Session 1

Brian Johnsrud

Brian shared with us a summary of the sheer scale of what has been added to EDEX (Adobe Education Exchange) by Adobe and the Adobe Educator Community, which has resulted in meeting demand for updates to make existing and future content more accessible and flexible.

Simple steps like allowing for editing or combination of resources empowers teachers to use the activities flexibly with high adaptability. Remixing is KEY for making the resources as timely and useful as possible.

Cross-curriculum interplay and pedagogy are building the potential for student success by allowing educators to hear from different Educator Voices in self-paced courses. Professional learning toolkits have also been added to EDEX to SAVE YOU TIME. The PL toolkits include everything, from email templates, slide formats, everything that you need to concentrate on content, not the build process.

Kickstarters:  This has expanded from 12 last year to 21, to give you ideas on how to fulfill and challenge students in a short period of time.

Past Challenges have also been adapted for EDEX, so you can use all the creative thinking from them in your own context

One of the most exciting things is how teachers have been using what is available on the Adobe for Education YouTube Channel to embed and expand their learning resources in their own classes!

Keep in touch with news from Adobe...

Adobe has become Khan Academy's official Creativity Partner, with the potential for everything that is available in both platforms being expanded to the benefit of everyone!

Check out the co-created lessons and activities using the link edex.adobe.com/khan!

Next...

Matt Niemitz

The Adobe Education Exchange (EDEX) has now reached over 1000000 members, which is an amazing milestone for a remarkable resource. EDEX has been around for 10 years, and it has evolved a great deal in that time. The recent updates and sheer scale of community contributions means that Matt and his team have reimagined both the backend and front end user experience to make searching, using and sharing easier for both users and contributors.

Aim of EDEX: To save you all time and find the quickest ways you can get to the content you are looking for.

Matt shared a tour of EDEX, taking us through the new logic of how things are organised to make finding things faster and easier, based on feedback from YOU.

Matt mentioned that Brian and his team have a section for curated content, where they can highlight what is a new resource or timely (like upcoming events or culturally significant periods - specific resources are shared there for you to use for yourself and your teaching.

Looking for a place to get started? Matt highly recommends the Creativity for All course for everyone to explore their creative potential.

A major redevelopment of resource kits has made it easier to preview, download, or open in your chosen cloud-based solution. Discovering an idea is the first step. Matt's team are exploring things like how to share to a Learning Management System, or other methods that you can integrate what is available into systems that you are already using. Templates are also a great way for teachers to work, or for teachers to share project 'starting points' with their students.

and now...

Tacy Trowbridge

Educators and Educational institutions need allies to empower students with creativity and digital literacy skills.

Students are responsive to gaining creativity skills in their courses... and so are future employers.

Job postings across rapidly growing industries (including healthcare and tech) show a demand for creativity, with job postings seeking skills, but jobseekers not understanding the importance of including information about their creativity skills in their resumes.

Adobe is also involved in advocacy for teachers and educational institutions around the world, working to help make sure the priorities for industries (and our student's future employers) are being met by the priorities that institutions manage for their educators.

This can be as simple as creating in-demand resources, increasing readability and accessibility for resources, or focusing on maintaining student learning as a lifelong endeavour that they will carry into their careers.

Session 2

Tim and I did a fast Demo for Spark Post to make a flyer...

Check out my own creation (below), then follow the links in the buttons beneath to view the brilliant shares from others:

LIVE DEMO SHOWCASE

Theme: Creativity in Education is important because …

Those who opted not to share their name publicly have been named as 'anon' below.

Then KEV LAVERY joined us to do a super quick demo on Adobe Premiere Rush:

Kev is very passionate about his cuts, and he encourages users to:

1. minimalise transitions to make their projects look professional (J cuts, L cuts)
2. Have good audio, as viewers will forgive grainy footage if it is easy and clear to listen to.

Kev then took us through the way he quickly sets up a project.

He also oriented us to how there is options for your aspect ratio, as well as how to select, remove or move the footage added around the timeline of your project.

Kev quickly showed us how to separate the audio from the footage. He right-clicked on the video clip to get menu options - I like to use the menu button at the bottom-left of the screen.

When it comes to transitions and effects, Kev only uses dissolves and other options for audio - he believes in keeping transitions as clean as possible, as a 'fade' transition suggests that time is passing.

