ImpressivE Technologies for Learning
To be truly literate in our world today, our students need to be competent at creating a variety of types of media. This course focused on using Adobe After Effects to create a variety of visual effects. The power create powerful media by our students is growing exponentially. The tools exist…getting them into the hands of the students is the challenge…o
I like when I open an educational door expecting one thing and find something else…completely unexpected, but wonderful. When I registered for this course through Adobe Education Exchange, I assumed it would be focused on Adobe’s iconic image editor, Photoshop. When it became clear the focus was Lightroom—particularly the new web-based Lightroom CC—I’ll admit to being a bit disappointed. I’d worked with Lightroom before. The desktop version is a standard of professional photographers and is a powerful platform for organizing photos, batch editing, and making quick adjustments. Lightroom CC takes that functionality to the Web and mobile devices.
Photography is a true love. With the tools and amazing smartphone cameras of today, we are truly in a golden age of photography. Seems like photo-literacy is a skill that should be built into our curriculum from an increasingly young age. We are educating a generation of media consumers like never before. They should be literate in the media that dominates their world.
Since ancient times, finding a way to keep and share knowledge has been a goal of mankind. From the wet clay cuneiform of the Sumerians, to sheets of papyrus of the Egyptians, to the parchment scrolls of the Hebrews, to moveable type of Gutenberg’s printing press…these methods gave mankind the ability to share ideas with people of their day, and with generations to come. They weren’t, however, tools for the masses. Only the intellectual elite and wealthy had the opportunity to participate in this extended conversation.
The technology explosion of the past 20+ years has opened the sharing of ideas and production of professional quality printing to anyone with a Web-connected device. We teach our students to read and write. In this era, they should also know how to take their ideas and put them into an interesting and compelling format.
This course from Adobe Education Exchange gave me the opportunity to explore some more advanced features of Adobe InDesign. I’ve known this software since it was called PageMaker. It is a truly powerful and flexible tool for creating media not only for print, but also for the Web. I was particularly surprised by the ability to create PDF documents with animation and interactivity. Check out my learning journal from the class to see more.
Some design resources to evaluate found on a Post-It note on my desk…to check out later.
This course was lots of work…very valuable work. I earned my master’s in instructional design in the infancy of online education. Since I earned my degree, the entire EdTech program at San Diego State has gone online. (Also, the program was rebranded as Learning Design and Technology to more accurately portray its focus.)
I appreciated the tasks of creating instructional videos, though the time constraints seemed overly restrictive at times. It gave me an appreciation for those that create high volumes of online instruction. I plan to incorporate more instructional videos in my teaching. While they take some time to produce, they eliminate questions and allow the students to be more productive.
Pretty devious of the Google Innovator folks to have applications for LAX18 come due just as the school year is winding down with all the craziness that goes with the end of the year.
I’m hoping the third time will be the charm for me. I like my idea for my Innovation Project…not sure it comes out in the 90 second video. Basically, I’d like to provide resources and a gathering place for teachers and students to develop and polish their skills with images and video. Check out my application video below (as well as my two previous attempts).
Just completed the Graphics and Illustration course from Adobe Education Exchange. This was my second class with Adobe EdEx and once again it was a great experience.
Illustrator is a application that I had never felt comfortable with. Since I started my Adobe journey with Photoshop, it was always difficult to think vector rather than raster. I can now say that the pen tool and I are on speaking terms…friends even!
Check out the learning journal to see the various projects. Squeezing projects in amidst the craziness of teaching wasn’t always easy, but we do the best we can in the time we have.
Some new things worth investigating…these integrate with Google Classroom…cool!
I’m glad to be back with Adobe. For probably ten years they priced themselves out of our school. Their education pricing didn’t accommodate for small schools like mine. For the past three years we’ve been part of an agreement through CETPA that has brought Adobe tools back into our classes.
To get back up to speed with the Creative Cloud apps, and to get ready for our new digital video class, I took the Video for Educators course through the Adobe Education Exchange. It was a great experience and not only provided some great project ideas, but provided a good foundation of video production principles in addition to learning to use Premiere Pro.
Part of the class was a learning journal that I’ve linked above. Check it our to see my projects and some of the things I learned.