For the past 4 years, I have had the pleasure of running online workshops with the Pacific Links Foundation, an organisation focused on providing life skills for Vietnamese students at risk of being trafficked.

I ran 4 workshops over the weekend for about 150 students who were encouraged to use Adobe Express to build a poster about their passions.

Most of the students didn’t speak English, so a translator was provided at each session to help with the instructions.

Adobe Express is a free browser and app-based design tool which ideal for making posters, webpages and video stories. The students were using a mix of laptops and Android tablets/phones to connect and create. It was a challenge for me to teach the browser version & the app version all while being translated, but somehow it worked because the student were very appreciative and produced some wonderful posters.

On Friday 16th June, I had the privilege of presenting two sessions at the National Education Summit at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. The first was a workshop/presentation titled Engaging your students in any curriculum area with Adobe. The second was an open theatre session in the Expo area titled Enhancing digital creativity is key to the future classroom.

Throughout the day, I had the opportunity to interact with more than 200 teachers representing various school systems across Australia. Many of them were unfamiliar with the offerings provided by Adobe and were pleasantly surprised to discover the accessibility of the software, which can be easily incorporated into any subject area alongside Adobe’s professional design tools.

It was a pleasure to share the work of Professor Seymour Papert, Sir Ken Robinson, Dr Tim Patston and other researchers as I presented why creativity is such an important focus in all aspects of education and life in general.

Additionally, it was a delight to reconnect with Adobe Education Leaders who were also presenting at the event from Victoria and interstate such as Brett Salakas, Jason Lane and Steven Kolber as well as many of the Aussie EdTECH community.

On Thursday 8th June, Buronga Public School in the Sunraysia region of NSW hosted a series of digital literacy and creativity events for students, teachers and school administrators around the region.

Making the most of Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Express for school admin and publication was the focus for admin staff and teachers from five schools in the region who joined me at the start of the day. More teachers from those schools also took part in a special in-person version of the Adobe Creative Educator level 1 course at the end of the day with 15 teachers earning their certification.

In between both teacher sessions, students from Year 3 to 6 at Buronga Public School spent the bulk of the day building passion posters and video stories with Adobe Express.

Special thank you to Greg Stewart (Digital Classroom Officer) and Adam Astill for organising this day of digital creativity and productivity.

Feedback highlights from the teachers included:

• Learning about a new online program.
• Linking adobe to student creativity.
• I made a webpage.
• Tim’s delivery was very engaging!
• Very informative.
• All of it. Great course. Tim was excellent.
• How quick and easy it is to use and I’m excited to work with my students creativity
• Hands on . I created not just watched.
• The fact that I, a technological idiot, created a Web page.
• The assistance given to beginners.
• Creating a web page – I had never done that before.

Other comments

• Very engaging. Never new Adobe was more than PDF
• Thanks- I got so much out of this.

On Wednesday 7th June, I had the pleasure of visiting Chaffey Secondary College in Mildura, North West Victoria for an Adobe Day.

Character Animator, Fresco and Premiere Rush were the three main Adobe applications that were introduced to classes of Year 8 & 10 students from a range of subject areas.

The after school professional learning session involved teachers from schools around the region. Highlights from the feedback included:

• Working with the students during the day and how engaged they were
• Seeing live animation recorded in character animator
• ‘I feel I am able to easily use these programs with my students. It looks so achievable.
• ‘The ease of how to use the programs

Key Learning Area Leader for Arts, Jess Cook did a fabulous job organsing this day in relatively short notice when she discovered I was visiting the area. Thank you Jess!

On Thursday 1st June, a group of talented Visual Communication & Design students from Braybrook College visited the Adobe Melbourne office for a My Career Rules mentoring session organised by the Australian Business Community Network (ABCN).

My Career Rules is a careers awareness program that provides students with the opportunity to prepare questions and interact with a panel of professionals, opening their minds to careers that reflect the current workplace.

The three panelists, Tomas Francis, Kelly Reay and David Huynh were asked some great questions about their careers to date, how they got to where they are and what life is like working at a company like Adobe.

Following the panel session, the students enjoyed a light lunch and Adobe demo focused on discovering the power of Adobe Character Animator and Premiere Rush.

On Wednesday 24th May I had the pleasure of visiting Williamstown High School for an Adobe Day. I spend the morning with various Year 7 & 8 classes at their junior campus introducing them to Adobe Character Animator and Premiere Rush as two very creative applications within the Adobe Creative Cloud that they were not aware of.

