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It was a pleasure to visit Adelaide again to run a range of Adobe in Education workshops with a wide range of South Australian educators.

On Tuesday June 16, I ran two workshops with Catholic Education South Australia. These were based on developing multimodal text skills with a range of Adobe software including Adobe Voice, Presenter, Muse, Clip, Premier Pro, Acrobat Pro and Adobe Slate.

The teachers worked well with a partner to produce some very creative stories with Adobe Voice and Premier Clip.

On the afternoon of Wednesday June 17, I had the pleasure of running an Adobe Photoshop workshop with about 30 South Australian State, Catholic & Independent school teachers at Cedar College in Adelaide’s northern suburbs. This was organised by the Business & Enterprise Teachers Association of South Australia.

We went through a range of Photoshop techniques such as shake reduction, Save for Web, Batch Resize, Content Aware Fill, Filter Gallery, Puppet Warp and others. I also ran some short demonstrations on how manipulation images with Photoshop can be published with Adobe Voice & Adobe Slate.

Special thank you to Lorraine Nitschke (Adobe Campus Leader) for organising this event.

• Have a look at the education professional learning opportunities available via the Adobe Education Exchange?

About 350 students and about 30 teachers from around the Australian Capital Territory braved the cold and made their way to The University of Canberra for the Big Day In event on Thursday June 11.

This event was opened by former Labor Senator The Hon Kate Lundy who inspired the students to keep developing their ICT & Media skills for not only their future, but also the future of the country.

Lawrence Crumpton from Microsoft was the first keynote and was spell binding as he talked about the history of computing and outlined some of the amazing research and development that is happening at Microsoft.

Me & Lawrence

For this event, I invited Sian Beadle (Adobe Student Rep at Canberra Uni) to join me on stage to give her perspective as a young designer just about to hit the workforce after studying at Canberra University.

It was a pleasure to meet and speak to so many young people who are in the last years of  secondary schooling about to go into further study &/or work.

Cheryl White from XCERIO looked after the Adobe stand and promoted Adobe Certification to the students, teachers and local Canberra University staff and students.

Sian, Me & Cheryl

Of course a trip to Canberra is never complete without a visit to Parliament House. This trip was extra special as Cheryl and I also had a meeting in The Hon Mr Pyne’s office (Federal Minster of Education).

Other Big Day In posts …

• Gold Coast
• Sydney, NSW – UTS
• Wagga Wagga, NSW – CSU
• Newcastle, NSW – University of Newcastle
• Perth, WA – Perth Town Hall

• Check Adobe Learn & Support for help with over 100 Adobe products ?

Forest Lake State High School in Brisbane invited me to run an Adobe video workshop with one of their Year 8 classes on Wednesday June 10.

We started with a some theory focused on telling good video stories and how to capture quality video & audio.

The students decided on a number of video stories to work on in small production crews based on their recent newsletter.

Each group filmed against a green screen and captured a range of other related material for their stories before uploading all their assets and working with Adobe Premier Pro to put their story together.

Special thanks to Beth O’Malley (Adobe Education Leader) for organising this special day.

Some other video workshop posts from 2015

• University of Western Sydney
• Quakers Hill Sydney
• Independent School Teachers WA
• Scotch & PLC Perth
• Christ Church Grammar, Perth
• Grimwade House, Melbourne

• Have you checked CreateEDU TV recently?

The Big Day In roadshow hit the Gold Coast today at Griffith University with about 350 QLD and Northern NSW students and teachers finding out why they should develop their ICT & Multimedia skills to enhance their future job prospects.

It was great working with the team of XCERIO to help them promote Adobe Certification which, in Queensland, contributes credits towards the QCE (the Queensland Certificate of Education).

My main message on these events if for young people to develop a wide set of skills while they are at school and university and try and establish what their passions are. I show them examples of how young people are not waiting to leave formal study to start developing their passions into small businesses. I share with them the message of Professor Young Zhao who says that educators should be preparing young people to be global, creative and entrepreneurial.

I also show the audience some of the findings of the survey Adobe did last year with hiring managers to discover what skills they look for in the young people they hire out of school and university.

In summary, there is a growing expectation that job candidates will be tech-savy, digitally sophisticated and creative. Problem solving, critical thinking, creativity, innovation  and technical specialist skills are most in demand. Students should be developing a wide set of skills and focus on creativity to set themselves apart and stand out from the crowd.

http://bit.ly/futurehire14

Other Big Day In posts

• Sydney, NSW – UTS
• Wagga Wagga, NSW – CSU
• Newcastle, NSW – University of Newcastle
• Perth, WA – Perth Town Hall

• Have a look at the education professional learning opportunities available via the Adobe Education Exchange?

