I was very saddened to hear about the passing of Sir Ken Robinson this morning after his short battle with cancer.

I had the great pleasure of meeting him on three occasions when he visited Australia for various education events and count him has a major influence in my professional life.

After seeing his 2006 TED Talk Do schools kill creativity I was hooked and have read all of his books and refer to him and his messaging often when I am presenting to teachers.

Sir Ken championed the fight to enhance creativity in education and in all aspects of life. His passion, his words and his influence will live on in all of us who are striving to improve the education system.

I was very much looking forward to working with him later this year where we had booked him to present (online) at Adobe Max.

His memory and his message will live on.

Starting on Friday 14th August and finishing a week later, over 365 students from over 30 universities throughout Australia and New Zealand competed for a special virtual Adobe Creative Jam.

An Adobe Creative Jam event is where students, lecturers, and industry professionals come together to solve real-world issues by designing experiences that bring ideas to life. The virtual Creative Jam LIVE is an online version where thought leaders share a behind-the-scene peek into their processes and projects; meanwhile, teams compete in a tournament that puts their creative skills to the test using Adobe Creative Cloud.

In this case, the iconic Australian company Rip Curl was the industry leader and they provided the following brief – Design a third-party mobile app that encourages local coastal communities to take action and help preserve their own coastal environment.

During the first session, the students were inspired by Mark Flanagan from Rip Curl and then took part in an Adobe XD bootcamp session by Adobe’s own Jason Grant.

The 365 students formed 162 teams and used Adobe XD to create their designs in preparation for the judging during the second session.

202 students from 22 universities completed the challenge and submitted 85 entries.

The judges (Mark Flanagan and Lachlan McNish from Rip Curl as well as Hilary Nemer from Adobe) narrowed down the entries to following top ten entries

First place – Swinburne University

Team: We Met On Zoom App: Lighthouse

Second place – Monash University

Team: Gist App: Waves

Third place – RMIT

Team: Hareharu App: Greenify

Fourth place – Griffith University

Team: Kakooo App: Local Coastal

Fifth place – The University of Sydney

Team: Team Iggly App: Conservation by the Coast

Other finalists …

Griffith University

Team:Cuddly – Their App

Swinburne University
Team: Ham Kat App: Stingray Bay

RMIT
Team: JTAC App: WildPost

Swinburne
Team: Team RAE.J App: Beach Please

UNSW
Team: Turtle Rollers App: WaveMakers

Over 3000 teenagers (mainly girls) from Vietnam applied for about 750 places at the 2020 Summer Camp run by the  Pacific Links Foundation  called Camp Connect 2020 where I had the pleasure of running a set of six Adobe Spark workshops.

The theme of the camp was Building a Brighter Tomorrow and the mission of the Pacific Links Foundation is to support the sustainable development of Vietnamese communities & the enrichment of their cultural heritage

Over the past 15 years, this Foundation has produced some outstanding results.

I spent much of the weekend (on Zoom) working with about 120 Vietnamese teenagers who are risk of being trafficked. My repeated workshop was based on teaching them Spark Post & Spark Video to help develop some digital skills in the hope that they will stay at school and find employment.

The objective of this camp are to:

■ To build a solid foundation for a bright future
■ To promote personal development by strengthening self-awareness
■ To introduce new paths and directions for the future

Students who did not have access to devices or the Internet were looked after by a range of companies and the camp was run by over 100 volunteers providing a total of 270 workshops via Zoom run by 130 presenters from around the globe.

It was a delight to be involved and provide some new digital skills and opportunities to these wonderful young people.

I enjoyed sharing some of my past Vietnam experiences when I took a group of students on a 2009 World Challenge trip to paint a school for the blind in Hanoi. This became the topic of my Spark Post while the students were encouraged to create posters based on their passions.

Today is my Grandmother’s 100th birthday. Myra France Wilson, née
Lazarus (Nan), was born on 17th August 1920 just after the Spanish Flu pandemic.

When she was a teenager, she looked after the family horse Dolly that use to deliver milk around the streets of East Brunswick in inner Melbourne. She remembers when horses outnumber cars on the streets of Melbourne.

She grew up through the depression of the 1930s, married and had her first child (my mum) during World War Two, raised four children, looked after 11 grandchildren (including me) and 15 great grandchildren. Book-ended between two world-wide pandemics, Nan has lived an amazing life.

She looked after my sisters and me when both our parents were establishing their careers. She helped me learn the 7 times table when I was in Grade 4. She taught me how to bake. She taught me how to be patient and she showed me the value of unconditional love and the golden rule.

