The 2019 Nth American AEL Summit took place from July 22 to 25 at the Adobe office in San Francisco with about 100 Adobe Education Leaders from all over the globe.

Meet some of the AELs and what they were looking forward to at the start of this event …

Clara Galán, Adobe’s Global Community Lead, K-12 & Higher Education, welcomed everyone to official start the Summit. Have a listen to her address …

Tacy Trowbridge, Adobe’s Global Education Programs Lead, then addressed the educators and shared about some of the recent changes Adobe has made to their education teams.

Adobe’s new Global Head of Education, Henry Hsiao introduced himself to the AELs and the wider education community with the following address that shared his vision  for Adobe in Education.

Highlights of Day 1

Creative Catalyst Talks

The following Creative Catalyst Talks from various AELs were a highlight of the Summit.

Teaching Game Production & Creating Games for Social Good

by Andy Phelps

Andy is a Professor of Film and Media Arts at the American University Game Lab. He is soon to start another position as Professor of Human Interface Technology, at the College of Engineering at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch New Zealand.

Are  Your  Question Marks Big Enough?  Why Epic Projects are Worth the Risk

by Lisa Gottfried and one of her students from New Tech High, California.

Lisa Gottfried has taught CTE Digital Design at New Tech High for 6 years and is an Adjunct Professor at Touro University in Innovative Education. In 2017/18, Lisa was recognised internationally for Innovation in Education with Blog Portfolios through HundrED.org and also won the “Innovation in the Classroom” grant from California Educational Research Association. She is also currently a professor for Touro University in the Innovative Ed. Masters program and is a proud member of the Adobe Education Leaders group.

Inspire Your  School Community: Building The Leaders of Tomorrow

by Georgina Dean

Georgina is  the Primary Google Learning Management Systems Coordinator at Modern English School Cairo. She has been the holder of the Excellence in Education Award for the past 3 consecutive years, and always looking for new ways to raise the bar in education by inspiring digital integration. She is about to start a new chapter in her education journal in Amman, Jordan.

TeachMeet: Ignite Creative Catalyst Talks

We also enjoyed hearing the following  Ignite Creative Catalyst Talks from the AEL community.

Fostering creativity through storytelling

by Michael Hernandez

Sparking Creativity

by David Dodds

Designing Adobe CC Micro-Lessons to Share with Faculty & Students: What & Why

by Shelley Rodrigo

Why what you are  doing in school might be under threat

by Ian Usher

What is Instructional Design

by Deila Bumgardner

Be Pro-active

by Leonard Barbar

Understanding what ‘Flash’ has become when dealing with the modern, open web

by Joseph Labrecque

Create… Space.

by Kelly Kermode

Integarted Learning Strategist

Creativity and Metacognition

by Phil Badham

Educational and Creative Technologies Consultant

You can see the above videos and lots more on the CreateEdu TV 2019 Nth American AEL Summit Vimeo channel

Look back at past AEL Summit videos …

• 2018 APAC Summit
• 2018 Nth American Summit
• 2017 APAC Summit
• 2017 Nth American Summit
• 2016 APAC Summit
• 2016 Nth American Summit
• 2015 APAC Summit
• 2015 Nth American Summit
• 2014 Nth American Summit

On Wednesday July 17, I worked with a group of academics and support staff at the Monash University Education Faculty to enhance their knowledge of a number of Adobe applications and how they can be used to enhance teaching & learning.

We started by playing with Spark Post, with a particular focus on the new animated sticker feature on iOS & Android.

We then progressed to Spark Video and Premiere Rush to show how video is so easily accessible these days as a communication tool.

Then we spent some time playing with Character Animator and work-shopped the ease of real-time animation and how it can be used by academics and students.

It was great to catch up with my friend Roland Gesthuizen who took the above images and is now planning some wider engagement with Monash staff & students for later in 2019.

About 200 NSW Department of Education teachers from the Hunter Valley region took part in the InteractED event at The University of Newcastle on Wednesday July 3.

InteractED is a series of events run by the NSW DoE T4L team around NSW with an aim to enhance the use of digital technologies throughout NSW Government Schools. So far this year, Adobe, Google, Apple and Microsoft have been involved with the InteractED events in Sydney, Wagga Wagga, Wollongong and this one in Newcastle. Later in the year, InteractED will hit Coffs Harbour and Dubbo.

This event began with a great keynote presentation from Chris Betcher from Google. Chris is also an Adobe Education Leader and a well known education thought leader in Australia. He flipped his keynote by using Google’s collaboration tools to get the audience to to contribute most of the content.

I was up on stage next to do a keynote sessions titled Creativity is not an option, it’s an absolute necessity. I used this opportunity to share some of the key themes from Sir Ken Robinson’s messaging at EduTech this year such as:

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Then we spent some time looking at this question …

I also provided the teachers with some information on how they can enhance digital creativity within their curriculum areas with the help of their Adobe products.

Following the keynote, I ran the following three workshop sessions …

Feedback from the organisers …

Tim I love the way you provide the why in the keynote and then the how in your workshops…the hands on demonstrations and using participants to present is such Gold!!!

Special thank you to Mark Greentree, Jo Cohen and the T4L team for putting on such a great event.

On June 29 & 30, about 200 Queensland educators attended Creativity 2019, QSITE’s annual two-day conference at the Griffith University Gold Coast campus.

