ABOUT THE COURSE
We all know that higher education is directed by different objectives – knowledge and skills in the subject areas, capability to identify formulate and handle complex problems, evaluate information and formulate possible solutions, communicate knowledge at theoretical as well as applicable level, enhance ability to co-operate and to develop professional skills. Fulfilling these objectives in itself is a great challenge; it imposes specific demands, not only on the teachers but also on teaching methods. Teaching must stimulate students to learn, to seek information and to critically synthesize information and knowledge. It should also offer possibilities for applying their acquired skills. This infers that a variety of teaching methods need to be applied.
This course has been designed to provide students with tools for life-long learning, i.e. learn how to learn and to gather knowledge. The course was created keeping in mind the rapid growth of new knowledge. It focuses on enhancing creative skills of the students and make them future ready to step into the corporate world.
knowing the fact that today's world is all about being digital, be it the corporate or the PERSONAL world, this course focuses primarily on enabling students create their digital profiles.
The course does not only focus on subject knowledge, but also on the skills to be acquired. Students must become aware of what they need to learn to succeed.
Skills without a degree or a degree without skills will be of not much important (however, skills without a degree is always better than a degree without skills)
Adobe Spark – An Introduction
1. What is Adobe Spark?
Adobe Spark is a free application by Adobe to enhance and showcase your creativity. It helps you to create beautiful visual stories swiftly and share ideas instantly across various platforms. You can create visual stories using combination of various media like text, icons, images, and videos.
Adobe Spark stories can be build using three design applications – Adobe Spark Page, Adobe Spark Post and Adobe Spark Video, using platform independent Adobe Spark Web app or Mobile app for iOS devices like iPhone. Content created, automatically gets saved on the cloud and is always in sync.
2. What Adobe Spark can do?
Adobe Spark helps you to create images optimized for different social media platforms with right size and shape of image for each social media platform to augment your social media presence. Create a video using images from your computer or iOS camera roll, add narration and background music, formulate text overlay and craft an amazing video to share with your peers or students.
You can combine your images and videos and develop a web page adding elaborate text and other relevant images directly searchable from within Adobe Spark. You can easily develop visual content for businesses, education, social media and many more. You also get inspired by exploring the Adobe Spark Gallery for different projects made by different classes of people.
Adobe Spark can be used by students of higher education for creating book reports, assignments, making projects, designing reports, creating posters, creating blogs, digital profile, personal portfolio, sharing experiences in the form of storytelling etc. On the other hand, educators can use the same for creating video journals, video lessons, lesson plans, storyboards and so on. Thus, it is evident how Adobe Spark is beneficial not only for students but for the entire education fraternity.
In a nutshell you can create amazing ‘professional in look’ graphics, beautiful magazine-style Web Pages, and professional quality videos with soundtracks and cinematic motion.
3. Features of Adobe Spark
- Quick anytime, anywhere creativity
Create anything, anywhere and anytime with the help of a platform, with independent web app and apps for iOS. Use any device – a laptop or mobile iOS device.
- Instant Sharing
Share your creations via social media platforms or email and capture attention with your amazing designs.
- Ready to use Templates
Professional quality themes are available with best-in-class layouts, colors, and fonts. Tweak them just by adding text and photos that suit your needs.
- Beautiful typography
You can turn your text into a professional-looking graphic by simply applying a professional theme that provides beautiful fonts and color combination without the need of any designing experience. Make your text pop by resizing and applying beautiful typography.
- Photo Library
Search and use thousands of photos on the web or use from your personal collections on Adobe Creative Cloud, Lightroom CC, Dropbox or Google Photos.
- Auto-resize designs as per requirement
Irrespective of your need of a graphic for Facebook, Pinterest or a banner for your blog or website, simply create it and adjust it to right size on the fly by selecting a target platform.Unique Motion Effects
- Unique Motion Effects
Bring your text, photos and videos instantly to life with fluid, elegant motion called Glideshow. Impress your audience with its amazing motion effects.
- Responsive web pages fit for any screen
Pages you create in Adobe Spark automatically adapt to look great on any screen size – be it a laptop, tablet or mobile phone. Present your idea as a responsive web page that can be viewed in any web browser.
Components of Adobe Spark
Adobe Spark Post
Enables you create professional graphics in absolutely no time. A user friendly tool for creating memos, announcements, invitations etc.
Adobe Spark Video
Adobe Spark Video enables you to create animated videos in absolutely no time. It is a great tool for lessons, pitches, presentations, greetings and more.
Adobe Spark Page
Adobe Spark Page enables you to create web stories in absolutely no time. It is a competent tool for photo journals, event recaps, portfolios, catalogues and more.
This section will focus on creating Digital Profiles of the students, but first we need to understand the difference between a contemporary cv/resume and digital profile
Digital Profiles Vs. Resumes
Resumes have been around for what seems like forever, and while they are not going away in the immediate future, they are certainly headed that way. With social media dominating how we communicate in this day and age, it’s only a matter of time before digital profiles become the leading method for hiring as well.
One might say that digital profiles are just a digital resume, and while the comparison is understandable, implying that digital profiles are still just “resumes” is not accurate.
It’s more like reading a book and then watching the movie version of that book.
When you read the book, you are envisioning what is being said. However, when you watch the actual movie, you are not left with as much uncertainty because it is all there for you to see in black and white.
