New Adobe in 15 min vodcast series

For the beginning of the 2023 school year, the ANZ Adobe Education Team introduced a new series of Adobe in 15 min vodcasts on the Adobe for Education YouTube channel based on getting to know how to use Adobe Express and other popular Adobe applications in the classroom.

Short for “video podcast,” a vodcast is a type of digital media that combines the elements of a podcast with video.

Each Adobe in 15 minute vodcast is also linked to a live Adobe in 30 min webcast where teachers are welcome to join in a hands on workshop experience, interact with the presenter and ask questions.

The first episode was based on the making of infographics with Adobe Express. An infographic is a visual representation of information or data, usually in the form of a chart, graph, or other visual elements, that is designed to communicate complex information in a simple and easily understandable way. They typically include a combination of text and images which is why the graphic design side of Adobe Express is such a great tool to use to help create infographics.

Here is the first episode of Adobe in 15 min that was dropped on YouTube on Tuesday 7th Feb, 2023 …

Here is a recording of the first of the Adobe in 30 min live webinars based on making infographics …

The next episode of Adobe in 15 min with be focused on making digital portfolios with Adobe Express and will be dropped on the Adobe for Education YouTube channel on Tuesday 14th February at 8 am (AEDT).

Being creative in Mt Beauty, Victoria

Mt Beauty Secondary College is located at the base of the stunning Victoria’s Alps and it was the location of an Adobe Day on Wed 14th December, 2022.

The main focus of this day was getting to know the value of Adobe Express in the teaching and learning process.

Being the last week of school for 2022, there was considerable flexibility in the timetable. Some staff and students spent most of the day with me, others came in for an hour or so.

We made, posters, video stories and web pages all based around what we are passionate about. I was also able to introduce Character Animator and Adobe Premiere Rush to a number of students and teachers.

I would like to thank Hannah Little, Mt Beauty’s Visual Communication Design, Digital Tech and Technologies teacher for organising this event.

Click here to get to know more about Adobe Express

Expressing creativity at Yarra Valley Grammar

Yarra Valley Grammar is one of Melbourne’s most successful independent schools and I was invited to work with their Year 5 & 6 teaching team on Monday 12th December.

We started with a session titled The importance of creativity in teaching and learning. During this session, we touched on research from the World Economic Forum, Dr Ellis Paul Torrance, Professor Ellen Jane Langer, Dr Tim Patston, Professor Seymour Papert & Sir Ken Robinson.

I encouraged the teachers to look at the interviews we did with Sir Ken about 10 years ago, now available on a dedicated playlist within the Adobe for Education YouTube Channel.

The rest of the time together was based in learning how to use Adobe Express to build animated posters, short videos and webpages.

All the teachers were quick to learn and came up with lots of ideas related to the way they will be using Adobe Express throughout 2023 with their students.

A special thanks goes to Phil Callil, the Yarra Valley Grammar Director of IT and Digital Learning, for organising this event.

Skilling up for 2023 with Adobe at McKinnon Secondary College

On Thursday 24th November, Adobe Senior Solution Consultant Brian Chau and I had the pleasure of working with 12 staff members from one of Victoria’s largest government schools McKinnon Secondary College.

We went through a range of Adobe applications and how they can be used in any classroom such as

  • Character Animator
  • Photoshop on the Web
  • Photoshop
  • InDesign
  • Aero &
  • Adobe Express

We also had the opportunity to share the Adobe section on Arc to a large number of other staff members. Arc is the Victorian Department of Education and Training’s main communication portal for their teachers that relates to a vast array of software that is provided to their schools.

I’d like to thank Peter Eglezos from McKinnon for all his support in organisin this opportunity for his colleagues.

Click here to discover more opportunities to skill up with Adobe.

A Very Special Day

On Friday 11th November my beautiful daughter Talana married the love of her life Campbell Bonello at Albert Park Baptist Church. It was perfect day and a wonderful celebration of love, commitment and creativity.