I had the pleasure to facilitate a Character Animator workshop on day 1 with a range of teachers from primary & secondary teachers.

Rob the Robot helped me with this session.

To start day 2, I presented a keynote session titles Creativity in not an option, it is a necessity.

All my resources for this event can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-QSITE-GC19

About 4.5K creatives and marketing professionals attended the 2019 Adobe Symposium on June 27 & 28 at the Sydney ICC with thousands more watching live from all over the globe.

As it says on the Symposium website it is about evolving experiences. It’s not only where experience makers are born, but where they go to grow.

At this event, Adobe’s three clouds (Creative, Document & Experience) combined for an exhibition of data management and creativity. CIOs and graphic designers from all over APAC gathered together to learn more about how and who Adobe is a leader in digital transformation for many business and organisations.

Suzanne Steele hosted the keynote session at the start of day 1. Suzanne is Adobe’s Managing Director for ANZ.

One of the highlights was the keynote from the amazing Holly Ransom.

Holly Ransom is the CEO of Emergent, a company that specialises in change management disruptive strategy and building the capacity of leaders. Emergent, has worked with the following companies: Microsoft, Virgin, INPEX, Europcar, KPMG, & the AIS, as well as local, state and federal government departments globally.

Holly was the youngest person to be named in Australia’s ‘100 Most Influential Women’ in 2012. In 2016, she was listed by Sir Richard Branson as one of his dream dinner guests, and in 2017 was Sir Richard’s nominee for Wired Magazine’s ‘Smart List’ of future game changers to watch. In 2018, she was personally requested by Barack Obama to moderate an hour-long conversation with during his only engagement in Australia.

Adobe’s Vice President of Marketing for Asia Pacific, Alvaro del Pozo shared about the opportunity for marketers to design and deliver exceptional experiences.

Steve Hammond, Adobe’s Sr. Director, APAC Experience Business, was involved with a number of main stage presentations throughout day 1. Steve recently moved with his family from the United States to Australia to lead the Experience Business for the region.

Alex Amado flew in from the US to be part of this year’s Symposium event. As VP of Experience Marketing at Adobe, Alex Amado is responsible for creating and delivering compelling experiences that reflect Adobe’s brand which was recently ranked the 56th most valuable global brand by Interbrand.

Alex interviewed Julian Hamilton and Kim Moyes from The Presets, who recently collaborated with Adobe on a Lyrical Masters challenge for creative types to design 100 lyrics from their song ‘Tools Down’ using Adobe Creative Cloud software. Click here to find out more.

The Presets have been recognised globally for their dynamic live performances, playing hundreds of shows domestically and internationally, including key slots at renowned international music festivals such as Glastonbury, Coachella, SXSW, Exit, Melt and Splendour In The Grass.

Another highlight was the SNEAKS session featuring one of Australia’s most well known comedians/actors Julia Morris.

SNEAKS is all about showing new inventions from the Adobe Lab that may end up part of or on their own as an Adobe app.

Click here to see a full list of all the presenters at Adobe Symposium 2019.

Here are some more images from both days.

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On Wednesday June 26, Adobe hosted their first Educator’s Day as a pre-conference event in advance of Adobe Symposium 2019. This involved about 25 educators from a range of universities and TAFEs around Australia including:

• The University of Sydney;
• TAFE NSW;
• The University of New South Wales;
• Macquarie University;
• Western Sydney University;
• TAFE Queensland;
• Monash University; &
• The University of Queensland.

Adobe Educator’s Day was based around two main activities, the Spark Challenge & the Rush Challenge. The Spark Challenge was based around creating a Spark Page that featured at least one Spark Post and one Spark Video. The theme for this challenge was  – Creativity in Education.

The aim of the Rush Challenge was encourage each educator to work with a group of people who they have never worked with before to create a 2min video story based on the topic How Adobe helps me teach.

Here are some screen shots from the various stories that were produced …

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The other highlight of Educator’s Day was the appearance of Adobe product managers and experts each doing a 20min session on what is new in their favorite products. A number of these presenters were out from the US for Adobe Symposium.

Hoyle Wang from the Adobe XD team in San Francisco presented new features in Adobe Experience Design.

Jon Barrie, Adobe Video guru, presented about Adobe Rush.

The amazing Julieanne Kost (Principal Digital Imaging Evangelist for Adobe) presented some great features of Photoshop & Lightroom.

Check out her blog via – https://www.jkost.com/

Alwyn Hunt gave a great presentation about how Adobe is move full steam ahead into the world of 3D texturing with their new product acquisition called Substance by Adobe.

It was also great to have Adobe Education Leader (Emeritus) Chris Betcher join us for a demo on linking a new Google product called Google Earth Studio with Premiere Pro.

Here are some other images of the day …

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Special thank you to the Adobe team Sasha McQuaide, Mark Strain, Graham Abbey, Abbey Williams, Jerry Wong, Jane Chen and Emma Li for helping to make this day such a success.

Also thanks to the following Adobe Education Leaders and Campus Leaders who were involved – Wing Yiu, Craig Daalmeijer-Power, Mike McPherson, Kev Lavery, Brett Kent, Jason Carthew, Philip Saldais & Chris Betcher

On the afternoon of Friday July 21, I ran an Adobe CC overview session featuring an Adobe Spark Workshop with a group of academics and PhD Students from The University of Adelaide.

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My resources for this event can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-UniAdelaide19