Tim’s Website

Earlier this week I visted three Queensland Education Schools that are part of the Schools of Creative Excellence Program. Forest Lake State High in Brisbane, Merrimac State High on the Gold Coast and Tullawong State High in the Sunshine Coast.

Each of these schools are leading the way in Queensland with the use of their newly gained Adobe Creative Cloud software to help enhance creativity in the learning and teaching process.

At Forest Lake, I was invited to take a Year 8 Science class and show them how to present their learning in video format.

Here is Keith Netscher (Deputy Principal of Forest Lake State High School) reflecting on the impact of the SOCE program so far at his school.

[vimeo:https://vimeo.com/101165865%5D

Merrimac State High School, in the heart of Queensland’s Gold Cost was my second visit.

Chris Tobin, the Principal of Merrimac, made the Creativity Pledge and recorded his reflections on the program. Stay tuned for the video.

Chris Tobin, Principal of Merrimac State High School.

Steffi (Merrimac’s School Captain) took the creativity pledge.

Special thanks to Nathan Pugliese and Rose Duggan for organising the Merrimac visit

My third and final visit for this trip was Tullawong State High School located at the south of the Sunshine Cost.

I was guest speaker at their open day and official launch of the Schools of Creative Excellence. One of the many displays included a computer lab full of student samples of work made with Adobe products.

Deb Murphy, Principal of Tullawong, gave her creativity pledge – video to follow.

Deb Murphy – Tullawong Principal

I would like to thank Geoff Hooton and the other Adobe Education Leaders at Tullawong for helping to make this event such a success.

Geoff Hooton, Tullawong Adobe Education Leader

Tim’s Website

The 2014 Adobe Education Virtual Conference is being held on 22^nd & 23^rd July (APAC time) titled Sparking Creative Catalysts.

Click the image below to see an Adobe Voice message about this event.

Register to access & find out more via …

http://edu.adobeeventsonline.com/2014/VirtualConference/

 This event is being held as part of the Adobe Education Leaders Institute at the Adobe Head Office in San Jose, California.

Live sessions that work for Asia Pacific times are listed below:

22^nd July

8.20 AM (Auckland time)

Creativity in Education Session
Teaching Business for Creatives—Best Practices

Renée Human, Northern Kentucky University
Learn about a course on business for creatives entitled the Business of Media Informatics taught at Northern Kentucky University. In this course, students learn to launch their professional careers and build and maintain a business. In a field where nearly three-fourths of all media designers and developers freelance at some point, students need to understand and develop key business practices.

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7 AM – 7.40 AM (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne)

9 AM – 9.40 AM (Aukland)

Creativity in Education Session
Students Become Entrepreneurs with the Sentinel Design Lab—Best Practices

Cindy Schultz, Sentinel High School
This session introduces an innovative way for students to become entrepreneurs using Adobe products in the high school classroom and beyond. This program is a unique example of 21st century education at its best: an environment where students work with instructors to shape their own education and become productive members of the community. Students in this program receive experience and training vitally needed in the rapidly expanding digital design market, along with opportunities for critical thinking, collaboration, leadership, entrepreneurship, and problem solving.

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8 AM – 8.40 AM (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne)

10 AM – 10.40 (Aukland)

The Creative Application of Education—Discussion

Erik Natzke, Adobe, Principal Designer, Experience Design
Einstein famously said, “Knowledge is limited; but imagination encircles the world.” The knowledge we acquire does empower us. But it isn’t until we find new and imaginative ways to apply this knowledge, that we begin to evolve ourselves. The mechanisms for acquiring knowledge and applying creativity are generally in conflict with one another. One is the systematic absorption of information and the other is a mode of play that often disrupts our progress to shake out discovery and gain a greater understanding of the known body of knowledge. The real trick comes when you can complete the loop and have play inspire learning and vice versa.

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7 am – 9 am (Perth, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur)

9 am – 11 am (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne)

11 am – 1 Pm (Auckland

Leadership Session
Storytelling Boot Camp—Training

Melissa Jones, Adobe and Pip Cleaves, Design | Learn | Empower
The ability to tell your story is essential for any leader and innovator. Want to be a Creative and Innovative Leader? Then you need to be able to tell your story. You need to be able to help others to understand why your cause is so important to you and to them. Help them to see why they should join in creativity in Education. This hands-on workshop will give you time to build your own narrative, and help you tell your own story and, in doing so, bring others to a common understanding of what drives you to do what you do.

