On the 13th March 2025, students from Mitchell High School in Sydney’s west visited the Adobe office in Darling Harbour as part of the ABCN My Career Rules program and worked with 15 Adobe mentors.

The Australian Business Community Network (ABCN) partners with Australian businesses to break down barriers for students from low socio-economic backgrounds by offering structured, workplace-based mentoring programs. These initiatives aim to raise aspirations, build essential skills, and broaden students’ horizons.

My Career Rules provides students with the opportunity to meet and engage with professionals from various industries, expanding their awareness of careers that align with today’s workforce. By connecting classroom learning with real-world work experiences, the program emphasises the importance of the skills and mindsets necessary for a successful future career.

I had the pleasure of demonstrating the value of Adobe Express for Education to the students, showing how it can enhance learning across various curriculum areas.

The reflections and feedback from the students and mentors were a tribute to the value of this type of program

A special thank you to Olivia Yeates from Adobe for coordinating this event, all the Adobe mentors, the ABCN presenter Guy Cuthbertson, Michael Turner (Mitchell High teacher and Adobe Creative Educators-Leader), and most importantly, the students for making this day a success.

Meridan State College on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast was the venue for an Adobe Express workshop with some of their Year 7 STEM specialists on the afternoon of Tuesday 4th March.

The students were taught a number of video and animation creation techniques and produced some very creative results.

After school, about 30 teachers from around the Sunshine Coast region came to Meridan State College to work through the Adobe Creative Educators Level 1 course.

One of the teachers was a local school principal and his feedback about Adobe Express features this statement …

Adobe Express is an absolute game-changer when it comes to creating stunning visuals and professional-quality content with ease. Whether you’re a seasoned designer or someone who’s never touched design software before, Adobe Express puts the power of Adobe’s creative magic right at your fingertips. With intuitive tools, thousands of beautifully designed templates, and seamless integration with Adobe’s creative ecosystem, it makes everything from social media graphics to logos, flyers, and videos a breeze. Its AI-powered features, quick customisation options, and vast library of fonts, images, and design assets mean you can create polished, eye-catching content in minutes — no stress, just results. Adobe Express isn’t just a design tool; it’s your creative superpower.

I would like to thank Stephen Reid the Head of Innovation, Technology & Interactive Learning at Meridan State College for organising these workshop activities.

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Maleny State School is located in the beautiful hinterland inland of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. I had the pleasure of working with their Year 5 & 6 students on the morning of Tuesday 4th March introducing them Adobe Express.

I was very impressed with how quickly they picked up the video and animation features to create short stories.

I would like to thank the wonderful Adrian Greig for all the work he did to make this event happen for his students.

With over 3000 students, Kelvin Grove State College in Brisbane is one of Queensland’s largest government schools and on Monday 3rd March, they hosted an Adobe Day for their year 7 & 8 students with a focus on English & Humanities classes.

Adobe Days usually include a design thinking challenge designed to boost digital literacy, encourage creative problem-solving, promote lifelong learning, and build confidence in innovation. In this instance, students learned to create animated videos using Adobe Express and were inspired to produce short videos on making the world a better place, focusing on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Late in 2024, Education Queensland endorsed Adobe Express as their preferred browser-based design tool and allowed access to all of their students and teachers through their single-sign on school email & password. Since this it has been great to see so many QLD students and teachers using it as a learning & teaching tool.

I would like to thank Sue Isbell for organising this special incursion for many of her student. It was great to spend a day at this very impressive school.

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On Tuesday 18th February 2025, over 20 teachers from schools around Sydney, TAFE NSW and ACU visited the Adobe Sydney office to work through the Adobe Creative Educator (ACE) Level 1 & 2 courses.

This was a unique opportunity to complete both micro-credentials in the one afternoon session and join the international ACE community. Being a member of the ACE program, involves receiving curated professional development materials, information about virtual and in-person events, and the opportunity to connect with like-minded educators from around the world.

Click here to find out more about the ACE program.

Feedback highlights from the teachers involved:

• Learning new animation skills in Express. Access to great resources within the courses too!
• Expanding my knowledge of features within Adobe Express and applying these in practical exercises.
• The course was designed to support education
• Well run lesson with very achievable outcomes
• Being able to learn more about the capability of Adobe Express.
• Unpacking the versatility of Adobe Express
• The hands on nature of the session
• Brevity and clarity of what was being taught.

