Adobe Education Leaders

Imagine a situation where you finally have something you and others have yearned for for years and yet it has now become common and people have become blasé about it. You struggle to get everyone excited about it, to find it relevant to their work and daily lives, to take advantage of it. No, I’m not talking about the right to vote in the US. I’m talking about Adobe’s great tools and technologies.

After years of conversations and negotiations my institution, Indiana University (IU), signed an Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) with Adobe giving our students, faculty and staff access to Creative Suite, Captivate, Lightroom and others. At first they melted the wires downloading it, but now it’s become commonplace. Sure the Fine Arts, Journalism and IST students are still in hog heaven, but what about the Business or Chemistry students? How can we make it relevant to them? Think of how well Mendeleev could have presented the Periodic Table if he’d been able to throw together a mock-up in Fireworks. And imagine how much more accessible E=mc2 would have been to the average reader if Einstein could have added an Edge animation to his landmark “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies” paper.

How can we broaden the conversation about Adobe tools? How do we get our entire school populations to think outside of the creativity box? This software is not just about makin’ thangs purty. This software helps us express ideas – sometime simple, sometimes complex. It should be an arrow in our communications quiver. We need to help our communities screw in and turn on the lightbulbs of inspiration. These tools are for everyone.

How. Do. We. Do. This?

First, we need be sure the tools are up to it. Are they simple enough to use? DW has a nice drop-down list to change the layouts. Can you make a “for dummies” layout that gives you just the essentials and removes the finery? if Adobe can simplify the UI for the touch apps, why can’t they give us an option for a simplified UI in the desktop apps. Sure, we want to power, but only when we need it. The rest of the time we want simplicity. Imagine Steve Jobs designing an SUV. It would be able to 4-wheel up the mountain when necessary, but the rest of the time it would be a car simple enough for anyone to drive to the grocery store. Can we get reach those heights of UI simplicity for PS or IA?

Second, we need someone – the community? Adobe? – to examine the WHOLE education space, not just when the teacher is in the classroom with the students, and develop relevant examples to seemingly mundane activities for all to see. Adobe Connect for office hours? Not really flexing the muscles of the product, but it is simple, relevant and gets people using the tool. A time-lapse profit chart in a Business student’s company case-study report? It will not only blow away his professor, but it will give the student a deeper understanding of the content. It might even be their gateway drug to other CS apps… The list goes on.

I have the greatest respect for those who work and teach in the visual and creative arts. I am envious of their talents. However it is far too easy for the Adobe Creative Wow Factor, exemplified by their work and the praise it justifiably receives, to so dominate the conversation. It can seem unattainable to and shut down the imaginations of those who exercise less artistic pursuits.

We need inspiration. We need examples. We need to show a broad spectrum of use cases from across the academic spectrum. Adobe tools for the poets and scientists! Adobe tools for music and pre-med! Adobe tools for the researchers! Adobe tools for the secretaries! If the tools can be used by everyone (jury is still out on that question), then lets show everyone using them.

This may not seem relevant to you. You may be in a school where getting the software is a struggle. It was a struggle for us too. That’s why keeping it, by showing its ROI, is so important.

Stand up and be counted! Share your thoughts.

The connected world is such a wonderful thing! As an educator, it keeps you in a constant state of excitement plus some trepidation thrown in.

The thoughts are always there….Will I try to implement this software in my classroom because I know it will work? Will I try this new Web 2.0 tool that I found on the net? Will I try & use this in my classroom with the chance that it will be an epic fail? And the answer is predominately YES!!

Currently our campus is going through a massive focus reshift as we no longer have any externally based assessments to teach to (the NSW School Certificate in particular). We are now moving into a realm of certification and this is going to be really exciting (for me at least) but there are some who will not be as excited to let go of years of emotional attachment to content & the way in which it is presented. We are trying to move our school to a healthy mix of Assessment of Learning  & Assessment of Learning. In our rapidly changing classroom environment, I believe they both need to coexist for students to be able to learn at their best.

