help solve a range of crimes. The students were all learning how to use Photoshop at school so they were very please to meet someone who actually helped build Photoshop. Later, the student were introduced to the power and flexibility of Adobe Express as a creativity tool.