Thursday February 28 was a very special day at Maria Regina Catholic Primary School in Avalon, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. It was the day that Dr Bronwen Wade-Leeuwen (Macquarie University) and I worked with the whole school on a STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts & Mathematics) project titled Bring back the Arts.

Here is a reflection from Dr Wade-Leeuwen …

The primary school students (approximately 110 children) loved creating their street chalk artworks around the school’s theme of ‘Love’ on the playground area.

They enjoyed being collectively photographed in their year groups by you together with their street chalk artworks. 

A wonderful example of how ‘Bringing back the Arts’ through STEAM approaches can generate critical and creative thinking in contemporary active learning environments. The school’s theme of ‘Love’ directly supports the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of working collaboratively with industry and institutions (school and university) towards ‘Partnerships for the Goals’

The final session for the day was with the senior students (Years 4-6), this session showed the students courage, creativity and determination to quickly learn new skills using Adobe Spark technology through the planning and engineering of their artwork images, videos and voice recordings into amazing professional productions to share with others.

The day began with a Big Draw exercise based on the theme of LOVE and the Sustainable Development Goals as set by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015.

Each grade level had a set of goals to learn and draw about.

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The Grade 4 to 6 students documented their drawings with their iPads by taking a range of photos and videos.

In the afternoon, I worked with the the older students to help them turn their images and videos into video a range of video stories using Adobe Spark Video.

It was great to see how quickly the students mastered the app and developed a range of creative stories.

Special thank you to Kathy Gee, the Principal, her teaching staff and Dr Wade-Leeuwen for making this day a possibility.

Stay tuned for a video about this day on CreateEdu TV.

Digital creativity was the focus of the first Inject Creativity into the Classroom with Adobe professional learning event in NSW yesterday at the Adobe Sydney office in Darling Harbour.

NESA endorsed professional learning

Teachers from the NSW Catholic education system, independent schools and government schools worked together to enhance their skills with a range of Adobe applications.

We  started with an overview of how a number of Adobe applications are being used in classrooms all over the globe to enhance creativity then we jumped into a whole group Photoshop & Spark Post activity. This involved taking a selfie, doing some simple manipulation techniques with Photoshop, compressing the image for online use and featuring it in a Spark Post poster.

Then we broke into the following three different workshop groups:

• Incorporating Adobe software into STEM (with Brett Kent)
• Design thinking & prototyping with Adobe XD & Photoshop (with Jason Grant)
• Simple video  production with Premier Rush  & Premiere Pro (with Tim Kitchen)

Brett Kent has been an Adobe Education Leader for many years and is currently on the NSW DoE STEM Share team where he travels to schools all over Sydney sharing how to integrate a range of technologies into STEM programs. During his workshop, he introduced the teachers to a rang of Adobe products with a focus on building virtual reality assets with Premiere Pro.

Jason Grant is one of Adobe’s Solution Consultants and he introduced the teachers to Adobe XD as a tool to apply a design thinking to the production of an app for a phone or tablet. XD is the fastest way to design, prototype and share any user experience, from websites and mobile apps to voice interactions and more.

My workshop introduced the teachers to Adobe’s newest video production tool, Premier Rush. Rush is a very simple to use multi-layered video editing app that is part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite of software and also available on iOS.

In between workshop sessions, the teachers did two Adobe Spark activities. One was to build a Spark video about what they had learned and the other involved creating a Spark Page reflecting on how they could apply what they learned back in their classrooms.

The Inject Creativity into the Classroom events are happening all over Australia throughout 2019 and they are free. Click here to find out more and register.

Last Friday 22nd February, Adobe Solution Consultant Brian Chau and I had the pleasure of being involved in a special Adobe Day at Tay Creggan, the Year 9 campus of Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School in Melbourne.

Tay Creggan is a beautiful historic school campus on the Yarra River in Hawthorn.  As mentioned in the school’s website … Built in 1893 as a family home, it quickly became the social hub for fashionable Hawthorn. Strathcona bought Tay Creggan in 1969. The following year it opened as Australia’s first designated campus for Year 9 girls.

