Just as Adobe is changing the world through digital experiences, educators are changing the world through innovative teaching. From creating inspiring curricula to bringing dynamic, media-rich content into courses and assignments, educators go above and beyond to prepare students for today’s global workforce. But creating those amazing learning experiences for their students is not an easy task. To encourage educators to share their successful teaching materials and help each other get ready for the new school year, the Adobe Education Exchange launched the 2011 Educators’ Choice Awards. Starting this week, educators can win great prizes by simply submitting their best projects, lesson plans, curricula, and tutorials. Prepare to be inspired!

The 2011 Educators’ Choice Awards will recognize and reward Adobe Education Exchange members who submit the most innovative teaching and learning materials. The community will choose the winners of the awards by rating and voting for one another’s entries. Educators can submit entries in four categories including:

• Higher Education Digital Arts and Media
• Primary/Secondary Digital Arts and Media
• Higher Education Cross-Curricular
• Primary/Secondary Cross-Curricular

Grand prize and runner-up winners will go home with prizes like laptop computers, tablets, digital cameras, and the new Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 to help them continue to create innovative learning experiences for their students.

For more information on the 2011 Educators’ Choice Awards or to enter, visit: http://www.adobe.com/go/AdobeEDUAwards. For inspiration and examples, join or sign in to browse the resources on the Adobe Education Exchange. Also, be sure to follow @AdobeEDU and #AdobeEDUAwards for the latest updates about the awards. Get your creative juices flowing, submit your great teaching materials and win big!

Digital Museum

Adobe breaks new ground on the Web today with the official unveiling of the Adobe Museum of Digital Media.  It’s a first-of-its-kind, all-digital museum created to showcase all forms of digital art and media.  The project has attracted world-class creative and curatorial talent – the inaugural exhibition is by American artist Tony Oursler and curated by Bard College’s Tom Eccles (the same curator who brought the amazing waterfall installations by Olafur Eliasson to New York last summer).

The vision for the museum is to celebrate digital media and the artists who are embracing and exploring its limitless possibilities.  The venue invites visitors to thoroughly explore the interactivity, lack of physical boundaries, and 24/7 availability of the online world.  Check it out and let us know what you think.

Last night, Adobe hosted a VIP launch celebration in New York at The Standard Hotel’s High Line Room leading up to the 12:01 Eastern official Museum launch.  Nearly 200 digital artists, museum curators, collectors, media, and other art world luminaries turned out to mingle over cocktails with Tony Oursler, Tom Eccles, and other members of the visionary team responsible for the museum while experiencing a first-hand preview of Tony’s mesmerizing exhibit, Valley. It was a standing-room-only crowd.

This project has been a long time in the making and I want to offer my thanks and congratulations to the many people who made it possible.  In addition to Tom and Tony, I’d like to highlight the amazing creative work of our in-house Adobe team; Goodby, Silverstein and Partners under the leadership of Rich Silverstein; Filippo Innocenti, co-founder of Spin+ (architecture); and unit9, a London-based design firm, led by Piero Frescobaldi.

At its core, Adobe has always been about catalyzing creativity.  That’s why we come to work every day.  We feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to bring a museum featuring ground-breaking digital media to the world.   Please visit us and become a member (it’s free).

Rich Silverstein, Steven Estok, and Ghiora Aharoni, looking at Tony’s exhibit, “Valley”

John Travis, Tom Eccles, Rich Silverstein, Tony Oursler, Piero Frescobaldi, and Filippo Innocenti at yesterday's launch event