On Wednesday August 26, a group of talented Year 5 students from Gosford Public School in NSW got up very early this morning and took the train into the city of Sydney to enjoy a day with me at the Adobe office doing a video workshop with Adobe Premier Elements.

[vimeo:https://vimeo.com/137347009%5D

See similar videos to this on CreateEDU TV

The students enjoyed the view from their new classroom for the day.

The aim of the day was to enhance the students skills in capturing and editing video. They worked in a small group (production crew) to capture footage and then individually to do the editing.

I was interviewed by one of the production crews.

One of the highlights was a tour of the Adobe office and meeting a number of the Adobe employees.

The students even got to meet James, an 18 year old intern who is studying Commerce and Marketing at Macquarie University and doing an internship with Adobe for 6 months.

Listing to James, an Adobe intern

Image from Megan’s Instagram post

Special congratulations to NSW Adobe Education Leader Megan Towns for receiving the Rotary Club of Wahroonga’s Vocational Teaching Award.

As stated in the official Rotary documentation, this particular award aims to honour outstanding teachers who have taken a leadership role in professional and community networks and who have supported the involvement of colleagues in external learning opportunities.

The first step to becoming an Adobe Education Leader like Megan is to get involved with the Adobe Education Exchange and then apply to become an Adobe Campus Leader.

World class Aussie magician Paul Cosentino was a big hit for hundreds of educators at the Ignite, Innovate & Integrate Conference hosted and run by Kingswood Primary School in Dingley, Melbourne.

The Ignite, Innovate, Integrate ICT in Education Conference is a unique event because it comes from the initiative of a particular Melbourne primary school (Kingswood Primary) and now involves teachers from schools all around Melbourne and attracts presenters from interstate.

Adobe Education Leaders Chris Betcher and Brett Kent were flown in from Sydney to present. It was great to spend some time with both of them in my home city and share this event with them.

Here is yet another example of how industry standard software like Adobe’s Premier Pro video editing program can be used by young students to creatively communicate messages that are important to them.

[vimeo:https://vimeo.com/135962613%5D

Alexa Cafe (https://www.idtech.com/alexa-cafe/) is an all girls summer camp held each year at Palto Alto High School, California. I have had the privilege of visiting the camp in the past 2 years and seeing first hand what these students and their facilitators can achieve in just one week.

STEM stands for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics, all important careers that we should particularly be encouraging girls to consider.

Here is the video I produced with Mike McHugh (an Aussie working with Adobe in San Jose, California) in 2014.

[vimeo:https://vimeo.com/104794703%5D

• Check more Adobe in Education active use videos via CreateEDU TV

The Cairns School of Distance Education was the venue for 35 teachers from Northern Queensland who came together to find out more about what Adobe has to offer their students.

Special thanks to Leigh Howser (QLD Adobe Campus Leader) who was instrumental in the organisation of this event. She presented two of her favourite Adobe mobile apps (Adobe Voice & Slate) and also ran some workshops.

It was also a pleasure to meet Trevor Milevskiy (QLD Adobe Campus Leader) who also shared his passion for Adobe’s mobile apps and provided some excellent workshop opportunities.

The Cairns School of Distance Education offers programs for Prep to Year 12 students across the 300,000 square kilometre area of Far North Queensland. They are a strong advocate for the creative use of Adobe products to enhance education.

Some of the feedback from the teachers included:

• Really inspired to have students explore these programs and produce short film using premier to edit.
• I appreciated the format of the day, that is, several short sessions on a range of topics.
• Inspired me to try out more tools.
• Well organised very articulately presented, inspiring content.

On Monday August 3, Marymount College, Gold Coast was the venue for the first of a series of Adobe Roadshow events in Queensland.

About 30 teachers from the Gold Coast region took part in a range of workshops that focused on Multimodal text and the Australian Curriculum.

One of the highlights was having Beth O’Malley (QLD Adobe Education Leader from Forest Lake State High School) run a workshop and share her passion for the use of Adobe products to enhance creativity in the classroom.

It was great to have the involvement of Richard Turner-Jones (Adobe Solution Consultant) sharing his expertise and experience with the teachers.

The teachers also valued the opportunity to hear from Sarah Hiscock from Data#3 about how to opt into an Adobe Creative Cloud enterprise agreement, help with deployment and Heidi Fisher from XCERIO  about Adobe Certification options and links to the QCE.

Prior to the teacher sessions, Richard and I ran an Adobe Day with Year 11 students from Marymount based on video production with Adobe Premier Pro and Publication techniques with Adobe InDesign.

Special thank you to Katrina Nicholson from Marymount College who was instrumental in initiating and organising these events.

Here are some of the comments from the feedback provided by the teachers who attended …

• Really inspired to have students explore these programs and produce short film using premier to edit
• Inspired me to try out more tools
• I thought Tim was a terrific informative host
• Very impressed with all Adobe products presented.
• Thank you Tim and co- you covered a lot and provided multiple resources.
• Good event I think there should be more like it so we can come together to learn and collaborate with other teachers from different schools.
• Great PD. Loved learning about all of the mobile apps students can use in the classroom.
• Creativity at its best! Thanks Adobe!