Adobe Day at Warrnambool College – Victoria

Warrnambool College, in the stunning south-west of Victoria, hosted an Adobe Day on Tuesday 1st November for students in a range of year levels and subject areas.

Part of the day was focused on working with Adobe Express on a mix of iPads and laptops to produce creative infographics and short video stories.

The Year 10 & 11 Visual Communication & Design students also spent some time getting to know Adobe Photoshop better and further developing their image composition skills.

A number of Warrnambool College teachers and teachers from surroundings schools took part in an after school professional learning event where the use of Character Animator, Adobe Express and Premiere Rush was introduced and connected to a number of curriculum areas.

I’d like to thank Anthea Rafferty (Head of Art) and Amos Mills (I.T. Manager) for helping to organise this event.

Adobe Day at Upper Yarra Secondary College – Victoria

Upper Yarra Secondary College in Yarra Junction, Victoria hosted an Adobe Day for all of their Year 7 students on Monday 24th October.

Adobe Days are a creativity program to support teachers in the mission to transform teaching and learning and to promote student success with an aim to inspire teachers to foster engaging student experiences that develop digital literacies, creative problem-solving, life-long learning and build their confidence to innovate and connect the curriculum with career and community.

This event was focused on encouraging each Year 7 students to use Adobe Express to build a poster/infographic about a cause or topic they are passionate about.

Staff from a range of faculty areas within the school as well as some visiting teachers joined in on an after school Adobe in Education professional learning event that looked at the educational benefits of Adobe Express, Character Animators and Premier Rush.

Special thank you to Marcus Cook (STEM Teacher) for organising this Adobe Day for his students and colleagues.

Click here to find out more about coming Adobe in Education events.

Adobe Max 2022 – Highlights

The Adobe Max conference is Adobe’s largest annual event and, for the first time since 2019, it was back face to face in Los Angeles and broadcast live across the planet.

This year, Adobe celebrated it’s 40th anniversary. CEO Shantanu Narayen reflected back on his 25 years with the company and the way Adobe has helped lead digital transformations in so many ares of work and play over the years. In his keynote address, Shantanu said …

Our vast portfolio of industrial leading products are empowering billions of people to tell their stories in richer and more varied ways than ever before.

Shantanu announced that Adobe Express is now available for free to over 10 million global not-for-profits organisations to help them engage donor and generate increased impact was met with strong applause by the 6,000 in attendance. Shantanu also formally announced the recent acquisition of Figma, a leading web first collaborative design platform to re-image the future of digital creativity and productivity.

Shantanu mentioned that there are now 30 millions Behance members globally and 300 million images on Adobe Stock. And he concluded his keynote by thanking Adobe users who continue to inspire his over 27,000 employees to create products and experiences that change the world.
 

Shantanu Narayen – Adobe CEO

Scott Belsky, Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud led a session of demos and announcement of new features for a range of Adobe applications based on three themes:

  • Precision & superpowers
  • Sped & Ease
  • Collaborative Creativity

Premiere Pro

  • Auto colour correction
  • Audio re-mixing
  • Frame.io integration (video collaboration, review & iteration)
  • Lots more Motion Graphic Templates within Adobe Stock
  • Auto Color

Photoshop (desktop)

  •  Simple selection tool
  • Click & delete objects
  • New neural filters
  • New Sky Replacement features
  • New gradient tools
  • Share for review (Beta)
  • Depth Blur
  • Landscape Mixer
  • Colorize

Photoshop on the web

  • New editing & retouching capabilities
  • Raw image support
  • Contextual task bar

Lightroom

  • Lightroom Albums for sharing & co-editing

After Effects

  • Replacing objects with AI

InDesign

  • New sharing & collaborating via HTML features
  • Text wrap around object feature
  • Style packs

