On Wednesday 11th May, The Hon. John Barilaro, MP (NSW Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Skills, and Minister for Small Business) visited the Adobe Sydney office to thank Adobe for being a partner in his NSW Jobs for Tomorrow Scholarships initiative.

(Left to right) Ben Forta (Sr. Director, Education Initiatives), Me, Hon. John Barilaro, Chris Skelton Sr. Director, Enterprise Sales ANZ) & Wayne Weisse (Manager Enterprise Sales)

The Jobs of Tomorrow Scholarships are for NSW students who have skills in science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM). From 2016, the NSW Department of Industry are offering 25,000 scholarships over four years.

Adobe is one of many industry partners who are happy to open their doors for some of the scholarship recipients and give them a taste of the IT industry.

It was a pleasure to welcome the Minsiter as well as a number of industry representatives, students, teachers and members of the Adobe Education Community to this event.

The Minister shared about his passion for encouraging students to consider entrepreneurship and turn their skills and passions into a future job.

Ben Forta, who was visiting form the US, also addressed the visitors and shared about some of his experiences working for Adobe for 18 years.

It was great meeting some of the scholarship winners and their teachers.

A personal highlight for me was having AEL Chris Woldhuis and his media crew from Northern Beaches Christian School there to capture the event.

Here are some images of the event…

On Tuesday 11th May, Ben Forta (Adobe’s Senior Director, Education Initiatives) and I visited Roseville College in Sydney to work with a number of Roseville students and staff in the morning, and some visitors in the afternoon.

Ben enjoyed sharing the features of ProjectM (the browser version of Adobe Voice, Slate & Post) to the Year 6 students and seeing what the girls were able to create. ProjectM is still in beta mode but available to try via https://projectm.adobe.com.

At one stage, one of the girls discovered a bug in the program (not unusual with beta software). Ben immediately looked at his watch, worked out that the product team in Seattle would still be in the Adobe office and emailed them. Five minutes later, the bug was fixed. The student was so pleased that she was able to help develop this amazing software.

Here are some images of the Year 6s in action …

Ben went on to work with some senior students and staff while I had the pleasure of working with the Year 2s and 3s, introducing them to Adobe Clip.

Later in the afternoon, a number of teachers and students form around Sydney joined us at Roseville for a special Adobe Education event with Ben. A highlight was a showcase of some of the great Adobe related work being done at Roseville.

Ben Forta (Adobe’s Senior Director, Education Initiatives) began a busy week of Australian engagements immediately after stepping off his long flight from his home state of Michigan, USA on Tuesday 10th May.

His first engagement was at the wonderful Hilltop Road Public School in the west of Sydney. Principal Mrs Natalie See gave Ben & me a warm welcome and was delighted to also welcome a number of visiting students and teachers from nearby schools.

Ben has one of the best jobs at Adobe. He works with the Next Generation Product teams and has the fabulous task of traveling the world and sharing new product ideas with students and teachers to get their opinions on how they can be used to enhance learning and teaching.

Project M is the code name of what will be the browser version of Adobe Slate, Voice & Post. Currently in beta, but available to try via …

https://projectm.adobe.com

Here are a couple of image collages tweeted by Mrs See (@see_natalie) soon after the event …

After Ben’s keynote address, the students were broken into three workshop groups led by Ben, Bret Kent (Adobe Education Leader & Year 6 Teacher at Hilltop Rd) and me. Ben showed his group Project M. Brett ran a workshop on Adobe Post and I ran a session on Adobe Clip.

It was lovely to introduce Ben Forta to members of the Australian Education Leadership Community – Brett Kent (left) & Rita Maroun (right)

The 2016 AIS ICT Leadership Conference was held at the National Convention Centre in Canberra from 4th to 6th May and Adobe was the Platinum Sponsor.

This conference involved over 500 ICT Mangers, education leaders and vendors associated with the The Association of Independent schools NSW. It was my pleasure to do an opening welcome address focusing on the importance of providing students with the digital tools to enable them to enhance their creativity in this ever changing world.

