Saturday, June 14, 2008
The Adobe Education Leaders got off to a great start at the Adobe head office in Chatswood in Sydney. There were five Adobe Education Leaders including 3 from NSW, 1 from NZ and myself from Melbourne. The plan is to expand the program next year to for more Education Leaders from Australia and Asia.
So what does an Adobe Education Leader do? Well, we were told about the new Adobe Curriculum which is a year long course that culminates in an exam and a qualification as an Adobe Certified Associate. Basically, you can set up training centers at your school, the kids learn the curriculum, which pretty much corresponds to the Victorian VET Multimedia Course, they get experience by sitting the Adobe exam and then their own Year 12 exam and they come out with the bonus of Adobe certification. Pretty good deal for the students by the sound of it, particularly when the Adobe people said that employers are more inclined to employ the certified student above the student who doesn't have the qualification.
We were also shown some tips and tricks in the various adobe products by the whiz kids of Adobe. We were given some freebies in the form of Wacom tablets, the full Adobe master suite and paid accommodation and flights.
On our part we all had to give a presentation on our favorite Adobe software and I gave mine on Illustrator. We listened to how the Adobe company is making inroads into the education market and that our role as educators was to show students and teachers best practice of Adobe products. This might involve going to conferences on Adobe's behalf and presenting workshops but it also means spreading the word about Adobe products.
Overall it was an interesting couple of days and great to hear what Adobe is doing with their products. The most exciting product though was the conferencing software that allows you to conduct eseminars. I can see this having great use for PD for teachers. Adobe will be sending me a login to use the product in a couple of weeks and I'm looking forward to using it with the rest of the Pixeled committee. Another exciting product was the Adobe Visual Communicator, basically this is being used in the States to replace newsletters. All you do is set the camera up with the software, get the student to sit in front of a blue screen and then press go. The student can then change the backgrounds or do whatever they want and then post it as a quicktime, AVI, flv etc...
Another thing was the AIR products or Adobe Rich Internet Applications that are a fancy form of widget. We had a look at Flex and how easy it was to make Internet Rich applications. Also, we had a quick peek at the new Adobe Media Player which plays FLV's with aplomb. These can be downloaded for free (the Air application add on and the Media Player) from the Adobe site.
Some great resources were:
adobetv
eseminars
adobe resources at Adobe
the adobe curriculum
Kular (a color technique website)
I came away not sure what the next step is for the Adobe Education Leaders but knowing that the company is fully supportive of our role and committed to helping teachers and students with the Adobe products.
So what does an Adobe Education Leader do? Well, we were told about the new Adobe Curriculum which is a year long course that culminates in an exam and a qualification as an Adobe Certified Associate. Basically, you can set up training centers at your school, the kids learn the curriculum, which pretty much corresponds to the Victorian VET Multimedia Course, they get experience by sitting the Adobe exam and then their own Year 12 exam and they come out with the bonus of Adobe certification. Pretty good deal for the students by the sound of it, particularly when the Adobe people said that employers are more inclined to employ the certified student above the student who doesn't have the qualification.
We were also shown some tips and tricks in the various adobe products by the whiz kids of Adobe. We were given some freebies in the form of Wacom tablets, the full Adobe master suite and paid accommodation and flights.
On our part we all had to give a presentation on our favorite Adobe software and I gave mine on Illustrator. We listened to how the Adobe company is making inroads into the education market and that our role as educators was to show students and teachers best practice of Adobe products. This might involve going to conferences on Adobe's behalf and presenting workshops but it also means spreading the word about Adobe products.
Overall it was an interesting couple of days and great to hear what Adobe is doing with their products. The most exciting product though was the conferencing software that allows you to conduct eseminars. I can see this having great use for PD for teachers. Adobe will be sending me a login to use the product in a couple of weeks and I'm looking forward to using it with the rest of the Pixeled committee. Another exciting product was the Adobe Visual Communicator, basically this is being used in the States to replace newsletters. All you do is set the camera up with the software, get the student to sit in front of a blue screen and then press go. The student can then change the backgrounds or do whatever they want and then post it as a quicktime, AVI, flv etc...
Another thing was the AIR products or Adobe Rich Internet Applications that are a fancy form of widget. We had a look at Flex and how easy it was to make Internet Rich applications. Also, we had a quick peek at the new Adobe Media Player which plays FLV's with aplomb. These can be downloaded for free (the Air application add on and the Media Player) from the Adobe site.
Some great resources were:
adobetv
eseminars
adobe resources at Adobe
the adobe curriculum
Kular (a color technique website)
I came away not sure what the next step is for the Adobe Education Leaders but knowing that the company is fully supportive of our role and committed to helping teachers and students with the Adobe products.
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