When she lost her husband in the mid 80s, she spent a lot of time at our house in the suburbs and school holidays were spent at her house at the beach in Dromana. When she stopped driving, I use to regularly take her to Dromana. When I was doing my Doctoral thesis, we spent many weekends and school holiday periods together at Dromana. I would be writing from 6 AM to 6 PM and she would cook for me and keep me company.

When she turned 90, I took long service leave and my daughter and I flew Nan up to Alice Springs and we hired a campervan to show her Uluru. It was such a special time for the three of us.

Nan is currently being very well looked after in aged care which sadly means we can’t see her on her big day because of the Melbourne corona virus lock-down. But we will be thinking about her and connecting via Skype and phone calls.

Happy Birthday Nan. We are so proud of you and love you very much.

Hi Folks

Have a look at this week’s Inject Creativity Live chat-show and deeper-dive show featuring Adrian Bruch from SAE Creative Institute in Melbourne and Paul McClean from New Zealand.

Click here for the Deeper-dive event

• Chapter 1 – Introductions
• Chapter 2 – Adrian Bruch – The Adobe Pen Tool
  
• Chapter 3 – APAC Summit promo (http://bit.ly/adobe-edu-summit20)
• Chapter 4 – Paul McClean – Stock taking a school’s creative-state.
• Chapter 5 – Resources & takeaways

Join us live for the next show on Wednesday 19th August at 6.30 PM (AEST) with special guest, Melbourne Primary Teacher and Adobe Education Leader Joel Aarons as well as Film maker and Social Media Lead at ESPN Jamie van Leeuwen

Podcast

As Victorian teachers & students go back to schooling from home, universities around the country continue to do the same and an increase in blended learning becomes the new normal around the rest of country, the Adobe Distance Learning Resources site has become more important than ever. Take special note of the:

• Higher Ed projects that make distance learning engaging, &
• K-12 Projects that make distance learning engaging

Inject Creativity Live

This month, we celebrate the 25^th episode of the Inject Creativity Live show for 2020.

We recommend you keep Wednesday evenings free and join the average of 97 teachers who have join us live (or watched the recording soon after) each week throughout June and July.

Here is some feedback from recent episodes …

• The entire event was AWESOME. Thank you.
• These sessions are always entertaining, instructional and fun! Provides opportunities for upgrading my skills and sharing with my colleagues, students and parents.
• These are very important professional learning sessions, the challenge task encourages listeners to feel confident in learning new digital materials to broadening their professional and creativity skills. Additionally, I really appreciate being able to claim an hours accreditation from our professional NSW body- NESA.

University + Rip Curl Creative Jam LIVE with Adobe XD

To all University & TAFE teachers. Encourage your students to represent your University and TAFE in an Adobe Creative Jam LIVE event alongside other talented student teams across Australia and New Zealand to win prizes and bragging rights! Students will solve a design challenge as issued by the Rip Curl design team in a fast-paced tournament from August 14 to August 21, and present their solutions to design experts. Your students could win VISA gift cards worth up to $500 AUD! Direct your students to learn more and register at https://cjam.in/ripcurl

Adobe Creative Educators Program

In July, Adobe launched the Adobe Creative Educators program which is aimed to help teachers continue to develop their digital communication and creativity skills. Designed for educators in every subject area and sector, members will receive free lessons and resources to spark creativity with students, in addition to special events with other like-minded educators and the Adobe team. Encourage your colleagues to join.

The new Creativity for All course on the Adobe Education Exchange is a prerequisite for the Adobe Creative Educators Program, especially if you were not already an active member of the AEL or ACL program. This free course is about understanding the power of creativity, why it matters, and how to leverage it in your teaching helps prepare students with 21st Century skills they need to succeed.

All things iOS and Adobe in Education

On Thursday 10^th September at 6.30 PM, we are running a webinar titled All Things iOS and Adobe in education. The aim of this event is to share the value of the main Adobe iOS applications being used by teachers to enhance creativity and digital literacy in classrooms around the globe.

This online event is for Apple Distinguished Educators, Apple Professional Learning Specialists, Adobe Education Leaders, Adobe Creative Educators and those who are considering the Adobe Creative Educators program – who teach with iOS devices.

Click here to find out more and register.

APAC Adobe for Education Summit

The 2020 APAC Adobe Education Summit will be held as an online event from September 29 to October 1. Being a holiday period for most educators in ANZ, this event is about digital creativity for all areas and levels of education. The theme will be Improving Education Following COVID-19. Please encourage your colleagues and wider education networks to register for the September 30 sessions that are open to all educators.