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23^rd July

8.20 AM (Aukland)

Creativity in Education Session
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Common Core—Interactive

Kim Cavanaugh, Palm Beach County School District and David Olinger, O’Dea High
With the Common Core standards adoption well underway in the US, the question becomes not “if” our students will use creative software to meet the objectives of the Common Core, but “how” teachers and schools can promote solutions that encourage students to be creative. In this session participants will learn strategies for incorporating authentic assessments that use creative software tools from Adobe, see examples that use interactive tools to collect and evaluate student work that is aligned to the Common Core, and share their own experiences in the challenges of meeting the requirements of these new standards.

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7 AM – 7.40 AM (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne)

9 AM – 9.40 AM (Aukland)

Digital Media Session
How a Pen Transformed a Company—Discussion

David Macy, Adobe, Principal Designer, Experience Design
David Macy will demo Adobe’s first tools for the new creative—Project Mighty and Napoleon. Through natural interface, cloud connectivity, and now new hardware, Adobe is starting the process of creating tools for the next generation of creative. David will share how these tools are not only redefining the playing field for designers, but are also transforming and inspiring an entire company.

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8 AM – 8.40 AM (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne

10 AM – 10.40 (Aukland)

Creativity in Education Session
Fishbowl on Assessment, Accreditation & Gamification in Education—Panel / Discussion

Ian Usher, Buckinghamshire County Council; Greg Hodgson, The Wycombe Grange; Kelly Kermode, Eastern High School; Rob Schwartz, Sheridan Technical High School; and Mike Skocko, Valhalla High School
Explore the various strategies AELs use to motivate and recognize learning for different audiences—through games, certification, open badge systems, and more. Do these efforts help students better demonstrate what they learn and showcase that learning outside their classroom? Participate in the discussion yourself in a Fishbowl session and help refine the ways AELs can implement such approaches.

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7.45 – 8.10 AM (Perth, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur)

9.45 AM – 10.10 AM (Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne)

11.45 AM – 12.10 (Aukland)

Adobe Resources and Programs for Educators and Reflection Point

Tacy Trowbridge, Adobe Group Manager Education Programs

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Tim’s Website

Following my previous post on the ACA World Championship, here are two videos that have just been made public …

[vimeo:https://vimeo.com/98625016%5D

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmiM4vXg7zM%5D

Click here to find more information on the ACA World Championship.

Click here to find out more about Adobe Certification.

Here is the video on last year’s Australian ACA Champion, Liz Watkins.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wzaVsl1HFA%5D

Tim’s Website

Last Friday 20th June I had the pleasure of spending the day with the passionate staff and students at Sydney Boys High School.

The day started with a 1 hour staff professional learning session with about 30 staff members. It was great to be able to share some of research Adobe and others have been doing on the importance of creativity in education. I was also able to share how some of the Adobe tools the staff have can make a difference in engaging students and enhancing creativity in the teaching and learning process.

The rest of the day was dedicated to a group of about 20 Year 9, 10 & 11 boys from a mix of Art, Media & ICT subject areas. The aim of the day was to get the boys to work in small groups to come up with a music video clip based on an original kids song.

Here is a video story about the day …

As you can tell from the video, we had a great day.

I would like to thank Mrs Paris Munro and Mr James Kay from Sydney Boys High who organised the day as part of the ‘Adobe &’ program.

Tim’s Website

Dr Partridge was in Australia as a keynote for the EduTECH conference in Brisbane and flew to Melbourne especially for this engagement at RMIT on 5th June with eLearning educators from K-12, Higher Education and corporate training sectors.

Click the images to see the recordings

Allen’s presentation

Panel session

Allen Partridge, PhD, is Adobe’s world wide Senior Technology Evangelist for eLearning. He has a 20-year background in education, game and multimedia development.  He has researched and reported on authentic educational solutions to audiences around the world over the past decade.  Allen is well recognized for his many online video tutorials and eSeminars that are a mainstay of eLearning developers & trainers, working to learn how to create effective online educational materials.

Special thanks to Wilkar Productions for filming this event.

Tim’s Website

It was a delight to spend yesterday at the Adobe office in Sydney helping IC Central host  eight young designers who were competing to represent Australia in the Adobe Certified Associate World Championship.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmiM4vXg7zM%5D

These students, from Western Australia, Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales, were competing for the opportunity to represent Australia in the ACA World Championship event to be held in Disneyland, California on 27th July.

The focus for this year’s Australian event was to produce branding and advertising for a new campaign by Melbourne based charity group YGAP, which stands for Y-Generation Against Poverty. Scott Duncan from YGAP spoke to the group of students at the start of the day about the work of YGAP and provided a brief for them to work through.

The students were provided with a computer loaded with Photoshop CC, InDesign CC & Illustrator CC, a Wacom tablet, the YGAP brief and lots of food. Five hours later their poster designs were sent to a local printer and judged by IC Central, last year’s winner Liz Watkins, YGAP and myself.

