On Thursday 8th May, I had the pleasure of visiting Morisset High School in NSW to run an Adobe Day with their Year 7 & 8 English classes where the students were introduced to some of the things that can be created with Adobe Express.

Morisset High is a public secondary school located in the southwestern shores of Lake Macquarie, New South Wales near the Hunter Valley. Approximately 22% of its students identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, and the school supports these students through the Itji-Marru Aboriginal Education Resource Centre, which is where we ran the Adobe Day.

The students created some wonderful video animations and were encouraged to keep using Adobe Express as a tool for a wide range of future publications.

A very special thank you to Rhianna Long for organising this day of digital creativity.

The University of Newcastle proudly hosted the 2025 Big Day In event for secondary school students across the Hunter Valley and regional New South Wales. More than 350 students attended to hear from leading IT professionals representing organisations such as Adobe, the Australian Defence Force, Microsoft, the Australian Signals Directorate, and Westpac.

The event was opened by Professor Craig Simmons, Pro Vice-Chancellor of the College of Engineering, Science and Environment and Sharon Claydon MP, Federal member for Newcastle and deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives.

I had the privilege of presenting insights from Adobe and the World Economic Forum on generative AI in education, along with the skills students will need to thrive in the future workplace. I also conducted a live Adobe Express demonstration, showcasing video and animation tools. Around 250 students accessed a curated set of my Adobe Express tutorial resources, bringing the total number of educators and students who have engaged with these materials to over 3,400.

Singleton High School is located about an hour’s drive northwest of Newcastle in the Hunter Valley, regional NSW. On Monday, 5th May, I visited the school to conduct an Adobe Day with their Year 7 & 8 students and teachers.

During the visit, I introduced Adobe Express to the students and guided them in creating short video animations. The students quickly grasped the app and produced impressive results. The teachers were very impressed with the potential of Adobe Express as a tool they could utilize in various curriculum areas.

After school, I worked with a number of the teaching staff to graduate them through the Adobe Creative Educator (ACE) Level 1 course. These teachers joined the 1,956 ANZ teachers who are currently part of the ACE community.

I would like to thank Adobe Creative Educator – Leader Martin Gray (former teacher at Singleton High) and Dayna Cowmeadow (Deputy Principal) for organising this event and inviting me.

On Wednesday 30th April, I was invited to Oyster Bay Public School to work with their Year 3 to 6 students and teachers to help develop their digital literacy and creativity skills with Adobe Express.

I first discovered this school in 2023 when a group of their Year 4 students (and their teacher Ashley Napier) won the Primary School section of the NSW Department of Education Game Changer Challenge Final, beating a range of older Year 5/6 groups. Watch the video on this link to find out more.

Ashley and the school principal Mat Egan organised for these talented students (who are now in Year 6) to visit me at the Adobe Sydney Office the day prior to my visit to their school. We spent a couple of hours learning some new techniques with Adobe Express and had a tour of the office.

It was delightful to visit the Oyster Bay Public School and work with just about every student from Year 3 to 6 where I set them all a design challenge to create an animated video with Adobe Express based on making the world a better place.

After school, I ran many of the teaching staff through the Adobe Creative Educators Level 1 micro-credential course.

I would like to thank Principal Mat Egan and Ashley Napier for organising this special incursion event for their school.

On Monday, 28 April 2025, Ascham School ran a special professional learning conference for their teaching staff called TechXcelerate.

Ascham School is a prestigious independent, non-denominational day and boarding school for girls, located in Edgecliff, an inner eastern suburb of Sydney. Established in 1886, the school has a long-standing tradition of academic excellence and holistic education.

Two of the sessions I ran involved graduating a number of teachers through the Adobe Creative Educator Level 1 micro-credential course. The third session was a workshop on Adobe Character Animator and Adobe Express.

The Adobe for Kids Holiday program was back in the Adobe Sydney office on April 23 & 24, 2025. About 60 kids aged 9 to 14 worked in small groups to plan & produce a set of wonderful short video/animations with Adobe Express based on how to make the world a better place for everyone.

It was delightful to see the way they worked together so beautifully throughout each day to do the brainstorming, research, scripting and then the actual production. For many of the students it was their first time working with Adobe Express.

Scroll down to see some samples.

Some of the feedback highlights from the students included …

• We made a video about how to make the world a better place.
• A highlight was when we learned how to animate the characters, include the transitions and add the audio. It was fun and challenging at the same time.
• I liked that i got to learn new skills and got to play with my creativity.
• A highlight of today was working in a teem, and also having fun learning about the features on Adobe
• I love making the animations
• My highlight is making the video with all the adobe tools like Gen AI.
• My highlight was making the video with my partner and learning lots of new things.
• Adobe express is the best and the staff is very kind.
• Adobe express is cool 🌈
• Making a presentation as a group
• The staff at adobe are very helpful
• There’s an activity where we can earn prize, it’s when we do the “do this”, “do that”.
• This is a great experience
• Being able to be creative with software that allowed me to be imaginative
• Having fun with my friends.
• Being able to work on a video about being kind with my favourite sister.
• It was very fun creating the story
• Solving the problems we had.
• I enjoyed animating the characters and the recordings.