This Adobe Day was part of a special program called TC Envision which teaches important entrepreneurial and life ready skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, design capability, intellect, collaboration, communication and resilience.

For this day, three Strathcona teachers as well as Brian and myself ran a series of workshop sessions introducing the the students to arrange of Adobe applications that they can use throughout the year as part of the program and in the future. The applications that the girls were introduced to include Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Spark and Premier Rush.

The Envision program is coordinated by Head of Tay Creggan, Karyn Murray and this particular day was organised by Strathcona’s Head of Digital Learning & Innovation – Strathcona Michelle Dennis who is also an Adobe Education Leader.

It was a particular pleasure for me to be involved in this day because Strathcona was where I taught for 13 years prior to starting my job at Adobe. It’s also where my daughter Talana is currently in Year 12 and one of the Deputy School Captains. I wish I had a dollar for every time I was asked if I really was Talana’s father.

During the day, we conducted some video interviews and are currently putting together a case study video about the day and the way Strathcona uses Adobe products. Stay tuned  for this video coming soon to CreateEdu TV.

Special thanks to Karyn, Michelle, Brian and the Year 9 teachers who helped make the day such a success.

The Haileybury College City Campus was the venue for one of Adobe’s Inject Creativity into the Curriculum roadshow events this week.

Haileybury is one of the largest independent schools in the Asia-Pacific region with four campuses in Melbourne (Keysborough, Brighton, Berwick, City) as well as one in Darwin (Northern Australia) and Beijing. I have been to most of their campuses but had never been into their Melbourne City site, so I was very pleased when Lauren Sayer (Haileybury’s Director of Digital Learning offered to host this event.

Lauren Sayer – Director of Digital Learning at Haileybury

About 20 teachers registered for this event and a highlight for me was the involvement of Adobe Education Leader Michelle Dennis (from Strathcona), Adobe Campus Leader (ACL) James Rafferty (from The University of Melbourne) and ACL Justin de Lacy (from Woodleigh School Penbank Campus).

Michelle ran a great workshop on Adobe Illustrator and James & Justin conducted a more in-depth look at Adobe After Effects.

We also had a workshop linking Adobe Sketch with the Spark tools.

I would like to thank the Haileybury staff as well as Michelle, James & Justin for helping to make this event a success.

Some of the comments from the feedback included …

Highlights …

• Learning about products within the suite that I was unfamiliar with and considering their uses. Also, winning a sticker – thanks Tim!!
• Learning how to use Photoshop
• New features and techniques, networking
• Learning free apps and resources and how it can be utilised in the classroom
• Making a koala out of Russell Crowe 
• Practical tips from teachers

Other comments

I will start doing the Adobe Exchange courses – very excited about them and the YouTube short inspirational clips too.

The next Inject Creativity roadshow event is next Wednesday afternoon at the Adobe office in Sydney. Click here to find out more.

Established as one of Melbourne first public schools, Williamstown High School was the venue for a range of Adobe in Education events this week.

I had the pleasure of working with the Year 12 Media students, focusing on enhancing their video production skills with Premiere Pro. This video captures much of what took place …

I also had the opportunity to work with the Year 11 & 12 VCD (Visual Communication Design) students to develop their Photoshop skills.

VCD is a Year 11 & 12 VCE (Victorian Certificate of Education) subject that examines the way visual language can be used to convey ideas, information and messages in the fields of communication, environmental and industrial design.

After school, I conducted a professional learning event a number of Williamstown High teachers as well as some visiting educators.

We focused on Photoshop & Adobe Spark and had teachers from a range of subject areas involved such as humanities, mathematics, science, art, design, media and a primary teacher.

Special thank you to Freya Alexander who helped organise these events for her school.