Other feedback:

• Very engaging and well paced! Absolutely perfectly presented!
• Super creative way to engage my students
• Learned a lot in a short time
• Had a fun afternoon of learning
• This is an engaging course that all Technology teachers should attend.
• Fun, engaging and so easy to use

I would like to thank my colleague Al Briggs and Adobe Creative Educator – Leader Martin Gray from Singleton High for helping me run this session.

More opportunities to complete ACE Level 1 & 2 can be found here.

On Thursday 13th February, Macgregor State School in Brisbane hosted an Adobe Day for all 224 of their Year 5 & 6 students.

The challenge that each student had was to access Adobe Express for the first time and use it as tool to create an animation about how to make the world a better place to live.

Following some explicit teaching about the tool, the students produced some great results and were keen to explore more features within Adobe Express. The teachers were very excited about the potential of Adobe Express to help engage the students and foster digital literacy and creativity skills within a range of curriculum areas and activities.

After school, over 50 of the teaching staff at Macgregor took part in a professional learning session that involved doing the Adobe Creative Educator Level 1 micro-credential course.

I would like to thank Deputy Principal Gary Davey for organising this Adobe Day at his school and Adobe Creative Educator-Leader Richard Turner-Jones for helping me and many of the students and teachers throughout the day.

Click here to find out more about Adobe Days.

On Wednesday the 12th February 2024, I had the pleasure of working with about 130 Year 7 to 10 students from Bellbird Park State Secondary College near Brisbane.

Late in 2024, the Queensland Education Department allowed Adobe Express to be a part of the single-sign-on system for all of their students and teachers. I had the pleasure of introducing this wonderful application and watching the students work together to make a set of amazing short video animations.

After school, about 25 Bellbird Park teachers worked though the Adobe Creative Educator Level 1 micro-credential course with me. It was great to see the excitement in the eyes of the teachers as they discovered the power of Adobe Express to engage students in a wide range of curriculum areas.

I would like to thank STEAM Coordinator Zainab Ali for organising this fabulous day.

On the afternoon of Monday 10th February, I had the pleasure of working with a group of talented Year 5 & 6 students at Grand Avenue State School near Brisbane.

These students use iPads as their main digital device so this was a great opportunity to test the capacities of mobile version of Adobe Express.

The animated characters were very popular and well used by the students to create short animated stories on their iPads.

I would like to thank Student Engagement Coach Reece Neyland for organising this opportunity for his students as well as the after school professional learning session that was organised for teachers in the region.

About 250 people attended Mark Christie’s funeral at the Thorak Cemetery near Darwin on Friday 31st January with many more watching live online.

Click here to see the live stream recording via Facebook.

Everyone was encourage to wear a colourful Hawaiian style shirt in honour of what Mark use to wear most days.

Mark’s son Joe wore one of Mark’s shirts and shared many wonderful memories of his Dad. They had such a wonderful bond. It was very clear that they were so proud of each other.

Mark’s wife Hellen was so brave as she also share her grief with us and described how proud she was of Mark as all that he achieved.

Mark’s three brothers (Sean, Grant & Lance) were represented so eloquently by Sean. He shared a number of stories about their life growing up in Darwin together. Each brother dispalyed a number of Mark’s mannerisms and his sense of humour, it was a pleasure to meet them.

Mark’s niece Cecilia Tsan flew in from Korea to help represent Hellen’s side of the family and did such a great job sharing her love for Mark and how she and many of the cousins saw Mark as a father figure.

It was my great pleasure to be asked by Mark’s family to represent his friends and wider education community who he served so well for many years. There were a number of educators and education administrators at the service including the current and past NT Ministers of Education, the CIO of the NT Department of Education and even the past Chief Minister of the Norther Territory Eva Lawler who also spoke and shared some very amusing stories about Mark and his influence.

I was able to share the reflections of a number of educators who knew and loved Mark from around Australia, including the following wonderful poem about Mark written by fellow Adobe Creative Educator Julliette Bentley.

Here is a link to the transcript of my speech.

Mark’s good friend, and fellow member of the Adobe Creative Educator community, Nalin Naidoo flew in from Brisbane to join me in supporting the Christie family. It was a great honour for both of us to be there at this difficult time.

RIP Mark Chistie