Kev then quickly demonstrated how to add titles and music!

Tim and Character Animator

Tim did a demo of what it looks like when you jump into Character Animator and use one of the available puppets.

Tim showed us how to manually animate the hands of the puppet, then how to export the animated puppet with audio OUT WITHOUT A BACKGROUND (very exciting)! This can be imported into Adobe Premiere RUSH!

Then...

MICHELLE DENNIS joined us to share her use of apps for DESIGN THINKING!

Michelle took us through how Design Thinking is important to resolve wicked problems. Wicked problems are the best kind of problems as the potential solutions are as unique as the person thinking about it.

Creative thinking is not something that is done solo, or by 'creative' people (artists). Everyone in every field has to think Creatively and Collaboratively in order to reach their full potential.

Creative thinking also gives you a structure to ensure exploration and deep learning. This is more important that students being focussed on whether something is worth learning because it is 'on the test' - a destructive approach to creative thinking (and real-world problem solving skills development)!

Michelle then moved into sharing her favourite design thinking tools, including XD and icompass!

https://bit.ly/HowMightWeTemplate

Michelle showed us some of her favourite tools for prototyping and the practical implementation of ideation.

Michelle then went into detail about her favourite phase - the testing phase. She used Flipgrid so her students can add video explanations and comments about their own and their peer's projects in an 'open' (class) forum.

Session 3

Classroom Success Stories

First up... Juliette Bentley, Brett Kent and Erin Raethke

BRETT KENT was first up, and talked us through the ways that teachers can use Adobe Spark to support our students in their creative process, either by building projects for them, or by enabling students to build it themselves.

He used a test case of Wambangalang (https://wambangala-e.schools.nsw.gov.au/) and the expectations of this environmental education centre to show positive outcomes for the students that visit them, while themselves having exactly ZERO official student enrolment.

The idea of this is that this institution is building content using Adobe Spark, then transforms the way they are doing learning and teaching, especially on a remote basis.

JULIETTE BENTLEY then took us through using Adobe Spark as a teaching tool and an opportunity to create really professional resources.

In her fundamental English class, Juliette has taken her students into an Adobe Spark Collaboration space to get her students to take ownership and have an authentic audience, giving students who don't usually raise their voice a pathway to express themselves and share their ideas.

Juliette reported that the quality of the work was richer and compelling - moreso than if the expectation was to present a report at the front of the class.

Previously confined students were free to express themselves.

Then... Craig Daalmeijer-Power and Ali Blackwell

InDesign

They joined us to go through solutions for InDesign, showing how students can use this powerful app to create, arrange, and make powerful decisions in their projects, creating professional outputs in their classrooms.

Then.... Dr Max Schleser, Mel Muller & Brett Kent

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality with Adobe tools

Brett Kent opened with practical examples of how 360 degree cameras can be used to capture environments that can then be used by students to create immersive learning experience.

This enables students to build their own virtual reality... including moving it into Premiere Pro.

Mel Muller then joined us to discuss her experience as a digital technologies teacher (self-taught) with students who have various levels of digital and literacy confidence.

Students have wanted to work in VR, so the teachers have come up with solutions to help student realise their goals. They are even working on projects for VR and AR to create avatars for their students.

Max Schleser then came in to talk about the 'Medibank Wellbeing' project.

It was about reconnection with nature from home, and it was so successful that Medibank picked it up. People could even 'invite' others on a virtual hike.

Max then shared his Today is Tomorrow project, to emphasise the importance and value of interdepartmental cooperation.

Session 4

More classroom success stories!

Next up... Joel Aarons, Craig Daalmeijer-Power, Michelle Dennis and Adrian Bruch

First up, Joel Aarons joined us to discuss how capable primary students are in using Photoshop when given the opportunity. Age is no limitation!

Joel spoke about how he introduced the idea of Photoshop to...

Get kids brains working!

Joel focussed on the engagement he gains when doing composites.

He uses the above practical tools to explain non-destructive editing and the use (and importance) of layers in projects (incl. Ps).

He then introduces the concept of creating something fantastical that would be impossible to create 'in camera'. He wants them to think of something that can't be practically achieved in any way by using tricks in camera (i.e. perspective shift).

The goal is to get students to create ideas and then make them a reality.