• Check CreateEDU TV to see the Adobe in Education Active Use Program in action

Surf Coast Secondary College is located in picturesque Torquay, Victoria. I found this school to be a very positive community where both students and staff enjoyed working in modern learning spaces surrounded by the beauty of Victoria’s coast line. The Bass Strait ocean is in view from this school which is a jewel in the crown of Victorian Government education.

I had the pleasure of spending a day with a group of Year 9 students, working on a range of multimodal applications within the Adobe Creative Cloud.

We started the day playing with a beta version of the new Adobe Character Animator which became available with the July 2015 version of Adobe After Effects. This is an animation tool that controls animated characters by tracking facial movements via the computer’s web cam.

We then had a play with Adobe Voice & Adobe Slate (Multimodal touch apps) in between of a few tips and tricks with Photoshop.

The bulk of the day was then spent working with Adobe Premier Pro with an aim to enhance the students video editing skills.

I was very impressed with the way the students picked up the required techniques and the way they developed some very creative outcomes.

• Check out the Adobe Education Professional Development Catalogue

It was such a delight to be back involved with the 2015 DLTV Conference (DigiCon). Digital Learning & Teaching Victoria (DLTV) was a merger of VITTA & ICTEV back in 2013 which I was very involved with as the Vice President of VITTA at the time. I missed last year’s DLTV conference due to overseas commitments so it was great to be involved this year and get Adobe on-board as a sponsor.

Richard Gordon (GM of XCERIO – Adobe Certification partner), Me & Brian Chau at the Adobe stand.

The conference involved about 700 teachers from around the country spending Friday July 24 & Saturday July 25 enjoying a wide range of professional learning at Swinburne University.

Check #digicon15 on Twitter to find out more.

The Maker Movement was a strong focus throughout the conference. Thank you to Gemma Sherwood for posting this image on Twitter via #digicon15

Education consultant Hamish Curry from notosh inspired the day 1 audience with an outstanding keynote address that commenced with the playing of the game duet (which he was very good at). He encouraged us all to look for the educational value of playing games.

He quoted Sir Ken Robinson when he said, The exile of play is one of the greatest tragedies of standardised  education.

He also quoted Jane McGonigal who said … people who continue to write off games will be at a major disadvantage in the coming years.

Some of the other great quotes from Hamish’s talk include:

School is like the ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy because it is a perfect metaphor for how adults entertain themselves by making children compete against each other. (Jiang Xueqin)

Finding out what teachers want to you to know and giving it back to them in assignments and exams is a common key to success. (John Hattie)

Why aren’t we teaching kids to say: this might not work. (Seth Godin)

Once you embrace the spirit of experimentation, the world becomes a sandbox in which to try out new ideas, ask new questions, and challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. (Steven Levitt)

It was great to catch up with Hamish Curry.

Brian Chau (Adobe Solution Consultant) & I presented on both days and enjoyed sharing the value of working with the large range of Adobe software that helps enhance creativity & engagement in the teaching & learning process.

We also promoted the value of the Adobe Education Exchange, free online resources & PD with a membership of over 217,000 educators.

We both enjoyed sharing the new Adobe Character Animator program which is part of the latest version of After Effects on the Adobe Creative Cloud. It tracks movements of you eyes, face and head to animate digital characters – very cool! Click here for a sample.

My friend Roland Gesthuszen & his vodcasting partner Amanda Rablin were working hard during the conference capture interviews and highlights for their show the ACCE Learning Network

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1g2_oTD6fjGkW_55m_fWTq_vjJYakfUi%5D

A special thank you to Mel Cashen (Conference Director and new President of DLTV) and her team for putting on such a great event.

• If you need any help with how to use Adobe software, get free tutorials from the Adobe Learn & Support site.

Thank you to my friend Roland Gesthuizen for this great image of the 2015 Digital Learning Showcase and for some of the other images on this post.

If all went to plan, I should have arrived in Melbourne for 2015 Digital Learning Showcase event after almost 2 weeks in the USA at least 24hrs before hand. As it turned out I arrived with 20 minutes to spare before my first speaking spot.

Not only was my flight from San Francisco to LA delayed because of fog and the closing down of one of their runways, but I find out later that all air space over LA was closed because President Obama was flying out after a golf trip.

At least I had an interesting excuse for being late.

It was great to see about 900 students (primary & secondary) at Swinburne University in Melbourne for this event that was focusing on encouraging young people to think about the importance of ICT as a possible career and the impact ICT has in most work places.

Wearing the same clothes for 2 days and not shaving for 3 days due to arriving late from the USA was not ideal for a live to air Internet TV interview.

Special thank you to the team at DLTV for putting on this great event on the eve of DigiCon, the annual DLTV Conference.