Visual Effects for Educators

Visual Effects for Educators

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…only then can those hands become skilled creators. Check out the Spark page above to see what I worked on.

Digital Photography for Educators

Robert Faust

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.


Digital Publishing for Educators

Robert Faust

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.

The waiting is the hardest part…

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).

Graphics and Illustration for Educators

Robert Faust

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.

Video for Educators Class

Video for Educators

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.

Tech Tool Gallimaufry

Superintendent Aguilar and I presented a collection (gallimaufry) of tech tools for a sectional at the Arizona-California District Teachers’ Conference in San Diego.

Tools change all the time, but I think this is a pretty good collection of some of the tools currently out there. If you have a suggestion for another, there’s a link at the upper right to add your own suggestion.

Visit the site here.

On add-ons, and scripts, and things…

We’ve been using a paper-based notification system for years to document behavioral and academic issues with students. It’s involved lots of paper and email and too many people.

After an amazing workshop with Brent Coley, I realized two Google Suite plugins he showcased could simplify lots of things with our process.

The add-ons are autoCrat and copyDown. Now when teachers need to notify a student, their parents, and their faculty adviser…they just complete and submit a Google form. Emails are sent to all concerned parties and a pdf copy is saved to a folder in Google Drive.

While wrangling spreadsheets to my will, I got over a major hurdle thanks to this tip from benlcollins.com. Looks to be an amazing resource!

<This post is mostly a buried acorn for me…if you want to know details…let me know.>