My final Big Day In event for 2016 was in Brisbane at The University of Queensland on Wednesday 8th June.

About 500 QLD students from a wide range of schools listened to representatives from a wide range of IT companies. I particularly enjoyed hearing from Anna Emmerson, Site Reliability Engineer at Google. A local girl, studying at St Peter’s in Brisbane and UQ, Anna was able to encourage the students (especially the girls) to work hard so that they too can potentially work at a company like Google.

It was great having Richard Turner-Jones with me for this event. His demos were very popular.

Richard Turner-Jones (Adobe Solution Consultant based in Brisbane) and I had the pleasure of running a series of workshops for students and teachers at Marymount College on Queensland’s beautiful Gold Coast.

Richard focused on Adobe animation solutions, including the new Character Animator product which came with the 2015 version of After Effects. This software became world famous a few weeks ago when the makers of The Simpsons used it to go live to air in the US at the end of an episode. Click here to find out more.

I showed the students a mix of the Adobe Spark tools, Photoshop & Premiere Pro.

In the afternoon, after school, a number of teachers from the Gold Coast region as well as teachers from Marymount College came together to meet with Richard & myself for a professional learning session on Adobe tools in the classroom.

It was great catching up with Rose Duggan (AEL) and two of her colleagues from Merrimac State High School.

Special thank you to Katrina Nicholson from Marymount College for organising this great day of Adobe in Education activities.

On Saturday 4th June I had the pleasure of presenting at Bradfield Senior College’s Creative Careers Day which was part of the 2016 Vivid light, Music & Ideas festival in Sydney.

Finishing a recorded panel session to a live audience at the start of the event.

Meredith Melville-Jones (Director of Bradfield College) and her team have set up this event to provide an opportunity for students  to connect with experts from the creative industry to discover where the jobs are, what skills are needed and valued and the steps they should take to forge a creative career.

After being part of the Human Library, where I was placed in a room and participants could come and ask questions, I ran a workshop titled Video Literacy. This involved having small groups of participants produce a video story about the event using Adobe Premiere Clip.

Premiere Clip is great because it is available for both iOS & Android devices and it’s really simple to used as a tool to film and editing a short video story.  Here is a sample of what one of the groups achieved in just 15 minutes of filming and editing …

http://premiereclip.adobe.com/videos/7oC7aCTDZ_v

It was delightful to meet with about 300 students in our Nation’s capital today at the 2016 Canberra Big Day In at the University of Canberra.

Designed by students for students, The BiG Day In is a series of IT careers events throughout Australia, sponsored by Adobe.

Throughout this year, there have been eight events so far with two more to come. By the end of this year a total of 161 speakers, 165 exhibitors & 69 organisations will have been involved in delivering events nationally involving over 6,500 students exploring careers in technology.

It was great to hear from Professor Lawrence Prachett, Dean of Faculty of Business, Government & Law at the University of Canberra, welcome the students to his university.

Mrs Meegan Fitzharris, ACT Minister for Higher Education, Research & Training also spoke to the students and encouraged them to consider ICT as a career and studying at one of the great universities in ACT.

It was a pleasure assisting two of South Australia’s most active Adobe Campus Leaders Lorraine Nitschke  and Giovanna Iannicelli in the running of the 2016 BETA (Business & Enterprise Teachers Association) Conference in Adelaide on Saturday 28th May.

About 70 teachers from Adelaide, and as far away as Coober Pedy, spent the day at the wonderful Next Generation centre which is part of the Adelaide Oval complex.

It was a pleasure to do the keynote session titled Creativity in Education is no longer an option, it’s an absolute necessity.

I also ran a workshop on Photoshop Tips & Tricks and another one on Adobe InDesign.

Resources that I shared at this event can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via: bit.ly/adobe-beta16

Ben Forta’s finished off his tour of Australia for this year in Brisbane by spending a day with Queensland teachers and students at Clayfield College on Monday 16th May.

We began by spending some time with a group of Year 9 Clayfield students. Ben introduced them to ProjectM (Adobe Spark) and we enjoyed seeing what the girls were are to produce with these digital storytelling tools.