Digital learning and Teaching Victoria

Adobe is an industry partner with Digital learning and Teaching Victoria (DLTV).

Click here to access the current DLTV Member’s Journal, due to COVID they are providing it to educators as a free resource focused on remote learning.  Take special note of the article on pages 16-19.

DLTV are also offering free membership and DigiTech Community Grants just visit their website

All DLTV’s webinars are free and available at their YouTube channel

This EduChat interview is with Adrian Bruch, media teacher Department Coordinator: Animation and Design, SAE Creative Institute – Melbourne.

Podcast

Vodcast

This EduChat and more can be found in the EduChat site.

Adrian will be the special guest at the Inject Creativity Live event on August 12

Have a look at this week’s Inject Creativity Live Chat-show with Dr Max Schleser and join us live this coming Wednesday at 6.30 PM (AEST).

Click here for the Deeper-dive event

• Chapter 1 – Introductions
• Chapter 2 – Dr Max Schleser – Premiere Rush
• Chapter 3 – APAC Summit promo (http://bit.ly/adobe-edu-summit20)
• Chapter 4 – Dr Max Schleser – Premiere Pro (360 video editing)
• Chapter 5 – Resources & takeaways

The concept of STEM in education started to become a serious policy consideration globally soon after the 2011 State of the Union address in the US when President Barack Obama called for a ramping up of technological innovation to stay competitive with other nations, encourage economic growth, preserve national security and increase ingenuity (Lee, 2012).

In 2015, the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced the ideas boom with the launch of the National Innovation and Science Agenda which aimed to drive smart ideas that create business growth, local jobs and global success. This led to then national STEM School Education Strategy 2016–2026, which placed a focus on foundation skills, developing mathematical, scientific and digital literacy, and promoting problem solving, critical analysis and creative thinking skills.

I was teaching secondary IT and Multimedia at the start of this new STEM led evolution in education and one of my responsibilities was to help teachers in other subject areas integrate ICT into their curriculum. What impressed me most about this initiative was that policy makers were encouraging subjects to integrate and come up with units of work involving a team approach to teaching linking mathematics, science and IT teachers.

To me, this made a lot of sense because my first degree in the early 1990s was in Primary Teaching and I was taught to teach with a holistic approach where teaching English often also involved teaching geography, a bit of history, some science and even some mathematics. When I became a secondary teacher, I was amazed as to how siloed things were. There was very little integration between subject areas and students were learning totally different concepts in each and every class with no common themes or continuity in the learning.

The STEM education movement supports moving away from segmented content areas, emphasizing technology to connect the subjects, and relating teaching to the outside world. STEM impresses 21st-century skills acquisition so that students gain proficiency in collaboration, questioning, problem-solving, and critical thinking. All crucial skills for the future workplace (Gunn, 2020).

A technology that connects all STEM areas is digital image manipulation. Scientists, Technologists, Engineers and Mathematicians need to be able to communicate efficiently using a range of visual media and the best image manipulation software in the world is Adobe Photoshop.

This year we celebrated Photoshop’s 30^th birthday. It has been around a long time and new features get accessed and refined constantly. I often reassure teachers that they don’t need to be an expert with an app like Photoshop before exposing it to their students. In fact, I don’t think I have ever met anyone who is an actual expert in Photoshop. Not even the people who make Photoshop know everything about it.

One really helpful tool within Photoshop for STEM teachers (and any teacher) is the Save for Web feature. It is the best way to compress large image files down to a manageable size for online while still keeping them looking as good as the original.

Most images from a smartphone or DSLR camera are too large to communicate online. Some can be between 10 & 20 MB but to work well online, they should be under 200 KB. Here are the main steps to compress images for online use with Photoshop.

1 – File > Open > select image

2 – File > Export > Save for Web

3 – Make sure the Preset is on JPEG Medium

4 – Change the Image Size width to 1280 px for landscape images or 960 px for portrait images (the height should change automatically) then click Save and give your file a new name and location.

Click here to see an EduTip video tutorial on this process.

Click here for more Photoshop tutorials and the check out how it is being used in classrooms across the globe via the Adobe Education Exchange

Join the new free Adobe Creative Educators program and get involved with an amazing professional learning community.

References

Gunn, Jennifer (2020),  The Evolution of STEM and STEAM in the U.S.

Lee, Jane J (2012), “Obama’s Budget Shuffles STEM Education Deck”. American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Have a look at last week’s Inject Creativity Live Chat-show and join us this coming Wednesday at 6.30 PM (AEST).