One of the great highlights for me was doing a presentation with Chris & Abi Woldhuis and two of Chris’ students from Northern Beaches Christian School.

Chris Woldhuis is an Adobe Education Leader (AEL) and one of the Assistant Principals at Northern Beaches Christian School (NBCS) in NSW.  Abi Woldhuis is an Adobe Campus Leader and on the Junior School Executive – Teaching and Learning Innovation at Roseville College.

Abi shared how Roseville College is working creatively with a range of Adobe products with a focus on Adobe Voice & Slate.

Chris talked about the amazing camp program at NBCC that he coordinates. Over 20 camps all at the same time, one of them being a media camp where the main task has been to record the workshops and keynotes at the AIS conference with the help of Adobe Premiere Pro, Bridge, After Effects and Photoshop. Here are some photos of the crew in action …

Stay tuned for a video story about these students in action on CreateEdu TV.

Here is a sample of some of the work by the NBCC Media team

Laurel Papworth, during her keynote presentation titled Utilising Social Networking successfully in your school was very informative. She had a great incite into the depth of social media and how it affects everyone’s lives; often in ways we are not aware.

It was great to be involved with this conference and share how Adobe tools are making a difference in schools around the world. Here are some more pics …

Me and comedian Peter Berner who did the after dinner speach

Pre-Conference dinner at the Australian War Memorial

Pre-Conference dinner at the Australian War Memorial

The Big Day In came to The University of Newcastle this week to meet with about 550 students and encourage them to consider a future in the IT industry.

It was lovely to work with Priyanka Chitnis (former UNSW Adobe student rep) for this event. She inspired and encouraged the students to develop their IT and design skills while they are at school to help prepare themselves for future employment.

Have a look at some of what Pri has been making since graduating via: http://www.unfoldingadventure.com/

Next stop for the Big Day In is Canberra on 2nd June.

The BiG Day In is an IT careers conference designed by students for students in association with the Australian Computer Society Foundation. It is designed for both high school (Years 9-12) and University students interested in careers in technology and involves events throughout Australia.

Here is a video that gives a taste of what a BiG Day In event is like …

The Sunshine Coast event involved nearly 400 students and was hosted at the fabulous Innovation Centre at the Sunshine Coast University.

I have had the pleasure of presenting at a number of BiG Day In events over the past 18 months, sharing about the skills that industry is looking for young people as they come out of schools and university.

At this event, I shared some of the thought leadership of Marc Prensky who has outlines specific skill sets that young people should be aiming at developing to help them as they enter an ever changing work future workforce where ICT is at the forefront.

Find out more about Marc Prensky’s though leadership in this area via: http://marcprensky.com/

During the morning tea & lunch breaks at a BiG Day In event, it is always great to meet so many young people and find out what their passions are and share with them the value of developing skills with the wide range of software offered by Adobe.

Cheryl White (from XCERIO) and me at the BiG Day In (Sunshine Cost, 2016)

It is always lovely to also support the work of XCERIO, Adobe’s certification partner, and encourage teachers and students to consider working towards formal certification in Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver or Premiere Pro. Not only are these certifications recognized by industry, in Queensland passing an Adobe Certified Associate exam also contributes to a student’s senior high school certificate (QCE). Find out more via http://www.xcerio.com/certifications/adobe/

The Adobe Education Leadership Summit moved to Hong Kong this week with an all day event on Tuesday April 19 at The Mira Hotel.

The Adobe Hong Kong team did a great job putting this event together which included about 56 leaders from about 40 Hong Kong universities and schools.

As always, it was a delight to work with Mark Henley (Adobe’s Director of Transformation and Digital Strategy).

Me introducing Mark Henley

Mark Henley in action

Paul Burnett (Adobe’s Principal Evangelist for APAC) wowed the audience with some outstanding demonstrations of a range of Adobe products that are changing the landscape of creativity in education throughout all sectors and subject areas.

