About 4000 Adobe employees from around the globe have gathered this week at the Aria Resort in Las Vegas, California for the Adobe World Wide Sales Conference 2018.

Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s CEO set the scene for the event, sharing his vision for Adobe in 2018.

This was a unique opportunity for representatives from all areas of the company and all parts of world to meet together, share and learn from each other.

It was lovely to catch up with Tacy Trowbridge, Adobe’s Global Education Programs Lead and meet face to face for the first time Adobe’s new Global Community Lead Clara  Galan.

Another highlight for me was the main stage presentation by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who have provided the Adobe Creative Cloud for all of their students. Have a look at this slide outlining all the departments and units of study who now work with Adobe software …

Check this clip …

One of the other big themes from the conference was the increasing development of Adobe Sensei (artificial intelligence & machine learning). Check the following slide that lists the current ways Sensei is working with Adobe applications.

Here are some highlight images from the event and Vegas …

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On Tuesday 5th December, I had the pleasure of running two Digital literacy workshops with Year 9 students at Wilderness School in Adelaide, South Australia.

Wilderness prides itself on being dedicated to understanding and meeting the differing needs of girls and young women in each phase of their development from childhood through adolescence to young adulthood.

I was a special guest for a week of activities based on encouraging the girls to develop entrepreneurial skills. The first workshop was based on video production with Adobe Premiere Pro and the second session on based on promoting them selves and their work through the Adobe Spark products.

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It was a pleasure to be one of the keynote presenters at the recent 2017 CreateWorld Conference at Griffith University.

CreateWorld features a wide range of academic and technical presenters from the education and industry sectors. It features keynotes, panel sessions, hypotheticals, hands-on technical workshops, and regular presentation sessions. It is aimed specifically at teachers, practitioners, academics, research teams, technical staff and students who use Apple technology in education and across the digital arts.

Besides the keynote, Adobe Solution Consultant Jane Chen and I ran a series of workshops based predominately in the use of Adobe’s mobile apps and how they link with the Adobe Creative Cloud.

The following gallery on self portraits came from Jane’s workshop on Adobe Draw.

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On the 29th November, a group of Year 4 students from Cromer Public School and a group of Year 9s from Northern Beaches Secondary College, Cromer Campus visited the Adobe Sydney office for an Adobe Day to became journalists for the day.

The Year 4 students worked well with the Year 9 students in small groups with an aim to produce digital stories related to Adobe as a company.

They worked with a range of Adobe’s video and online production tools to produce their stories and had a taste of what it is like to be a journalist. They worked with Adobe Premiere Pro, Premiere Elements, Spark Post and Spark Page.

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On Friday 24th November, a group of media students from Sylvania High School in NSW visited Adobe’s Sydney office for an Adobe Day focused on enhancing their video production skills.

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On Thursday 23rd November, Hilltop Road Public School in Sydney’s west hosted another very successful Big Day In Junior event for NSW.

Hundreds of Year 5 & 6 students from Sydney’s western suburbs gathered together to learn from IT industry experts about a wide range of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Mathematics) concepts.

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Special thank you to the Australian Computer Society Foundation, Hilltop Road Public School and all the IT reps, teachers and students who helped to make this event such a success.

A video about this event is on the way.

The Adobe Have a Voice Showcase was held on Wednesday 22nd November at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) in Melbourne.

This Showcase was a celebration of students achievements throughout the 2017 Adobe Have a Voice Project (HAV). The aim of this program was to provide Victorian students in Years 4 to 9 with an opportunity to have a voice about something important to them and enhance their 21st century communication and creativity skills.

16 schools registered for the project early in 2017 with 8 schools and about 115 students successfully contributing 33 projects to the showcase.

Here are some of the projects that were shown on the big screen …

The True History of Technology by – Tim, Luca, RJ & Charlie

Graffiti and its Impact by Simran, Lyla, Luis

Life Below Water by Bella, Abby, Lily, Alexi, Abi, Ollie, Kiara, Lily, Hannah, Leo, Leo, Tom, Tily & Ginger

Make the Difference by Lachlan & Jesse

War and Peace by Esther & Daniel

We’re all different, yet the same by Ryan & Jayden

The following two posters by Ryan & Jayden used Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to produce a message about tolerance titled We’re all different, yet the same

This digital art work by Mary & Tamara is a mock documentary film poster that explores the hardship suffered by young women and body image. Click here for a higher res version.

The following Blackburn High videos are rated PG

CLOSED DOORS by Anthony & Tess

Our Generation of Anxiety by Tess & Katie

Witness by Michael, Sebastian, Anthony, Jay, Francesca & Stefanie

The Environment Problem by Cloud, Bonnie & Casey

Reuse by Nae Koe, December & Roqya

Save our Planet’s Water by Gay Nay & Lwe Wah’K Paw

Mangroves by Hayley & Jackson

Our Waste by Deeanna, Akaila & Maddy

More to come …

The first ever Big Day In Junior for Queensland was held at Grand Avenue State School on Tuesday 21st November.

This event was organised by the Australian Computer Society Foundation and involved 100s of Year 4 to 6 Queensland students progressing through a range of STEM & STEAM related activities.

It is always a pleasure to be involved in a Big Day In event. I spent the day rotating students through an introduction to Adobe Spark Post with a number of the classes. They were encouraged to create a digital poster about there favourite STEAM component (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts or Mathematics).

The following images share some of the outcomes …

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St Mary’s College in Adelaide was the venue for a series of Adobe in Education events on the 16th & 17th November.

Adobe Character Animator, Premiere Pro, Premiere Clip and Adobe Spark were the most popular workshops during a 3 hour professional learning session that was registered by over 30 educators from around Adelaide.

The next morning, I had the pleasure of addressing all the St Mary’s Year 8 students at the start of a special day of IT related activities run by a number of local IT professionals.

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Special thank you to Adobe Campus Leader and St Mary’s teacher Giovanna Iannicelli for organising this special program. Also thanks to Adobe Campus Leader Lorraine Nitschke for her assistance with the Premiere Pro workshops.

Victoria’s first Big Day In Junior was held in Melbourne on Wednesday 15th November at Bentleigh West Primary School. This involved 100s of Year 5 & 6 students and teachers from Bentleigh West and surrounding schools spending the day doing workshop activities with industry representatives from a range of STEM and STEAM areas.

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. STEAM adds Arts into STEM, some argue a fundamental addition.

One of the activities the students rotated through was making lights for 3rd world countries through the SolarBuddy project. SolarBuddy is a charity aimed at ending the cycle of energy poverty that affects many communities across the globe. They run programs for Australian children focused on energy poverty, renewable energy and global citizenship.

Joel Aarons (Adobe Education Leader & Media Arts teacher at Bentleigh West PS) ran a series of design sessions with iPads based on the use of the free Adobe Sketch app. Joel’s main message is that anyone can draw and be creative with drawing when shown how and provided with a template to use.

The F1in School program is always a highlight of these events. The students enjoy testing their reaction skills and learning how F1 racing producing so many technical innovations.

Other workshops and activities were provided by the following IT representatives …

• CSIRO
• Westpac
• TechnologyOne
• WiseTech Global
• TATA Consultancy Services
• Microsoft
• UTS
• Animal Logic
• Atlassian
• Maker’s Empire
• Apple
• Adobe
• The Formula 1 STEM Challenge
• SolarBuddy.org
• Code Club

The Big Day In Junior is a great example of how industry and education can work really well together to help engage and inspire students. Stay tuned for an update of the Brisbane & Sydney version as well as some videos from these days coming soon to https://vimeo.com/createedu