As we are all aware, IT Education needs both (learn to use the software so you can implement it into your classroom & the same for students). Our Year 9 students have classes in using their laptop that the DEC issued them term 1 as part of the Digital Education Revolution. These classes have been enormously successful as the devices have a massive amount of software on them, including the Adobe Design Premium Suite of software. The devices are in a ‘locked down’ environment (specified by the department) and that has more benefits than drawbacks (less troubleshooting time involved). This means that we can maximise the student usage of the devices in the classroom & minimise downtime for all concerned. 

We are in a phase of restructuring with plans in place in 2012 for our refocus to kickstart in 2013. We are putting into place training for all of our year cohorts with the ideal situation being that they all receive an IT accreditation each of the 4 years that they attend our campus. Our staff are currently also in the training phase, with initially interested teachers being targeted with the idea of all staff being involved after the evaluation of the 2013 pilot program. Our students will all have globally-recognised IT skills & abilities that they can use to further their education or gain employment. And that for me, as an IT educator, is extremely gratifying.

At the heart of this new certification age is the use of Adobe Acrobat Pro X &, in particular, ePortfolios. As it is pre-installed onto the device, all content created on the device can be easily converted by Acrobat by the students, and then either submitted for assessment ( we use Moodle at our campus), or archived ready to be added to later or taken with them when they leave our campus. We extensively use Microsoft OneNote at our ca mpus and our students submit their notebooks for assessment each term by creating a PDF and submitting for content approval, a lso done in Acrobat with the use of Comments & stamps. The majority of the content is brought together in Acrobat and directions/instructions are put on each PDF, which speeds up availability of content.

Acrobat Pro X is the glue that binds our digitallly-based, paper-free, IT courses together.

I will keep you updated throughout the semester with how our students, staff & administrators are moving towards the next exciting phase of our journey.

Thanks

Ross

The following is a guest post by Bedros Kharmandarian, a junior at New Milford High School. Throughout his high school career he has been exposed to many elective courses in the areas of graphics and technology that have allowed him to unleash his creative talents. In this piece he discusses his use of Adobe tools to create our recent Holocaust Study Tour book.  You can view last year’s book created using Adobe Creative Design Suite HERE.

As a student, the use of Adobe programs has been a privilege, as well as, a tool to benefit myself and New Milford High School.  A large amount  of my efforts yearly go into our school yearbook, which is done through a collaboration between our Graphic Arts teacher, Mr. Pevny, and a few students such as myself.  I am proud to say that the yearbook has consistently received many awards over the years.  This, in my opinion, can be attributed to an amazing teacher in Mr. Pevny as well as the schools’ investment in the latest educational technology (iMacs, Adobe tools, digital cameras, etc.).

This year, a project that took a grand amount of effort on my part, as well as, the use of programs such as Photoshop and InDesign, was a booklet on the Holocaust Study Tour.  Every year our school holds an educational trip to Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic, in which a select group of students are taken to get a first hand education on the Holocaust.   When the trip reaches its end, they are left with multitudes of pictures, as well as, an essay, which is to be written by each student.   A single student is bestowed the task of using the resources at hand, coupled with Adobe programs, to create a 60 page booklet.  This year, I was the student chosen.

So, essentially, Adobe software such as InDesign and Photoshop have been a staple in my artistic student life. They have enriched my experience as a student at New Milford High by providing me the ability to make things ranging from yearbook content, Holocaust booklets, playbills for the school musical, projects for numerous classes, and many more learning artifacts.   I am afforded countless opportunities to learn on my terms with the tools that I am comfortable with at times that are convenient.  This is how school should be and I am thankful for everything that NMHS has done to meet my needs and provided me with unparalleled learning opportunities.

Seeding the Knowledge Garden Beta Lab: Developing a Cross-disciplinary course in Knowledge Design & Curation for George Brown College.
By Jim Kinney, Professor, School of Art & Design, George Brown College.