Sample video stories

On Wednesday 2nd April I had the pleasure of working with a number of teachers from the Northern Territory School of Distance Education (NTSDE) and guiding them through the Adobe Creative Educator (ACE) level one micro-credential course.

The NTSDE plays a crucial role in providing educational opportunities to students who cannot attend traditional schools due to geographical, social, or other constraints. It offers a comprehensive range of online senior secondary courses aligned with the Australian Curriculum and the South Australian Certificate of Education (SACE). It uses modern technologies and innovative teaching methods, such as flipped learning pedagogy, and Adobe Express to ensure students receive a high-quality education regardless of their location.

I would like to thank Dina Campbell-McQuillan (Learning Area Leader Arts) for organising this professional learning opportunity for her colleagues.

On Wednesday 2nd April, I was invited to work with the Year 5 & 6 students at Zuccoli Primary School, in Palmerston, about a 20 min drive out of Darwin in the Northern Territory.

The students worked in pairs with their class laptops to get to know the education version of Adobe Express and create a short animated video about how to make the world a better place to live. The students really enjoyed working with the software and I’m looking forward to hearing about what they will be achieving in the future.

Only 5 years old, Zuccoli Primary is located in a newly created suburb. The school focuses on innovative teaching and learning programs that foster inquiry-based learning and explicit teaching methods. It is committed to developing students into lifelong learners and independent global citizens, with a strong focus on respect, responsibility, resilience, curiosity, and integrity

A very well equipped school, it shares facilities with Mother Teresa Catholic Primary School, including an oval, air-conditioned hall, library, home economics, and science rooms.

I would like to thank Georgia Trindall (Digital Technology Specialist) and Chantelle Scott (NT DoE Teaching and Learning Advisor) for organising this visit.

April 2025 started with my second trip to the Northern Territory for the year and one of the highlights was spending time at the amazing students and teachers from Darwin High School.

Darwin High currently caterers to students in years 10-12 but will be opening up to younger year levels in the near future. The school is known for its strong academic programs and commitment to providing a comprehensive education and a standout feature of the school is its state-of-the-art STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) Centre.

Officially opened in October 2019, this $21 million facility offers students access to modern, interconnected classrooms, a cutting-edge robotics and electronics hub, and versatile presentation and project spaces and lots more. The STEAM Centre is designed to foster collaboration, innovation, and problem-solving skills, preparing students for future careers in STEAM fields.

The Adobe Creative Cloud is used in a range of subject areas with a focus on Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and InDesign. It was my pleasure to introduce these students to what Adobe Express can offer, especially as a link to Adobe Stock and a great tool for creating assets to be used in Adobe’s pro-tools.

Close to 50 Darwin High School teachers registered for the Adobe Creative Educators Level 1 course that was run after school on Wednesday 2nd April.

It was great seeing representatives from most subject areas interested in expanding their understanding of why creativity is important is all curriculum areas and join the international Adobe Creative Educator community.

It was wonderful to catch up with delightful Anne Myerscough whose husband Dr Mark went to school with me in the mid 1980s and has been doing great work as a medical professional with indigenous communities in Darwin since the 1990s.

I would like to thank Manju Dhir (Senior Teacher. LOTE, IT, Business) for making the above sessions happen and encouraging so many of her colleagues and students to be involved.

Organised by Adobe partner Data#3, Juice IT stands as Australia’s premier free IT Solutions & Services conference. In 2025, the event will take place in Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Fiji, and Sydney. I was honored to be invited to speak at a special executive breakfast during the Brisbane event on Wednesday, March 26th, hosted by my friend (HP Education Ambassador) and Adobe Creative Educator – Innovator Brett Salakas.

The breakfast event was with senior representatives from a range of Queensland schools as well as the Fiji Department of Education and the focus was how AI is being used in schools. It was a pleasure to share some of the recent research Adobe has done with Advanis in the Creativity with AI in Education 2025 report.

Click here to access my slides & resources

The Brisbane Juice IT was attended by over 550 IT specialists from a wide range of industries and was sponsored by 35 IT companies including Adobe.

The highlight of the main conference event for me was meeting the keynote speaker Dr Michelle Dickinson, one of the most inspiring Women in STEM I have met. She has worked with Steve Jobs on helping to invent the iPhone, she has also worked on many other inventions with amazing collaborators including Sir Richard Branson.

I would like to thank Dave Wain and especially Isabelle Grisales for inviting me to be involved in this event.