Posts in Category "Graphic Design"

Digital literacy = employment readiness

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Jim Babbage | Comments (4)

In mid-December, just before I headed out to the Adobe World Wide Sales Conference, I was invited by my ad students and the coordinator of the Centennial College Advertising program to their portfolio review day. I accepted right away; I really wanted to see how much they had grown as digital professionals. Continue reading…

Adobe Education Exchange Announces The 2011 Educators’ Choice Awards

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Richard John Jenkins | Comments (0)

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!

Prolific Powerhouse People: Teacher, Mike Skocko and the Mac Lab

Posted on November 19, 2010 by Richard John Jenkins | Comments (6)
Mike Skocko Keeps learning exciting and in balance in his Mac Lab

Valhalla High School teacher Mike Skocko keeps learning exciting and in balance in his Mac Lab.

 When it comes to learning Adobe software and technologies there is a fantastic cornucopia of terrific choices out there: great books, in-person seminars, online webinars, weekend hands on intensives and much, much more. I’m a visual learner so when it comes to my own way of learning Adobe tools I tend to gravitate towards one of the super online video offerings from companies like: KelbyTraining.com, VTC.com, TotalTraining.com, AtomicLearning.com, Lynda.com or our very own Adobe TV.

With the exception of Adobe TV mentioned above all of these training companies offer deep discounted education pricing to educators who subscribe to their offerings and in my humble opinion they are a super value. But what if I told you there is another source of terrific online video training available on Adobe tools and to access the videos it won’t cost you a dime?

Enter amazing prolific powerhouse Mike Skocko (pronounced skotch-ko) of Valhalla High School in El Cajon California who has produced and posted over 3,000 online video tutorials (no that’s not a typo – 3,000 and counting!) covering a wide range of Adobe tools and technologies. Best part, they’re totally FREE to watch and learn from. In fact Mike already has close to 300 videos on many of the current Adobe CS5 tools posted online and adds new ones daily.

Mike stated to me recently (and in the most humble way) he would have had near five hundred videos posted on the Adobe CS5 tools by now but since he was recently derailed by being accepted into Adobe’s Education Leaders (AEL) program and simultaneously started work on a Masters Program along with his fulltime teaching duties at Valhalla High, he’s only been able to add one video tutorial post per day. One per day!?  Five per week!?  Twenty per month!? Are you kidding me Mike!? I’m lucky if I can find the time to write three blog posts here on the Adobe Education Technologies Blog per month! So now dear blog readers you know why Mike has been picked by me as a Prolific Powerhouse Person here on our blog.

I encourage you to check out Mike’s excellent videos on Adobe’s software tools and share this great and free learning resource with your students and education associates far and wide.

The Mac Lab’s Online Adobe Software Tutorials can be found HERE.

Check out a cool interview Mike conducted with one of his former Students HERE.

Prolific Powerhouse People: Teacher, Dr Katherine Nell McNeil

Posted on October 3, 2010 by Richard John Jenkins | Comments (4)
Dr. Katherine Nell McNeil, East County Academy of Learning, Lakeside Union School District, San Diego, California.

Dr. Katherine Nell McNeil, East County Academy of Learning, Lakeside Union School District, San Diego, California.

It’s not every day when I man an Adobe booth at an education tradeshow talking with our education customers that I suddenly see someone in front of me practically jumping up and down and waving their arms to get my attention. Usually educators stop by our Adobe booth and politely ask us questions about education pricing, when the next versions of our software is due out and where they can learn more about professional development or certification. But at the last CUE (Computer-Using Educators) Conference held in Palm Springs, CA I rapidly finished up a conversation I was having and turned my attention to the woman at our booth who now had tears streaming down her cheeks and suddenly burst out, “Adobe save’s lives! Adobe changes lives! Thank you so much for all you do!”

I stood there jaw dropped and thunderstruck not quite sure of how to respond. I recall saying something really lame like “Excuse me!? Come again!?” But the woman standing there was now so emotionally choked up she couldn’t even speak! I sensed I better do something quick before she really started crying so I took her gently by the hand and asked her to sit down in our booth so I could calm her down.

After several minutes she finally did and said, “My name is Dr. Katherine Nell McNeil. I’m a Special Education teacher from the East County Academy of Learning in the Lakeside Union School District in San Diego, California. I want you to know for all the work that Adobe does, to each employee who has had a hand in making your software a reality, you all need to know that I stand up and yell thank you.  Adobe saves lives.  Adobe changes lives. You guys are dream makers not dream breakers.  Through your products my students with severe emotional and behavioral disorders learn not only how to make award winning digital media designs, but also develop new behaviors, higher order thinking skills, academic and social skills which they previously did not possess”.

Now it was my turn to get emotional. I remember getting tears in my eyes and blurting something like “Wow! Really!? Thank you for sharing this!”  Dr McNeil went on to tell me she has been a special ed. teacher for over ten years and by using digital media design tools like Photoshop, she’s made a profound difference in many of her students behavior. She stated many of students have severe learning disabilities including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHAD).  But through the use of digital media tools many of her kids have been able to turn their lives around by expressing themselves and building self-confidence using these tools. In fact she beamed when she informed me that several of her students won ribbons at the recent California Del Mar fair for their digital media creations made with Adobe Photoshop and other Adobe tools.

