On Thursday 7th September, a group of students from Davidson High School visited the Adobe Sydney office for an Adobe day.

Adobe Days are when a group of students work with an Adobe expert to help develop their 21^st century communication and creativity skills. In this case, the focus was on Video literacy with Adobe Premiere Pro.

Some of the students had previously worked with Premiere Pro but, for the majority of these students, this was their first experience with the software.

Adobe Premiere Pro is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of software which is provided by the NSW Department of Education to all their teachers and students. Earlier this year, the Victorian Government followed the lead of NSW and provided the Adobe Creative Cloud to all of its secondary school teachers and students. Most other school and university systems around Australia also have access to the Adobe Creative Cloud and Adobe Days are a great way to share the value of this amazing creativity software.

During this particular Adobe Day, three of the students and their teacher Jessica Peade were asked to share their experiences with Adobe software to all the Adobe staff throughout Australia & New Zealand during a special meeting. They were also told about the Adobe in Education Active use program and how between January & August in 2017, the program has reached an impact of over 240,000 teachers and students in Australian & New Zealand.

The Adobe staff were pleasantly surprised with the impact Adobe software has been making in education and very impressed with the contribution of the Davidson High School.

Jessica Peade is an Adobe Campus Leader which is a global leadership program for educators who are passionate about working with Adobe applications to enhance creativity in their classrooms.

Earlier this year, at one of the Big Day In events, I met Raymond Ho from 1Scope and we started planning a digital creativity event for some schools in Sydney.

1Scope is a unique company that provides options for students aged 12 to 25 to search and apply for skill building opportunities provided by top companies, start-ups, charities, universities and government organisations.

Raymond organised a group of students from St George Girls High School and Randwick Girls High School to visit the Adobe office in Sydney and rotate through three Adobe based workshops.

Jane Chen & Jason Grant very kindly donated their time on this day. Jane ran a workshop on Adobe Photoshop, Jason show the students a range of Adobe Illustrator techniques and I gave them and introduction to video editing with Adobe Premiere Pro.

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Special thank you to Raymond Ho for organising this day and also thank you to Jane and Jason for sharing their expertise. We are looking forward to partnering with 1Scope again in the future.

On Tuesday 5th September I had the pleasure of working with a delightful group of Year 10 students from Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College, Burraneer near Cronulla in Sydney.

Each student has access to Adobe Premiere Pro on their laptops so the aim of the day enhance their video literacy skills.

I informed the girls that video production is now considered a literacy and that these days it is almost as important to be able to make a quality video as it is to be able to write a quality essay. Some are predicting that by the end of 2017, 70% of all Internet traffic will be via video.

By the end of the day, the students had gained a wide range of video editing skill & techniques including how to key-out a green screen and replace it with any other image.

At the end of the day, I worked with a number of teachers from the school and some visiting teachers from other schools and showed them how to use a variety of Adobe applications to enhance their creativity and 21st-century communication skills.

One of the highlights of this session was teaching teachers how to use Adobe Character Animator to bring to life digital puppets made in Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator.

The following video was produced for a recent meeting to all the Adobe employees from Australia & New Zealand. It features most of the highlights of the Adobe in Education active use program from January to August, 2017.

Special thanks to my Nephew Archer Mason (Yr 6 – Yackandandah Primary School, Victoria) for producing the sound track used in this video.

On Thursday 31st August, I took a road trip to Phillip Island in Victoria to visit the Cowes Primary School students who are taking part in this year’s Adobe Have a Voice Project.

The aim of this program is to provide Victorian students in Years 4 to 9 with an opportunity to have a voice about something that is important to them and enhance their 21st century communication and creativity skills.

The students need to work in a group with at least one Adobe product to produce either a video story (maximum of two minutes), animation (maximum of one minute) a website/web page or poster about a topic or issue that is important to the group.

Here is a video about the Adobe Day and the involvement of the school in the Adobe Have a Voice Project.

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After school I worked with the staff and introduced them to the educational potential of the Adobe Spark tools.

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Adobe Character Animator helps bring digital puppets made in Photoshop or Illustrator to life by tracking your facial feature via a webcam.

On Tuesday 29th August, I had the pleasure of working with all the Year 6 students from The Geelong College in Victoria and introducing them to the joys of animated storytelling with Adobe Character Animator.

Rather than building a puppet from scratch, the student were all provided with a  character that they then manipulated in Photoshop to feature their school logo. They then imported it into Character Animator and brought it to life via their own facial reactions.

Later in the day the students were all taught how to use Adobe Spark to help communicate their stories via posters, videos and web pages.

I was very impressed with how quickly these students adapted to the new software and how creative they were with their storytelling.

The Sunshine Coast in QLD is a great place to be at any time of year, especially in the later days of winter. On Thursday 24th August, I had the pleasure of working with students and teachers at Caloundra Christian College.

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We focus on enhancing the student’s skills with the Spark tools and Adobe Photoshop. I was impressed with the InDesign skills of the Year 12 students who showed me the school magazine they are producing as an assessment exercise as well as for the school community.

I enjoyed working with a range of teachers after school, showing them some creative ways to engage their students with Adobe applications.

Special thanks to Paul Miller for organising this visit.