2019 is going to be an exciting year of digital creativity engagements with teachers and students both face to face and online. Here are some of the regions we are planning to do events …

February

• Melbourne
• Rural Victoria
• Sydney

March

• Jakarta (Indonesia)
• Kuala Lumper (Malaysia)
• Rural NSW
• Rural Victoria
• Sydney
• Brisbane
• Melbourne

April

• Sydney
• Rural NSW

May

• Melbourne
• Perth
• Hobart
• Sydney
• Canberra

June

• Gold Coast, QLD
• Brisbane
• Rural Victoria
• Rural NSW
• Melbourne
• Adelaide
• Sydney

July

• Newcastle, NSW
• San Francisco (USA)

August

• Sydney
• Brisbane
• Melbourne

September

• Sydney
• Melbourne

October

• Sydney
• Brisbane
• Melbourne

November

• LA (USA)
• Brisbane
• Melbourne

December

• Melbourne
• Sydney

And these are the events we know about at this stage.

To get involved, click out the Adobe in Education coming events Spark Page and register.

Also, join in on any of the amazing free online courses we are running throughout the year via the Adobe Education Exchange.`

We recently welcomed the 80,000 APAC member of the Adobe Education Exchange and the 25,000 from Australia. Globally, there are now over 600,000 teachers who have joined this great free education resources.

Get involved …

Fifteen minutes is all that the Year 8 students at Melbourne Girls College had to produce a short video about their passions with the help of Adobe Spark Video.

This was the first time the students had been exposed to the Adobe Spark tools and it was very pleasing to see easy they found the software. With less time needed to learn the tool, it allowed them more time to be creative.

Criteria for the video included the following:

• Must work with a group of two or three
• Must include the passions of each member of the group
• No more than 7sec per slide
• Must include text, still images, video and voice overs
• Be creative
• Be entertaining

The girls chose a wide variety of passions for their very creative video projects.

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Special thank you to Wendy Keen and Catherine Walkear for inviting Adobe to be part of the Year 8 Melbourne Girls College end of year program.

Adobe was pleased to again support Swinburne University’s 2018 Department of Film and Animation Students’ Showcase & Industry Awards hosted by Aussie Oscar winner Adam Elliot.

It was my pleasure to give the award for Creative Excellence in Animation to Giuliette Lugara and Lara Nguyen who both received 12 months of free access to the Adobe Creative Cloud software (retail value of about $900).

I was delighted to watch the wide range of student’s short films that were on show during this event. The quality of the film making and animation was outstanding, a true tribute to the quality of teaching and mentorship at Swinburne’s Department of Film and Animation.

Special thanks and congratulations to Adobe Education Leader Dr Max Schleser and his team for putting together this event and helping to create these amazing film makers of the future.

It was delightful to work with a number of students and teachers from Tintern Grammar on Tuesday December 4 and share with them the value of digital creativity with Adobe tools.

Tintern Grammar is unique because it runs a parallel program with boys and girls in seperate parts of the school for most subjects until Year 10 when they mix. As stated on their website …

The provision of both single-gender, and mixed classes on a co-educational campus- a best of both worlds approach- creates the optimum learning environment for students.

Most of the day was spent with the Year 6 students, introducing them to the Adobe Spark apps.

Their challenge was to produce a poster with Spark Post and feature the poster in a Spark Video focussing on their passions – what they love doing in their spare time.

In the afternoon, Brian Chau (Adobe Solution Consultant) and I worked with the Tintern Art  and IT teachers to help advance their skills with the more professional Adobe applications in the Creative Cloud.

The NSW Institute of Industrial Arts Technology Education (IIATE) had a strong involvement with Adobe at their annual conference this year.

On Thursday November 29 Adobe hosted a set of all day workshops for over 50 members of IIATE at the Sydney office. Adobe Education Leader Jason Carthew and I ran a series of workshops focussed on video production, composting & animation with Adobe After Effects, Premiere Pro, Character Animator and the new Premiere Rush.

Later that evening the IIATE hosted a dinner cruise on the beautiful Sydney Harbour.

On Friday November 30, I had the privilege of doing the opening keynote in front of about 300 IIATE members at the Sydney Masonic Centre.

All the resources I shared throughout the conference are available on the Adobe Education Exchange via – http://bit.ly/adobe-iiate18