Preamble
The number of web pages in existence today is estimated at anywhere from 25 billion to 1 Trillion and is moving towards an infinite value. Having the equivalent of all human knowledge a mere Google search away confers knowledge power on the average internet user that eclipses the wildest imaginations of our predecessors yet, in order to fully utilize this incredible resource, requires that we are able to harness this chaotic agglomeration by subjecting it to a process of refinement.
The rigour of computer science and library science has helped to make this infinite datascape easier to navigate, search and visualize. As more of our economic activity migrates to this space, productivity gains as well as new ways of interacting stimulate the emergence of novel economic patterns with new value propositions. These emerging values do not conform to the old paradigms of vertical, hierarchal organisation and functional specialization with their synchronized production of concrete artefacts.
Artefact production is an anachronism of an industrial age that we have been increasingly outsourcing and leaving behind. We have migrated to a new space where value lies not in things but in relationships and this new landscape has opened the door to a creative impulse that has not been experienced since the dawning of the renaissance.
The adept is one who can work outside the traditional constraints of space, time and function and who can assume a multiplicity of roles and adapt on the fly to rapidly changing environments. These participants in the new economy will, by necessity, be effective in team-based approaches and organizations will need to move to a rapid response or Just-In-Time operational model that can accommodate changes in the wind and allow for innovation.
In order to allow for the incubation, acceleration and commercialization of ideas organizations will need processes and infrastructure that allow for a design-centred approach that can quickly prototype, test and refine ideas for market. Part of an effective infrastructure will be a cultural apparatus that promotes multi-disciplinary collaborations that allow for the confluence of design thinking, new methods, materials and technologies to solve problems in a myriad of domains such as healthcare, service sectors, security, finance, etc.
Crucial to the success of this design-centred approach will be building the capacity to capture and curate process knowledge on the fly in order to build a powerful, searchable knowledge repository that can be drawn upon to inform other teams working on other projects. The ability to organize effective teams and capture their experiences, as it happens, and to use this intelligence in debriefs to inform standards of best practice will be an integral tool in the emerging economy. The ability to modularize the functionality of knowledge assets in order to enhance their accessibility and usefulness as well as an ability to re-configure and repurpose these assets for a variety of applications constitute an emerging skillset. See Appendix 1 (Knowledge Worker)
Participants in the emerging economy will require broad base of skills that can be adapted to a multitude of scenarios in order to collaboratively, co-create, curate, distribute and monetize digital assets and experiences. Whether you are a Chef working with a programmer to produce an interactive mobile menu application that will allow for people around the globe to participate in a cooking class from home or whether you are a Palliative Care practitioner who is documenting patient care and interactions on a tablet in consultation with a medical doctor, you will need to know how to work in a team in order to design workflows and applications that help you to optimize your outcomes. Given that these complex systems are rendered more usable through rich visual interfaces, at least a rudimentary knowledge of these processes would be critical to establishing a common framework of practice around how information in the moment is best captured and made usable. This forms the basis for a new class of participant in the emergent economy that we can call the knowledge holder/creator. The knowledge holder must be adept at working with programmers, engineers and designers to render their knowledge into assets and experiential opportunities that are more accessible and usable by a broader spectrum of clients. The knowledge holder will need to learn the skills of capturing and curating their know-how in ways that optimize this accessibility and usability.

The Knowledge Garden Project
This project used a team-based, distributed model of peer-to-peer learning that was designed as an adaptive response to pervasive, persistent and aggressive change in technology.
By reframing traditional classroom roles and empowering students as co-creators/designers of knowledge, over 150 individuals were soon doing the work that was done by only one. The ability to rapidly research, demonstrate, document, podcast, archive and curate a myriad of learning experiences across a broad spectrum delivered the power to generate know-how that was vastly superior in both quality and quantity to what could have been done by a professor alone.
The fact that subsequent teams of students would assume stewardship of this resource meant that an entirely new generation of stakeholders could work on updating and improving the resource by adding searchability, improved assets, better organization, etc. Even if a new release meant that over 30 hours of podcast instruction and hundreds of PDF manual pages were rendered obsolete, the new owners could cope with this. While this would represent an unmitigated disaster for a group of professors this was a relatively simple fact of life that could easily be remedied with another burst of creativity from its stakeholders. Individually, the task was leviathan, collectively—it was relatively easy.
In this model the professor took on the role of mentor providing research direction that best tied to the problems being tackled. Finally, the professor acted as a knowledge harvester—taking the best materials and promoting their use within a content system by the broader student population.
This new methodology combined with some software and hardware infrastructure paved the way for creating a Just In Time or RISK-based approach to learning (Rapid Integration of Skills and Knowledge).

