Over 40 teaching and admin staff from Western Sydney University (WSU) gathered for a Lunch &  Learn event on Tuesday 12th November with an aim to know more about their Adobe Creative Cloud software.

I had just over 1 hour to provide an overview of some of the favourite Adobe apps that are used by educators and students all around the globe. We also touched on some of the new apps that were announced last week at Adobe Max such as Fresco and Aero.

It was great to get direct feedback from the educators about their thoughts on the apps that were demonstrated.

A sppecial thank you to Anna Nakao (Adobe Customer Success Manager) and the team from  WSU for organising this event. We are hoping it will be the first of many more to come for this university.

Feedback comments included …

• Great engagement using attendees to demo the products. The demo’d products are easy to use, with good quality content being able to be produced very quickly.
• I have a new augmented reality project with primary school students, starting next year. I am here to explore how existing apps can be harnessed with a range of AR apps. Glad that Adobe offers me great potential.
• Well presented and was engaging, involved each moment and had all elements of fun, sense of humour and information
• Very engaging presentation. Thank you.
• It was amazing to learn about Adobe Spark and how to use it on my mobile. A real game changer. Thanks for the session
• A highlight was learning about products that I had little knowledge about. 
• Great look at tools for everyone

The resources I  ]shared for this event can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe12Nov19

On Thursday November 7, I had the pleasure to run an advanced video workshop for a group of teachers from Methodist Ladies College, Camberwell Girls Grammar and Kingswood College in Melbourne. This all-day event titled Taking Video Production to the Next Level was hosted at the Independent Schools Victoria office in South Melbourne.

After touching on the Spark tools as a simple way to create video solutions we quickly jumped to Character Animator, Premiere Rush and then spend most of the day working with Adobe Premiere Pro.

On a personal note, it was lovely to connect with the Kinswood College which is where I started by teaching career back in 1991. It was also great to catch up with Kim Perkins from Camberwell Girls Grammar who was my manager when I first worked at Strathcona in the early 2000’s.

My resources for this event can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-ISV19a

On Thursday 31st October, I had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours with a group of eLearning specialist  and deputy principals from a number of Catholic primary schools in Melbourne’s west. This was organised as by the Catholic Western Region eLearning Network of Victoria.

The focus of this session was the use of the three Adobe Spark apps for browser and for iPad. Most of the teachers were new to the Spark apps so we had an opportunity  to introduce each app and share how they could be used within a range of teaching and learning experiences.

Feedback comments from this event  included …

• Loved learning about how easy ADOBE products are to use. Can’t wait to share learning with staff and get students using.
• It’s fantastic to see what is possible with with Adobe products and how easy it is to use them with students.
• Looking at what you can do with the apps was eye opening.

The resources I shared for this event can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe29Oct19

Here are some excerpts from Shantanu Narayen‘s opening keynote presentation at the 2019 Adobe Max conference.

Shantanu has been the CEO of Adobe since 2005.

Adobe’s mission is simple and powerful. We want to change the world through digital experiences. And [for over three decades] it is this purpose that has guided everything we do we.

With Creative Cloud we are unleashing creativity, giving anyone anywhere the tools to express themselves.

All of Adobe’s 22,000 employees have a singular focus on empowering everyone to create experiences that inspire, transform industries and move the world forward.

We are in the golden age of creativity. Story telling has never been more rich thanks to the innate desire to communicate and the  power we have today with digital technology. It is the foundation of arts of culture, its critical to education and entertainment. And it powers societal change as well as drives economic powers and breakthroughs. It doesn’t matter if you are a designer an engineer, a student or a business owner, creativity today is a fundamental skill and at the core, creativity is actually all about making emotional connections.

Digital literacy helps students see things in a whole new light

Amazing things happen at the intersection of imagination and technology. Adobe aims to empower all voices from creative professionals to students, astronauts to office workers. We need to make accessible the power of rich media so anyone can tell their story.

