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I hope you have been (and for many of you, still are) enjoying your January break. I love this time of year with lots of opportunities to catch up with family & friends.

Looks like many educators around the world have been using this time to work on their Adobe skills with over 5,500 participants signed up to start the new Adobe Generation Professional: Digital Creativity course. It is not too late to be part of this exciting course and encourage others to enroll via:https://edex.adobe.com/pd/course/digital-creativity-2015/

Also, take a look at the current Adobe Education Exchange Live Events happening this week and in the near future. If you can’t make them live, the recordings are always worthwhile.

https://edex.adobe.com/professional-development/events/all/

CreateWorld Conference

I’m very pleased to announce that Adobe is a major sponsor of the CreateWorld Conference at Griffith University in Brisbane and I’m looking forward to again be part of this event.

‘Create World is aimed specifically at practitioners, academics, research teams, technical staff and students across the digital arts.’

http://auc.edu.au/createworld/about/

The Big Day In

I’m also very please to announce that Adobe is a major sponsor of ‘The Big Day In’ IT Careers events throughout Australia run by the ACS Foundation. If you are an Australian teacher of students in years 9 to University, have a look at their website and think about how you and your students could be involved.

http://www.acsfoundation.com.au/bdi/

CreateEDU TV

Have you checked CreateEDU TV recently?

https://vimeo.com/createedu

Worth a look!

Check out Tim’s Website                                                  Check out CreateEDU TV

At the end of 2014, Mrs Helen Hughes is retiring as Principal of Strathcona Baptist Grammar School in Melbourne, Australia after 14 outstanding years of leadership.

Tonight was a very special cocktail party in her honour put on by the school with a large number of current and past staff, parents, board members and students in attendance.

Helen was appointed Principal in 2001, 6 months after I started teaching at Strathcona and, since I first met her, I have greatly valued her wisdom, her leadership and her friendship.

In my final years at Strathcona, I was her Director of Learning Technologies and valued working closely with Helen on a wide range of innovative projects.

Helen was my Principal for 13 years. She gave me so many opportunities to grow as an educator, as a school leader and as a person. She encouraged me to develop networks with other local, national and international schools. I will always value the opportunities she gave me that eventually led to the international education work that I now do for Adobe.

I highly valued working with Helen and learning from her.

I also appreciated the support of Helen’s husband Keith Hughes and the contribution he made to Strathcona along side Helen for many years.

My daughter is now in Year 7 at Strathcona, so I am looking forward to a continued relationship with the school as a parents and supporting its new Principal Mrs Marise McConaghy.

_______

Thank you Helen for the dedication you have shown to the staff, students and parents at Strathcona for the past 14 years.

______

Check out Tim’s Website                                                  Check out CreateEDU TV

Day 1 in Manila was all about Higher Education, day 2 (2nd Dec, 2014) was all about engaging with a fabulous group of very keen and enthusiastic K-12 educators from all around the Philippines.

Some of these teachers drove for several hours to get to Manila for this event, which is not difficult to do in Manila traffic. They were very keen to hear about the Adobe Creative Cloud and how it can be used to enhance creativity in teaching and learning.

They were very interested to hear what educators from Australia, New Zealand and the USA were doing with Adobe software.

Later in the day, Greg Sisk and myself visited De La Salle College in Manila where we met with some deaf students and teachers who were passionate users of Adobe software and very keen to show us what they have been able to achieve.

This teacher showed us the sign they made up for the Adobe Creative Cloud

Here is some of the deaf student’s art work that was on display.

One of the highlights of the day was meeting Maricon Rivera, Philippines first Adobe Campus Leader. She was given permission by her Principal to have the day free to meet us.

Check out Tim’s Website                                                  Check out CreateEDU TVOn Monday 1st December I had the great pleasure to speak to a group of educators from a wide range of faculties at the oldest existing university in Asia (403 years old), University of Santo Tomas (UTS) in Manila, Philippines. It was a holiday period for the university so having so many come in especially to hear what Adobe Education had to say was humbling.

During the 2.5 hour presentation, the educators were given a number of opportunities to share their thoughts and reflections. A common theme was that university education in Philippines (like most of the world) is very tradition  and the significance of encouraging creative thinking and creative making is usually underestimated.

By the end of the morning, these educators were challenged and enthused to use Adobe creativity software in their teaching and an encourage their students to do likewise to construct their learning.

Greg Sisk, the Adobe Education account manager for Philippines, organised this trip. He has been very keen for me as an educator to come and share my experience and perspective on the difference Adobe software can make to education.

In the afternoon, we met with the Deputy Director General for Field Operations at TESDA (Technical Education and Skills Development Authority).

Here are some of the images I took while being driven around Manila for the first time. As with many Asian cities, the contrast between rich and poor is very evident.

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A lot of my professional life is spent in and around Australia’s two biggest cities, Melbourne and Sydney. So it seems to make sense that I spend some time directly between these two metropolises in south western New South Wales (NSW) and northern Victoria (The Riverina) meeting a number of educators and students who are using (or wanting to use) Adobe software in many creative ways.

