On Friday 22nd November, I had the pleasure of working with about 50 media students at St Helena Secondary College to help them develop their video editing skills with Adobe Premiere Pro.

Before we got stuck into tips & tricks with Premiere Pro, some of the students helped me demonstrate the value of Adobe Character Animator and the new Adobe Aero as additional video tools. Character Animator is a quick way to create animated puppets for a video story and Aero is a great was to create 3D augmented realty video experiences.

It was a great pleasure to work with these talented students as they commence the VCE Media Year 12 subject for 2020.

On Friday 15th November, It was my great pleasure to again be invited to hand out some of the graduation awards for the Swinburne University Screen Production Course.

The highlight of this event is always viewing the best of the graduating short films.

As one of the most sort after media courses in  Australia, Adobe is very proud to support the Film and screen production at Swinburne University.

Special thanks to Adobe Education Leader Max Schleser for inviting me to this event.

Tips & Tricks on Adobe Character Animator was the topic for the first of a series of new Adobe in Education Vodcasts I am hosting that went to air as a pilot on Thursday 14th November with co-host Craig Daalmeijer-Power (Adobe Education Leader from TAFE NSW).

The next Vodcast is scheduled for Wednesday February 5, 2020 (7.30PM AEST). The topic will be Adobe Creative Cloud Overview and will be hosted by Ali Blackwell (Adobe Education Leader from Melville Senior High School, Perth).

Join us live if you can and share this with your colleagues & wider network of educators.

On Wednesday 13th November, I had the pleasure to present to the student finalists of the 2019 SAE ATOM awards.

The ATOM Awards have been celebrating the best of Australian and New Zealand screen content from the education sector since 1982. These awards feature over 30 different categories covering everything from feature-length films, television programs, animation, short fiction, educational resources, and new media including web series, apps and games.

It was great to see students from all over Australia and New Zealand involved in this event and present at this ceremony.

My  job was to announce the winners of the 2019 ATOM 1 Minute Film Competition.

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