Dr McNeil's student's showing examples of their Adobe Photoshop work.

Photo sent to me from Dr McNeil & her student's showing examples of their Adobe Photoshop work including ribbons!

To learn more about this prolific powerhouse educator, Dr. McNeil and her special education teaching techniques check out this great video interview with her made by the San Diego Department of Education (SDDOE) at the link below.

Classroom of the Future Foundation Interview with Dr. McNeil

What? Another cool tool on labs, you say?

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Timothy Plumer, Jr. | Comments (0)

Yes. Yes we do say. We here at the Adobe Education Technologies blog love labs. Whenever we feel like facing a new challange and playing with some cool, new tools, we drift on over the Adobe Labs (link to Adobe Labs) and check it out. A new tool we found there got us very excited, so we wanted to share it with you.

Adobe WorkflowLab (beta)

It can be used for planning out project tasks and overall workflow and organize thoughts for project post-mortems or to learn about best practices using built-in workflow starting points. Go grab it for yourself and have a look (link to the WorkflowLab beta)

 

Read on for more details. . .

Continue reading…

Lightroom 3 is in Beta and available for you to try

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Timothy Plumer, Jr. | Comments (0)

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We here at the Adobe Education Technologies blog like to think of ourselves as amateur photographers (except for Rick—who is a real photographer, but the rest of us try to keep up). We are all VERY excited bout the next release of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom—version 3 BETA, and you can see it yourself on Adobe labs: (link to the Labs Lightroom 3 BETA site)

Some of the new features included for you to play with in the Lightroom 3 beta are:

  • Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
  • State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
  • Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
  • Portable sharable slide shows—with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slide shows as videos and include audio
  • Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
  • Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
  • New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
  • More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta

Read on for more resources and information about the next release of one of our Adobe favorites:

Continue reading…

Updated Teacher Resources

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Patrick Koster | Comments (0)

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The lesson plans on the Adobe Digital School Collection teacher resources web page have been updated to include sample project assets and technical guides for the new release of Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Adobe Premiere Elements 8. There is also a new resource page tailored for Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and netbooks. Finally, the Adobe Education SE team is hard at work creating video tutorials taking you through some of the lesson plans/projects. These can be found on Adobe TV.

Adobe == Collaboration

Posted on May 29, 2009 by Timothy Plumer, Jr. | Comments (0)

There is a storm brewing, folks, and it isn’t going to just blow over. As fuel prices (here in the US anyway) start the uphill, summer climb, budgets for travel sink lower, and the amount of work we need to accomplish at very best stays the same, we need to figure out how to do our jobs while working with our colleagues around campus or around the globe. We here at the Adobe Education Technologies blog have been asked to do more of our work from home, and we love it! However, it is difficult to confer and present with colleagues because we often need to edit the presentation together, yet there is no way to justify the trip across the country to do so. When the economy turns around, among the strewn bits of jetsam that any storm leaves, we need to find a better ways to work corroboratively, pick them up, and use them make our work more efficient in any economy.

Adobe is noticing this along with everyone else—and we are doing something about it. The latest effort has me floored. It’s called Adobe Presentations and it’s a true software as a service (SaaS) product. If you have ever worked with PowerPoint or Keynote, then you will know what it does. However, it’s the “how-it-does-it” that has us floored. First off, you can give it a spin by going to the new labs site of Acrobat.com. Link to Adobe Presentations. Take a look at the Welcome presentation sample that you can use to get started (this a PDF exported from that presentation and uploaded to SHARE):

However, to understand how this will become a new port in the coming storm, read on.

Continue reading…

Quickly Fix Common Photo Issues with Adobe Photoshop Elements

Posted on April 5, 2009 by Patrick Koster | Comments (4)

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Adobe Photoshop Elements Icon

After importing photos into the Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer you may need to make adjustments to ensure your photos look their best. You can quickly and effectively resolve common photo issues with a single click of a button. Simply choose the purple Fix tab located in the upper-right of your screen.

Continue reading…

Photo Compositing Made Easy with Adobe Photoshop Elements

Posted on March 2, 2009 by Patrick Koster | Comments (1)

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Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 application icon

Just in case you aren’t familiar with photo compositing, this technique combines two or more photos into a single new photo. Some examples where this technique would be useful are:

  • combining multiple photos to create a more expansive (panoramic) final photo
  • creating the perfect group photo from multiple photos
  • creating the perfect scenic photo from multiple photos eliminating unwanted elements (like people)

Adobe Photoshop Elements offers powerful, yet easy-to-use Photomerge technology to make these difficult and time-consuming tasks a snap. Here are three Photomerge tutorials (note 5-10 sec pause at the beginning for buffering):

Try Photomerge for yourself. If you don’t currently own Adobe Photoshop Elements, download the latest trial version from Adobe’s website!

Regards,
Patrick Koster
Senior Solution Engineer, Adobe Education