My first stop, on the morning of Monday 17th November, was The Scots School in Albury, on the boarder of NSW and Victoria.

It was great to meet Peggy Mahy the Principal and some of her senior staff and get a tour of this most prestigious of schools, one of the oldest in Australia. It was nice to see that Adobe software was prominent on the computers at Scots.

In the afternoon, I crossed the boarder into Victoria and ran a workshop/presentation with key staff at Wodonga Catholic College (CCW). My sister Lisa Mason, is a teacher at CCW, and it was great to spend some time with her and meet the CCW Arts staff and members of the executive. They allowed me to show them how Adobe software is making a difference to education around the world.

On Tuesday 18th November, I drove about 1.5 hrs from Wodonda to Corowa High School which is also on the NSW/Victoria boarder. I spent the day with NSW DEC teachers Phillip Lelievre and a number of his students running a video workshop.

I was very impressed with how quickly the students picked up how to use Adobe Premier Pro to make some great video news stories about their school.

On Wednesday 19th November, I drove to Tumut High School in the Snowy Mountains and spent the day with NSW DEC teachers William Crain & John Thompson and a number of their students. Together we worked through how to use Adobe Premier and a range of other Adobe software to create video news stories about their school.

A screen grab from Andrew’s story on uniform changes at Tumut High School

Thursday 19th November was spent at Gundagai High School with teacher Matthew Bishop and about 20 students in a range of year levels. By the end of the day they produced a series of video news stories that the school plans to use in their communication with parents and the wider community.

I was very impressed with how quickly these students picked up the skills and produced some interesting and entertaining and work.

Stay tuned for a new CreateEDU TV story about the Gundagai High video day.

To conclude my week in The Riverina, I did a presentation to a number of academics and other staff at Charles Sturt University (CSU) via their online systems including an Adobe Connect at their very impressive Wagga Wagga campus. The session connected with staff throughout NSW at Albury-Wodonga, Bathurst, Dubbo and Orange.

The Wagga Wagga campus of CSU is set on a hill overlooking the town of Wagga Wagga and is urrounded by farm land owned by the university. It was the first university campus I have driven through where I had to stop for a heard of sheep.

I’m looking forward to coming back to this region of Australia in the future.

Check out Tim’s Website                                                  Check out CreateEDU TV

I’ve just had a delightful week in Perth which began on Monday 10th November with a visit to Polytechnic West where I met fashion designer and teacher Jennifer Rule, a very strong advocate for the use of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop in the fashion industry. It was great to see the work she has inspired from her students and the way Adobe tools are being taught and used creatively in the fashion world.

One of Jenny Rule’s fashion students showing a garment design with Adobe Illustrator.

Tuesday 11th November was a very memorable ‘Remembrance Day’ with a large number of senior staff from Atwell College at their eLearning Conference. I was invited as the keynote speaker and also ran a couple of workshops on ePortfolios with Acrobat Pro.

I was very impressed with the way Darren Smith (Adobe Education Leader and Head of I.C.T. Pedagogy at Atwell) organised this event with the executive of the school. The conference was based on the ‘Train the Trainer’ model where I was brought in to train and inspire the school leaders who were then tasked with inspiring the rest of the school community.

The SAMR model and the importance of creativity in all aspects of education were key themes throughout the day.

Darren Smith (AEL) being interviewed by Tim Kitchen for Adobe CreateEDU TV

On Wednesday 12th November, I ran a workshop on Adobe Acrobat in education at Willetton Senior High School. This involved staff from Willetton as well as some ICT teachers from  surrounding schools.

Thursday 13th was a day with teachers from a range of WA Independent schools organised by the Association of Independent Schools of Western Australia (AISWA). The first part of the day was focused on ePortfolios with Adobe Acrobat and the afternoon was dedicated to Flipped Learning with Adobe Voice, Adobe Presenter and of course Premier Pro.

I had a great week in WA. It was good to meet so many passionate educators and it was a real pleasure to share with them my passion for creativity in all forms of education as well as how to make the most of Adobe software in the classroom.

I’m looking forward to doing it all again in southern NSW and northern Victoria next week.

Check out Tim’s Website                                                  Check out CreateEDU TV

The following YouTube video is a webinar recently produced by a group of Australian Adobe Education Leaders displaying some of the creative work happening in their classrooms with their Adobe tools.

The webinar was hosted by the wonderful Pip Cleaves, a very highly regarded Australian educational consultant, from Design Learn Empower. It was part of the regular series of free live professional learning events offered via the Adobe Education Exchange.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpUJRiox17c%5D

Special thank you to the following Adobe Education Leaders for their contribution to this production:

Brett Kent and Shaloni Naik for presenting, and…

Beth O’Malley, PJ Bryans, Henrietta Miller, Grant Ward, Tim Creighton, Gary Poulton, and Megan Townes for their work samples and inspiration.

The first step these days to becoming an Adobe Education Leader is to apply to become an Adobe Campus Leader.

Feel free to contact me via kitchen@adobe.com for more information.