Illustrator

  • Intertwining feature

Adobe Express

  • Integrating Adobe Express with Wix
  • New video and animation features
  • Real-time multiplayer collaboration
  • Link directly to Photoshop to make edits and sync automatically
  • New AI features eg – generating a background just my describing it
  • Create unique fonts with generative AI

Substance

  • Substance 3D Library enhanced
  • Substance Modeler (modeling in VR)
  • Substance Painter (linking with Substance 3D Assets)
  • Substance Stager

Check out Scot Belsky’s blog post – Updated Creative Cloud helps you create with precision and speed and collaborate seamlessly

Have a look at the special post-Adobe Max Inject Creativity Live show on the Adobe for Education YouTube Channel.

Watch the Day 1 Keynotes and demos in full

A highlight of Adobe Max each year is Sneaks where new technologies, that may or may not end up as future Adobe apps or features of current apps, are demos by Adobe engineers. This years Sneaks features US Celerity and comedian Kevin Hart.

Have a look at the main Day 2 keynote event in full.

Adobe Day – Somerville Secondary College, Victoria

Creating Digital Portfolios with Adobe Express was the main theme of the Adobe Day at Somerville Secondary College on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria on Thursday 13th October. What I really enjoy about Adobe Days is spending a whole day face to face with 100s of students from a range of years levels as well as lots of teachers, sharing with them what they can create with Adobe tools.

Digital Portfolios are one of the many publications that are simple to create with Adobe Express. I worked with four different groups of students from Years 7 to 11 sharing the value of digital portfolios and getting them all to create their own with the access to Adobe Express that has been provided to all Victorian government school secondary students by the Victorian Department of Education & Training.

We discussed the following points about Digital Portfolios:

  • Portfolios are designed to demonstrate what students know and how they got there.
  • They can be website, video, podcasts or other types of media
  • Portfolios help students to reflect on their learning, show evidence of learning, make connections between topics and develop presentation skills
  • Portfolios can be created for classmates, teachers, parents, future course admissions officers future employers

I created this portfolio site to help the students further understand and develop their own digital portfolios in the future.

At lunchtime, I ran a competition involving using Adobe Express to create an infograhic based on the theme of skills to thrive in the future and a set criteria. The winners won chocolate.

After school, about 50 of the teaching staff and some local visiting teachers took part in a professional learning session focused on engaging students in any curriculum area and level with Adobe Express, Character Animator and Premiere Rush.

Key resources I shared with the teachers included:

I would like to thank Charles Travis, Design and Technology Leading Teacher at Somerville Secondary College for organising this event for his school.

2022 APAC Adobe Education Summit

Over 4000 teachers went to the 2022 APAC Adobe Education Summit site leading up to the big event on Wed 28th September that was hosted and led by the above Adobe Education Leaders (AELs) and Adobe staff at the Adobe Sydney office.

The overall Summit involved 18 presentations from either AELs or the Adobe Edu team, 2 keynote sessions from Dr Tim Patston (one of Australia’s leading researchers in creativity and innovation in education) as well as over 40 online workshop options.

The Summit Studio

The Main Summit Day

The main Summit event was all day on Wed 28th September with a wide range of presenters. All the main sessions were recorded and are now available to view by clicking the related images below …

Summit Introduction with Tim & Erin

Click the image to see Tim & Erin’s introduction

Ben Forta – Adobe Global Team Update

Click the image to see Ben’s presentation

Tacy Trowbridge – Adobe Edu Thought leadership Update

Click the image to see Tacy’s presentation

Adobe Express Info and Challenge with Juliette Bentley

Click the image to see info in Adobe Express and Juliette’s Adobe Express challenge activity

Drew Mayhills – Classroom Success Story from All Saints’ College in WA

Click the image to see Drew’s presentation

Brett Salakas – Creative Catalyst Talk

Click the image to see Brett’s presentation

Adobe Education Exchange & Adobe Express resources

Click the image to see this session

Michelle Dennis  – Classroom Success Story from Haileybury

Click the image to see Michelle’s presentationhttps://livestream.com/wilkarproductions/apacsummit2022/videos/233108922

Dr Tim Patston – Keynote

Click the image to see Dr Patston’s presentation

Andrew On Yi Lai created this amazing visual representation of both of Dr Patston’s keynote addresses.