We all took a water taxi to the Banjo Paterson restaurant where the final judging took place and the winners announced.Each student came away with a new Wacom tablet, but here are the three finalists.

Third place – Olivia Shotton from Victoria

Second place – Sam Coverley from WA

First place – and Australian representative for the ACA World Championship in Disneyland next month – Amy Robinson from Latrobe University, Victoria

Congratulation Amy!

[vimeo:https://vimeo.com/98625016%5D

The Adobe Certified Associate program  covers a range of Adobe products and is internationally recognised by industry. The Queensland Studies Authority (QSA) recently approved the recognition of Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) exams as credit for the Queensland Certificate of Education (QCE). If your students are using Adobe software and keen to be certified, they can also qualify to enter the National competition in 2015 when they pass an exam, please contact IC Central.

Image gallery

Tim’s Website

Dr Allen Partridge, Adobe’s worldwide Senior Technology Evangelist eLearning, has been in Australia this week as a keynote speaker at EduTECH as well as a number of other engagements.

EduTECH is the largest ICT in Education conference in Australasia and possibly the biggest in the southern hemisphere. Over 5000 delegates attended EduTECH at the Brisbane Conference and Convention Centre this year.

Dr Partridge talked about the research he has done while travelling around the world asking educators what they want from eLearning solutions. He demonstrated some of the great features of Adobe Presenter and Adobe Captivate that have come out of this research.

The day he arrived in Brisbane, he took a shuttle to Australia Zoo and used the GPS onsite location functionality within the new Adobe Captive 8 to build an interactive application full of short learning activities that relate to the various animal enclosures within the zoo. Allen demonstrated this app as part of his presentation.

This app can be found via http://p0qp0q.com/zoo

I had the privilege of sharing the stage with Dr Partridge as part of the keynote session and was able to promote the wonderful Adobe Education Exchange and the new Adobe Campus Leader Program.

Outside of the keynote session, Dr Partridge spent time meeting important Adobe education customers and supporting the team at the EduTECH Adobe booth.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On Thursday 5th June, Allen addressed about 100 educators at RMIT. Most of the audience were involved with eLearning at their university or school.

Following his Melbourne engagements, Dr Partidge flew to Sydney for an AEL Breakfast along with a range of other customer engagements at the Adobe office.

It was a great experience for me to spend the week with Allen. I enjoyed learning from his wealth of experience as an Adobe Evangelist and educator.

Dr Partridge can be contacted via

allenp@adobe.com

Twitter – @adobeelearning

Blog – blogs.adobe.com/captivate

Tim’s Website

One of my hopes when I began working for Adobe was that one day I may get the opportunity to actually meet the guru of creativity in education, Sir Ken Robinson. Today it happened.

It was just by chance that I was heading out of the Rydges Hotel in Southbank Brisbane as Sir Ken was arriving. I recognised him immediately as his car pulled up and took the opportunity to welcome him to Australia and introduce myself. He introduced me to his son James who took the photo and asked me about my work. I was a bit (a lot) star struck and a bit (a lot) in awe.

I was on my way to run an all day workshop with a group of Queensland independent school teachers, so you can imagine what my opening story was about.

I have read (and re-read) two of Sir Ken’s books (‘Out of our Minds’ I often refer to as the teacher’s bible) and I often regularly reference his TED talks and the video series he did with Adobe on Creativity in Education. So to actually meet him face to face was a real thrill.

I’m looking forward to listening to Sir Ken do the Day 1 closing keynote address at the EduTECH conference tomorrow. On Day 2, I will be sharing the keynote stage with Dr Allen Partridge where we have been told we will potentially be addressing over 2000 delegates.

What a great start to what will be an amazing week!

Tim’s Website

On Tuesday 20th May, I had the pleasure of visiting Kingswood High in the west of Sydney to run an ‘Adobe &’ day.

‘Adobe & days’ are unique opportunities for students to work with Adobe experts on a multimedia project either at their school or (if practical) as part of an excursion to and Adobe office or other city venue.

The aim of this particular day was to enhance the Kingswood student’s film making skills by editing a chase scene with Adobe Premier Pro.

Mr Tim Creighton (English teacher at Kingwood) was recently invited to join the international AEL (Adobe Education Leader) community for the outstanding work he is doing at Kingswood with Adobe products like Premier Pro, After Effects and Photoshop.

We started the day by looking at what makes a good short film and we analyised some professional chase sequences before planning our own. Tim Creighton looked after one half of the students while I help the other half and several short films were made by the end of the day.

Here are two samples …

It was nice to visit Kingswood again after first visiting the school in 2013 for another Adobe & Day where this clip came from …