THE FOLLOWING SECTION IS A STEP TO STEP GUIDE ON CREATING DIGITAL PROFILE USING ADOBE SPARK
- Open Adobe Spark: Open your internet browser, type https://spark.adobe.com and press Enter. Click ‘Log In’.
- Login : Click "Login with Adobe ID"
- Enter Adobe Credentials: Login using your Adobe username and password
- Creating Page: Click ‘+’ icon at the top. Click on "Create new Web Page".
As we would be using a lot of photographs from here on, make sure the selection of photographs are wise both with respect to resolution and content of your profile.
- Add Title of Your Page: Click ‘Add a Title’ on page to add title "<Name>"
- Add Subtitle on Your Page: Click ‘ADD A SUBTITLE’. The Subtitle should be the name of your course/branch, e.g., Mechanical Engineer, Civil Engineer, etc.
- Click on ‘+’ Button: Click on ‘+’ to add photo on starting page. This can either be your photograph or a photograph related to your stream/course
- Add Photo through Upload Photo: If you wish to add your own photograph as background to the Title page, Click 'Upload Photo' and double click the desired photograph to add.
- Add Photo through Find Free Photo/Adobe Stock: If you wish to add a photograph as background to the Title page, Click 'Upload Photo' and double click the desired photograph to add.
- Select a Theme: This is the right time to select a theme for your Digital Profile. To select the 'Theme' click on the Themes, on the top right corner of your screen. It is recommended to choose a more professional theme such as 'Chic', 'Chronicle', 'Crisp' rather than 'Storybook' or 'Vintage'.
- Click ‘+’ to add New Text Section: Click on ‘+’ and select text to add text information. This information needs to be your 'Executive Digest'/'Objective'. Select the style as 'H2' / 'Double Quotes'.
- The next section in your digital profile should be your contact details. This should include your Contact No., LinkedIn Profile URL, Skype ID, Residential Address. Let's Start building this up.
Click '+' to add new section: Click '+' and select 'Glideshow' to add a background image to this section of your page. Once you click on glide show you need to add a photograph through 'Find Free Photos'.
- Make sure the selection of photograph for Glideshow is relevant. You can search on adobe stock with keywords like "Contact", "Social Profile"
Select the desired photograph and click on 'save' button on the top right of the screen. The moment save button is pressed, you will see that the selected photograph will fill the screen
- Add Text on Glideshow: You will notice a grey color box with a "+" sign on the photograph, click on the same to start adding your contact details.
- The next section of your digital profile will focus on your education & certifications. Let's Start building this up.
Click '+' to add new section: Click '+' and select 'Split Layout' to add a split layout (One side Photograph and Text on the other side) to this section of your page.
Add Image to the Split Layout: Click on 'Add Your Image' to add a photograph on oneside of your split layout and Click on '+' sign to add text on the otherside.
- Make sure the selection of photograph for Split Layout is relevant. You can search on Find Free Photos with keywords like "Education".
- In case you have some extra certification beyond your educational qualification you can start another split page and title that as Certifications.
The next section of your Digital Profile will focus on your experience (if any) or projects undertaken (if any). Let's start building it up.
Click '+' to add new section: Click '+' and select 'Glideshow' to add a background image to this section of your page. Once you click on glide show you need to add a photograph through 'Find Free Photos'.
- Make sure the selection of photograph for Glideshow is relevant. You can search on adobe stock with keywords relevant to your project(s).
- If a video file of the project is available you can upload the same on either You Tube or Vimeo and add the link of the same in your Profile. The following steps explains the procedure of the same
ADD VIDEO TO YOUR DIGITAL PROFILE
- Add Video: To Add a video Click on the '+' sign and select video
- Copy the URL: Copy the URL of your You Tube/Vimeo Video and paste the same in the box and click on 'Save' Button
now is the right time to see how our digital profile is actually shaping up or how will it look like to the person we would be sharing it with. to have a look at the same click on 'present/preview' button on the top center of your spark page
IF IN CASE YOU LIKE TO ADD MORE INFORMATION ABOUT YOURSELF, START A NEW GLIDESHOW OR SPLIT LAYOUT AND DO NOT FORGET THE FOLLOWING:
- To Change Theme Anytime: Click on ‘Theme’ to select any predefined theme on your page.
- Add Style Text: Select text which you would like to highlight and use the format toolbar to change style of text.
now finally our digital profile is ready and can now be shared. the procedure for sharing the profile is as under
SHARE PAGE
Share Page: Click on ‘Share’ to share your Adobe Spark Page with anyone.
Follow the procedure as under to create a shareable link of your Digital Profile
- Select 'Publish and Share Link'
- Click on 'Pick a category' and select Education from the drop down list
- Put the toggle key corresponding to Author Name as 'ON' by clicking on it
- Finally click on 'Create Link' button to create a link.
- Once the link is created copy the link by clicking on the 'Copy' button right next to the shareable link box and paste the same in the mail text body of your email client (Gmail/Yahoo/Rediff/Hotmail, etc.). Add the recipient's name and subject and send the link via mail to anyone.
the next time if you do any changes to your digital profile and want to share the same with the people you have already shared with, simply click on 'share' button then 'share and publish link', adobe spark will automatically calculate the changes and will prompt you to update the link. Click on 'Update the Link' and that is all. the next time anyone opens the same link will see the updated version of your digital profile.
Credits:
Created with images by Skye Studios - "Look Up" • BiljaST - "iphone x iphone x"