Workshops

About 30 online 1hr workshop options were provided by the amazing team of Adobe Education Leaders for the main Summit day and another 16 were offered at the Pre-Summit which was exclusively for AELs & Adobe Creative Educators (ACEs).

The Pre-Summit

The Pre-Summit day was on Tuesday Sept 26 and involved about 60 AELs & ACE who registered to be involved. Much of the content is now available by clicking the related images below.

Pre-Summit Introduction with Tim & Erin

Click the above image to see Tim & Erin’s Pre-Summit introduction

Ben Forta – Global Adobe Education Program Update

Click the image above to see Ben’s presentation

Kathy Xiao – Photoshop Express product team

Click the image above to see Kathie’s presentation

Jon Barrie – Premiere Pro

Click the image above to see Jon’s Premiere Pro session

Jon Barrie – After Effects

Click the image below to see Jon’s After Effects session

Steven Kolber – Classroom Success Story from a Victorian State School

Click the image above to see Steven’s Classroom Success Story

Alison Blackwell – Classroom Success Story from Western Australia

Click the image above to see Ali’s Classroom Success Story

Lauren Sayer – Creative Catalyst Talk

Click the image above to see Lauren’s Creative Catalyst Talk

Alwyn Hunt – All things Adobe 3D

Click the image above to see Alwyn’s session

Joel Aarons – Classroom Success Story from a Melbourne Primary School

Click the image above to see Joel’s Classroom Success Story

Art Chopra – Classroom Success Story from India

Click the image above to see Art’s presentation

Dr Tim Patston’s Pre-Summit Keynote

Click the images to see Dr Patston’s Pre-Summit Keynote


Feedback

The content of this event met your expectation

  • Strongly agree – 52%
  • Agree – 42 %
  • Neutral – 4%
  • Disagree – 2%
  • Strongly disagree – 0%

The content was relevant and useful

  • Strongly agree – 58%
  • Agree – 38 %
  • Neutral – 4%
  • Disagree – 0%
  • Strongly disagree – 0%

The event increased my knowledge of Adobe tools & programs

  • Strongly agree – 56%
  • Agree – 40 %
  • Neutral – 0%
  • Disagree – 4%
  • Strongly disagree – 0%

I will be able to apply much of what I learned in my work

  • Strongly agree – 48%
  • Agree – 44 %
  • Neutral – 8%
  • Disagree – 0%
  • Strongly disagree – 0%

The overall quality of this event was excellent.

  • Strongly agree – 68%
  • Agree – 24 %
  • Neutral – 6%
  • Disagree – 0%
  • Strongly disagree – 0%

I would recommend a similar session to others

  • Strongly agree – 68%
  • Agree – 26 %
  • Neutral – 6%
  • Disagree – 0%
  • Strongly disagree – 0%

Highlights:

  • Listening to Dr Tim Patston and his research and ideas on creativity.
  • A great insight into different Adobe tools and their practical application in the classrooms.
  • The workshop sessions were great.
  • What interested me the most was the discussion regarding the Adobe Express Challenge
  • I love hearing and learning how the speakers inject creativity in their classrooms.
  • It was a very fruitful webinar. I really enjoyed listening to the expertise of our resource persons especially Mr. Rollan Banez not only because he is a fellow Filipino but of his passion and dedication to imparting all the knowledge he gained through the years.

Summit images

Welcome event

Pre-Summit

Main Summit Day


Find out more about the Adobe Creative Educators program.

Register for a coming Adobe in Education event (most free and online).

Join the email list for the monthly Adobe in Education Update Australasia