Ben Forta teaching Year 5 students at Strathcona about why and how Adobe Voice was created.

Ben Forta, Adobe’s Senior Director (Education Initiatives) completed his engagements in Australia by visiting with teachers and students at two schools in Melbourne. Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar School and Carey Baptist Grammar School were chosen because of the innovative way they are working with mobile technologies, and the fact that I taught at both of them.

Ben and I enjoyed a tour of Strathcona’s new learning centre.

After visiting Strathcona, I drove Ben down the road to Carey a school that has a long association with my family. My Grandfather was a foundation scholar in 1923, my father went there, I was there from Year 5 to Year 12 and I taught at Carey from 1996 to 2000. The family tradition continues with two of my nieces currently there as students.

Ben met with members of Carey’s Tech Ninjas and a number of the IT and teaching staff. When the students realised who they were with, they opened up with some very engaging questions.

Carey’s eLearning Co-ordinator, Kylie Taig taking notes while Ben speaks to the Carey Tech Ninjas.

From Brisbane, to Sydney to Melbourne, it has been a busy and very successful tour of Australia’s east coast for Ben. It is a rare opportunity for Australian teachers and students to have a direct connection with the makers of Adobe software. Ben’s visit to Australia was very much appreciated and I know that he enjoyed all the opportunities to meet with a wider range of Aussie teachers and students.

Ben Forta (Adobe’s Senior Director – Education Initiatives) and I meet with a number of educators and students in Sydney today to find out what Adobe can do to enhance the education process.

We flew in from Brisbane and went straight to Roseville College, a Anglican Girls School. Abi Woldhuis (Adobe Campus Leader) and Henrietta Miller (Adobe Education Leader) organised a program of student and teacher engagement, including a lovely lunch with the school executive.

After a wonderful few hours at Roseville, Ben & I rushed to the Adobe office in Darling Harbour where we met with a number of NSW Adobe Education Leaders, Adobe Campus Leaders and other educators for a research meeting and dinner.

Ben was given some great feedback from everyone he met today that he will be able to send directory to the various production teams at Adobe in the US.

Tomorrow, we are off to visit two Melbourne schools.

• Have you checked CreateEDU TV recently?

Adobe’s Senior Director (Education Initiatives) Ben Forta flew to Brisbane from the US to meet with educators at the 2015 EduTECH Conference. Ben is part of the Adobe product team for Adobe Voice & Slate. He is in Australia this week to research how these products are being used in schools and how they can be improved for the future.

• Have you checked the education professional learning opportunities available via the Adobe Education Exchange?

Michael Leigh (Adobe Customer Success Manager) and I spent the last two consecutive Fridays working with a range of educators, trainers and students from the University of Western Sydney.

Over the two days, we looked at a wide range of Adobe solutions such as Premier Pro, Premier Clip, Photoshop, InDesign, Adobe Voice, Slate, Acrobat Pro and Adobe Muse.

It was especially great working with the students doing the Solar Car Challenge and showing them how they can document and brand their achievements is a range of creative ways.

Quakers Hill High School is one of a number of schools in New South Wales and Victoria involved in the Adobe Youth Voices (AYV) program.

Adobe Youth Voices (AYV) ignites young people’s Creative Confidence—the ability to har­ness creative skills to solve problems—thereby empowering them to find their voice and make it heard. AYV is the Adobe Foundation’s signature global initiative to increase creativity in educa­tion, which is critical to improving the lives of young people today and well into the future.

http://youthvoices.adobe.com/about

Quaker’s Hill High School teacher Smriti Mediratta organised an excursion for her AYV students, who ranged for Year 7 to 9, to spend a day with me at the Adobe office in Sydney doing a video workshop with a focus on how to work with Adobe Premier Elements.

In previously arranged production groups, the students had some great topic ideas for the video project they are doing for the AYV program. I was able to give them some help and ideas to make the most of the pre-production, filming and post-production phases of good video stories.

Some of the students had worked with Premier Elements and for others it was their first experience with this video editing software.

By the end of the day, the Quakers Hill High AYV students were well on their way with the projects.

• A video on this event is coming soon to CreateEDU TV .

Wednesday May 20 was the day that Sydney Secondary College (Leichhart) visited the Adobe office in Sydney for a video workshop.

Mr Andy Calvert with some of his Leichhadrt students.

Mr Andy Calvert organised this excursion for his students to work with Adobe’s video expert Jon Barrie (JB) and myself. The students with some video production experience had a master class with JB, while those who had minimal experience worked with me.

Jon Barrie, Adobe Video Solution Consultant, running a video master class with students from Sydney Secondary College, Leichhardt Campus.

The students worked well in their teams and produced some very creative videos.