Adobe is pushing the boundaries of technology to give you new ways to express your vision. Voice, AR, VR, 3D, animation, video, Photoshop, illustrations, screen design. Adobe is innovating to make the world your canvas.

Meeting Shantanu at Max 2018

During Max 2019, Adobe announced the next generation of Creative Cloud – a release of faster and more powerful products across multiple surfaces. This includes

• Adobe Photoshop on iPad,
• Adobe Fresco now on Microsoft Surface,
• Adobe Aero (a new authoring tool for creating in augmented reality)
• A previews of Adobe Illustrator on iPad, and
• the new Photoshop Camera

Adobe also released updates to Lightroom, Premiere Pro, After Effects, InDesign and Adobe XD. They also annonced new Adobe Sensei (AI) powered features such as Auto Reframe in Premiere Pro, Object Selection in Photoshop, Auto Tone in Photoshop Camera and Live Brushes in Fresco.

More information:
Read the blog post: Launching a New Version of Creative Cloud for a New Era of Creativity

Over 50 students and 5 teachers from Aurora College visited Adobe’s Sydney office on Wednesday 30th October for an Adobe Day.

Aurora College is a NSW Department of Education Virtual Selective High School that provides students in rural and remote areas the opportunity to study specialist subjects using the latest technology.

Twice a year the students from all over NSW come together for a city experience and on  this day, after a visit to the Opera House, they spent the afternoon at Adobe.

The focus of this Adobe Day was introducing  the students to Character Animator as a tool to enhance their presentations as well as Adobe Spark.

At one stage, the students had the challenge to work with a partner to produce a short creative film about their passions in 15 minutes. For many students this would be an impossible task but being a selective school, Aurora College is dominated by very talented students and so the results were very impressive. The fact that they  picked up Adobe Spark video so easily also helped.

Over 80 teachers from Sydney’s western suburbs registered for an Inject Creativity into your classroom event at the wonderful Bossley Park High School held on the afternoon of Tuesday October 29.

The session began with a series of Adobe software tasters for the classroom featuring Charter Animator, Spark Video & Spark Post.

Then the participants had a choice of three breakout workshop sessions that provided a deeper dive into a a number of Adobe applications. These were run by Adobe Education Leader Brent Kent, Adobe Campus Leader Michael Turner and myself.

Some of the feedback comments from this event included the following:

• I was overwhelmed about the powerful apps in Adobe Creative Suite. I was happy to learn about Premiere Rush, Premiere Pro, Adobe Spark, etc and how they be used to create amazing projects/products.
• Really enjoyable because of the style of presentation involving the audience. Heaps of websites to help with further study for students.
• Sharing the applications with year 7 students to undertake practical work using the applications
• The workshop was very engaging and informative. Can’t wait to use it!
• InDesign workshop was great
• The video session was mind blowing
• This workshop provided practical and engaging strategies to incorporate Adobe software into my teaching.
• A highlight was learning about software such as adobe spark, rush and premiere
• Great informative useful workshop
• A highlight was seeing how to use Spark since we can access it for free on phones. It was easy to see how we could use it with little set up.
• A hi light was learning new things about programs that I haven’t used for a while as well as new programs I didn’t know about
• Tim was able to give us a simple run down of a lot of the applications
• InDesign really got me interested.
• A highlight was discovering a range of tools to make more effective resources
• A highlight was seeing how the tools and software capabilities have improved efficiency for users. Loved Spark, Character Animate and Rush!!
• Great event, high engagement
• Engaging presenter and effective modelling of different programs
• I was really impressed by InDesign. I have never used it previously. I am now determined to learn it and use it.

My resources from this event  can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe29Oct19

Prior to this Inject Creativity event with the teachers, I had the pleasure spend a couple of hours with a group of  talent Year 7 students from Bossley Park High School, introducing them to the Adobe Spark tools and Character Animator.

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.