Paul Burnett

Paul, showing off some of Adobe’s great free touch apps

One of many highlights of this event was seeing local digital artist and freelance illustrator Jack Lee demonstrate his skills with  Photoshop & Illustrator via a Wacom tablet.

Meeting Jack Lee

Here are a range of other images from this event in a slide show …

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Special thank you to Candice Ma, Raymond Fung and their team for helping to put this event together. I can’t wait to visit Hong Kong again.

The beautiful Malaysian island state of Penang was the venue for the first of a series of Higher Education Leadership Summits run by Adobe Education. About 55 guests and Adobe employees  were hosted by the friendly team at the Shangri-La Rasa Sayang Resort & Spa.

#AdobeEdu16

Adobe Education Leaders Summit – Penang 2016 from CreateEDU TV on Vimeo.

Themed “Transforming Education for Student Success in a Digital World“, this seminar series aimed at bringing together Southeast Asia’s eminent thought leaders and higher education leaders, providing a great opportunity to connect, inspire, be inspired and to grow as leaders together.

Tony Katsabaris (Adobe’s Senior Director  for the Public Sector and Education in Asia Pacific) doing a keynote address about how digital technologies are shaping the future of education.

Wayne Weisse (Adobe’s Manager of Enterprise Sales) and Callistus Chong (Director, School of Design & Media ITE – Singapore) who both keynoted.

Yours truly had the pleasure of doing some Adobe demos and presenting a keynote with Tacy Trowbridge titled The New Generation  Creative Worker: How Can Education Meet the Needs of the Future Worker.

I enjoyed sharing the stage with Paul Burnett (Adobe’s Principal Evangelist for Asia Pacific) sharing some of Adobe’s great creativity tools.

A real highlight was working again with Indonesian design student and now freelance media artist Ira Carella.

It is always a pleasure to work with Tacy Trowbridge, Adobe’s Worldwide Head of Education Programs. This is us doing our keynote rehearsal.

Tacy & me keynoting

Great panel session, moderated by Tacy

Prabhjeet Singh, Titu Minhas (from the Adobe Singapore office) with Ira & Me)

The next events in this series will be held in Bali, Hong Kong and Columbo.

The first ever Teach Tech Play Conference has been a great success with about 300 teachers from across Australia and beyond gathering at the beautiful Ivanhoe Grammar School in Melbourne. This is a very unique conference because it has all be organised by practicing teachers who are passionate about enhancing good practice in the use on ICT in the classroom.

I’d particularly like to highlight the work of teachers Eleni Kyritsis, Corey Aylen  and Michael Ha (ACL) for their tireless work in getting this event off the ground. It is much appreciated by all involved.

Michael, Eleni & Me

I had the pleasure of sharing a range of Adobe focused workshops:

• Creative storytelling with Adobe Voice, Slate & Clip on the iPad
• What is flipped learning all about and how does Adobe help?
• Adobe and the Digital Technologies Curriculum
• Mastering multimodal text with a range of Adobe solutions

All mt resources can be found on the Adobe Education Exchange via: http://bit.ly/ttp16-adobe

Highlights for this event have been all the keynotes:

Alice Keeler – USA

Mark Anderson – UK

Ryan Trainor – AUST

Mark Anderson & Me

Other highlights have been seeing a wide range of sessions from many passionate educators and ICT in Education consultants.

Travis Smith from Microsoft

Bec Spink from codefuture.org

Mike Reading – Microsoft Master Educator & Google Certified Innovator

Nathan Jones – Computers Now

Alice Keeler – Author

Hamish Curry – NoTosh

Michael Ha – K-12 eLearning Facilitator, Newington Grammar

Corey Aylen – Google Certified Innovator

One of the biggest highlight was have students, ICT staff Principal Mr Gerard Foley from Ivanhoe Grammar involved in filming, presenting and hosting this amazing event.

Steve Brophuy and some of his outstanding media students from Ivanhoe Grammar