In the afternoon I had the pleasure of working with the Year 10 IT students with a focus on Adobe Photoshop and Firefly which is no longer in beta.

After school, a number of teachers from a range of faculty areas joined me for a professional learning event focused on using Adobe tools in any curriculum area.

On Wednesday 17th May, I had the pleasure of addressing all the Year 10 students and running some workshops with HSC multimedia students at Canley Vale High School in Sydney’s west.

The school encourages their students to work with Adobe Premiere Pro, Photoshop, After Effects and Adobe XD. I introduced them to Adobe Express and Character Animator to help add to the mix.

Earlier this year, Krissa Diamante (Industrial Arts & STEM Teacher) contacted me seeking support with the use of Adobe XD. A couple of months later, she sent me sample of their Multimedia students’ Visual Portfolios using Adobe XD. She said,

Students were assigned a task to generate a digital resume/portfolio when looking for employment in the Multimedia Industry. The task involved equipping and challenging students in creating interactive UI elements and functions. I’m extremely impressed and privileged to share these portfolios with you as these students continue to surprise me every time they use Adobe!

The following video feature some of this work and captures a couple of interviews with two of the multimedia teachers.

Have a look at Matt Rae’s article – What is Adobe XD and what is it used for?

About 60 educators from a range of NSW schools, TAFE NSW & the University of Technology Sydney registered for a series of two professional learning events at the Adobe Sydney office.

The focus was a look at Artificial Intelligence and how it currently (and will in the future) affect education and creativity. We explored the new and powerful Adobe Firefly beta and where this technology could be integrated into various Adobe applications in the future.

Each participant was encouraged to use Adobe Express to build their own resource based on this site that was provided for them.

It was a delight to have Adobe Education Leader Brett Kent help support me for these events. His insights as a classroom teacher and Adobe expert were highly valued by everyone.

Some of the feedback from the events included:

Highlights:

• Participants voices
• Getting more resources. Firefly – amazing
• Great links to share with my students and colleagues.
• Looking at Express
• The changes coming for video editing
• Tim’s presentation style
• Collaborating with others
• Discussing ai in the context of the Adobe products
• Seeing what’s coming next with AI, hearing and discussing ramifications of AI
• Character animator and firefly
• Very excited about implementing what I have seen and learnt in the classroom.

Other comments

• So much to learn. Great TPL, Tim
• Would love to attend a more detailed course on adobe express and firefly
• Superb event.
• Great help thanks ! Would love to come to more to these sessions. I would like to learn more about how students can use Ai for creativity.
• Really interesting session

Check out this video ..

It was my delight to present a keynote as well as a workshop at the 2023 Visual Arts and Design Educators Association (VADEA) of NSW Conference.

The VADEA seeks to promote the study of Visual Arts and Design education and to inspire and support Visual Art and Design teachers. During my keynote address titled “Creativity for All – Preparing for Student Success,” I emphasised the importance of creativity in achieving success based on research conducted by the World Economic Forum over the years. According to their findings, creativity has consistently ranked among the top 5 skills necessary to thrive in the future, since 2016.

I also ran a workshop titled – Art Technology Workshop and went through various tips and tricks with Photoshop as well as how to create a digital portfolio with Adobe Express.

Workshop resources

I would like to thank the VADEA Conference Committee for inviting me to their conference this year. It was a pleasure to spend time with some very creative educators.

On Wednedsay10th May, I had the pleasure of visiting Gleneagles Secondary College in outer eastern Melbourne for an Adobe Day.

Adobe Days are an interactive digital creativity program aimed to inspire engaging learning experiences that develop digital literacy skills, creative problem-solving, life-long learning and build confidence to innovate and connect the curriculum with career and community

I worked with a Year 7 Humanities class and a Year 8 English class with a focusing on creative presentations with Adobe Character Animator & Premiere Rush. I also worked with a number of VCE Media classes throughout the day helping them to develop their skills with Adobe Premiere Pro.

After school, I had the pleasure of working with about 25 teachers form a range of curriculum areas with a focus on enhancing digital literacy and creativity in the teaching & learning process.

I would like to thank Assistant Principal Robert Young, Head of Technology Geoff Forster as well as Humanities teacher Natalie Napolitano and English Teacher Lewin Cool for helping to make the day a success and contributing to the folloiwng video.