To see more of Joel's work, check him out here:

Now Adrian Bruch joins us to talk about SAE Creative Media Institute student work, featuring storyboard work by a student, from initial sketches, to colourising, to incorporating images.. to the actual video!

Adrian then featured another student, who used a combination of Ps and Illustrator to create movie posters:

Next, Mark Woszczalski and Emma Wise joined us to share some of the potential with After Effects.

By supplying students with a simple asset, you can get them adding the requirements to do a simple animation very quickly!

Students were given props and a brief to include at least two effects, and students had great fun with props and costumes.

Mark shared with us the finished video, which appears in the stream at the 5 hour mark or so.

Emma Wise then joined us to speak about Kerikeri High School, and the work she has done with them as a self-confessed 'non-expert'. What she observed was a huge lift in engagement from the boys at the school.

Using props, stop motion, green screen and animation, they explored how to make their scenes more dynamic.

Students also made use of food colouring with goo and other chroma-key techniques in app to create dramatic effects.

The more students explored, the more dramatic the effects became. Students would carefully storyboard their work to produce more and more sophisticated effects.

Next, Michelle Dennis & Craig Daalmeijer-Power came back to the stage to discuss what can be achieved with Adobe XD.

Craig led us through his own success story of an Interactive Design Class.

See the below student examples that you can use the QR code to browse yourself! He then took us through the design process, including using auto-animate to create dynamic interfaces in lieu of video being available in XD (which video is not for the moment).

In the XD Immersive Online Workshop, Craig used the immersive staff sessions to do a Train the Trainer workshop to further develop staff Design thinking.

The plan is to repeat these sessions with students, the intention of which is to build a portfolio for students to take out into industry. From these workshops, Craig shared an example created by a design teacher who had never used XD before, but had a clear idea of what they wanted and how to workflow their idea.

Michelle Dennis then shared a Design Sprint that she completed with her students. They had to find a problem, then create an app to design a solution. This one was around public transport in Melbourne.

To get students focussing on the design, she got them to make a paper prototype (and seek feedback) to make sure that once they were in XD, their ideas were a lot clearer, with divergent approaches for each student

Below, you can see the interactions that the students designed in the background of their app:

Finally, Michelle got the students to experience the Validation phase of creativity - the QR code provides users with the ability to not just interact with the design for the 'app', but also for them to provide comments to work from. This is a real-world skill that is vitally important for students to develop as they move into a workplace.

Session 5 - The finale!

JB Tinker from the Certiport and Clara Galan from the Global Adobe Education Team will be joining us for this final session.

JB Tinker from Certiport

From the Certiport site:

In preparation for the Adobe Certified Professional certification exams, Certiport and Adobe have put together a set of practice materials* and example exam items for you to review. These study materials were developed to help students and educators familiarize themselves with the key areas of the certification exam.

What you'll find in this packet are:

• Topic areas and objectives for the exam
• Practice materials with image assets
• Practice exam item

From JB: Each year Certiport run the ACA Championship. This is run like a real organisation, and any financial profits generated go to charity. The portfolios that students can create have helped real world students to get very real scholarships to help them into University and beyond.

As well as offical badges, completed participants also receive digital badges to place on their profiles.

And last but not least...

Clara Galan

Adobe Global Education Community Lead

Clara guided us through her thoughts (and encouragement) to become a creator (and a creative supporter for our students). Clara observed that her and her brother's studies were a foundation, but are so different from the roles they are in now as they DIDN'T EXIST WHEN THEY WERE IN SCHOOL!

Adobe wants to partner with you as educational professionals and students to help inform what works best in education, as YOU are the experts in what you need and what you want to see. She also shared the heat map of the current enrolments on EDEX and Syvia Duckworths Inspirational EduArt!

Clara also shared some highlights from Adobe Spark Post, with animation becoming available in browser and remixable templates... and remember to share with #AdobeEduCreative !

Clara also shared the Creative Process Kit - which she is happy to share links to:

If you aren't already, explore becoming an Adobe Education Leader. Reach out to Clara to find out more.

Clara also has her own livestream show for the US/European region. Find it on the Adobe for Education YouTube Channel:

ADOBE MAX IS NEARLY HERE!

Since last year Max has been virtual and on-demand. The same thing is happening this year, with an incredible lineup for everyone, but special 'tracks' for Educators, Beginners and Students.

#AdobeEduCreative