Later in the afternoon, a number of teachers from Clayfield and from around Brisbane joined us for a special professional learning event.

Special thank you to Clayfield College, especially Andrew Russell (Head of Technology) for helping to make this day a great success.

DATTA Vic is Victoria’s teacher professional association for Design & Technology subjects and Ben Forta and I were invited to take part in their conference this year on Friday 13th May.

Ben keynoted the first day of the conference with a great presentation titled The Case for Creativity in the Classroom.

I ran three workshops for theses Design & Technology teachers on Flipped Learning, ePortfolios and a overview of the Adobe Creative Cloud. Resources from both Ben’s keynote and my workshops are available on the Adobn Education Exchange via http://bit.ly/adobe-dattavic16

Ben Forta (Adobe’s Senior Director, Education Initiatives) and I visited Chifley College Senior Campus in Sydney’s west on May 12th, 2016.

The aim of the day was to enhance the student’s video editing skills with Premiere Pro CC. So we used the opportunity of Ben’s visit to Australia for the students to interview him and produce some stories about what was then ProjectM and what is now Adobe Spark.

Here is a video produced by one of the production crews and edited by Casey who had never use Premiere Pro before this opportunity.

Ben Forta at Chifley College, NSW from CreateEDU TV on Vimeo.

Here are some images of the students in action …

Planning their video story

Capturing their footage & still images

Filming the software in action

Interviewing Ben

Editing with Premiere Pro

Ben and I were very impressed with the work achieved by these students, most of whom had never use Premiere Pro before.

Special thanks to Chifley College teacher Andrew O’Brien for organising this special opportunity for his students.

On Wednesday 11th May, The Hon. John Barilaro, MP (NSW Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Skills, and Minister for Small Business) visited the Adobe Sydney office to thank Adobe for being a partner in his NSW Jobs for Tomorrow Scholarships initiative.

(Left to right) Ben Forta (Sr. Director, Education Initiatives), Me, Hon. John Barilaro, Chris Skelton Sr. Director, Enterprise Sales ANZ) & Wayne Weisse (Manager Enterprise Sales)

The Jobs of Tomorrow Scholarships are for NSW students who have skills in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM). From 2016, the NSW Department of Industry are offering 25,000 scholarships over four years.

Adobe is one of many industry partners who are happy to open their doors for some of the scholarship recipients and give them a taste of the IT industry.

It was a pleasure to welcome the Minsiter as well as a number of industry representatives, students, teachers and members of the Adobe Education Community to this event.

The Minister shared about his passion for encouraging students to consider entrepreneurship and turn their skills and passions into a future job.

Ben Forta, who was visiting form the US, also addressed the visitors and shared about some of his experiences working for Adobe for 18 years.

It was great meeting some of the scholarship winners and their teachers.

A personal highlight for me was having AEL Chris Woldhuis and his media crew from Northern Beaches Christian School there to capture the event.

Here are some images of the event…

On Tuesday 11th May, Ben Forta (Adobe’s Senior Director, Education Initiatives) and I visited Roseville College in Sydney to work with a number of Roseville students and staff in the morning, and some visitors in the afternoon.

Ben enjoyed sharing the features of ProjectM (the browser version of Adobe Voice, Slate & Post) to the Year 6 students and seeing what the girls were able to create. ProjectM is still in beta mode but available to try via https://projectm.adobe.com.

At one stage, one of the girls discovered a bug in the program (not unusual with beta software). Ben immediately looked at his watch, worked out that the product team in Seattle would still be in the Adobe office and emailed them. Five minutes later, the bug was fixed. The student was so pleased that she was able to help develop this amazing software.

Here are some images of the Year 6s in action …

Ben went on to work with some senior students and staff while I had the pleasure of working with the Year 2s and 3s, introducing them to Adobe Clip.

Later in the afternoon, a number of teachers and students form around Sydney joined us at Roseville for a special Adobe Education event with Ben. A highlight was a showcase of some of the great Adobe related work being done at Roseville.