Beta Lab (Knowledge Curation and Design Course)
While the provenance of this idea was borne in the context of teaching software to Graphic Design students it quickly became apparent that the real potential for innovation lay in bringing design practice, RISK methodology and Knowledge capture/curation infrastructure and know-how to non-traditional disciplines in order to widen the net of inclusion and to “push the envelope” as it were in disciplines that, traditionally, had not enjoyed the sort of knowledge/tech transfer that designers have enjoyed since the mid 1980’s. It occurred to me that a multi-disciplinary approach had the potential to float many more boats and provide a context for rich interdisciplinary collaborations that would address some of the key skills and competencies required by the communities that we serve—namely, the ability to collaborate and communicate effectively.
A workforce that has the knowledge skill and infrastructure to capture and reframe the intelligence of their respective fields delivers the capacity to transform those fields by making their know-how accessible, searchable, transferrable, comprehensible and highly mobile. These new modalities have the added capacity to generate revenue and promote great efficiencies while binding participants in the process to powerful new modes of interaction and providing them with direct participation at the epicentre of the new and emerging economy.

The Ground Covered
I have worked since 2003 on refining methods of peer-based collaboration within the context of design. My students have self-organized, self-taught, demonstrated and published a wealth of materials in the three primary areas of Photocomposition, Illustration and Page Layout/ Printing using Adobe’s industry standard toolsets. The learning was contextualized in solving three main problems: The production of highly realistic illustrations using the two-dimensional medium of Adobe Illustrator and the compilation of a manual that detailed the tools, tips and techniques necessary for accomplishing the task. Further explorations of Photoshop were required in order to produce a compelling piece of cover art for the manual and InDesign was used to publish the materials as a PDF book. Rather than learning being a series of seemingly disconnected factoids, each element eventually took its rightful place in a sequence whose sum resulted in expert and compelling works. All of the research presentation and publishing were co-ordinated and executed in a collective fashion while the Illustrations, naturally, provided an outlet for individual expression and grading. It was a blended form of learning that, while it allowed for a summative expression of individual abilities, could not have been made possible without a concerted commitment to a group-based approach to learning.
Initially, Students not only showcased their individual talents (some of whom won international design awards from Adobe) but they each shared the fruits of their collective efforts in the form of a beautifully designed and extremely informative manual covering key functions of three very key Adobe toolsets.
Infrastructure:
In 2009 I participated in a joint research project with Apple Computer and three other Canadian universities that allowed me to explore the potential for the creation and distribution of mobile learning assets for and by students. This opportunity resulted in the generation of a rich, searchable resource that could be configured and used both on an individual and a collective level. In addition to the usual production of illustrations, cover art and how-to manuals, over 200 podcasts were generated many employing closed captioning and several executed in other languages such as Spanish and Mandarin—effectively transforming what would normally be considered as a roadblock to learning into a terrific learning advantage. The racial and linguistic diversity of our large urban mosaic was changed from challenge to opportunity by leveraging this inherent capacity to speak to the world. On conclusion of the research, infrastructure was repatriated and, only recently, has it been re-established with the acquisition of a new podcast and wiki server. Ideally, it would have been helpful to acquire a third authentication and sign-on server but we are working on managing these resources in a very independent manner that allows us to minimize reliance on IT resources and maximize experimentation and innovation by way of this relative autonomy.

The Course
It occurred to me that the course should build incrementally in order to develop best practices, test infrastructure robustness and requirements and that early iterations should be limited to design students with proven capacity to work with these technologies and document their processes in a clear and usable manner. Later iterations should ideally reach out to include other departments within our school in order to allow them to explore untapped niches of opportunity in their own domains. Eventually, in the third phase the course would encourage community members NGOs/agencies and private companies to partner with the program in order to leverage our capacity for providing solutions to these problems. I envision a cross-disciplinary team that would involve second or senior year students from various departments in order to provide a broad base of skill sets, a variety of faculty consultants, an IT liaison, a community partner with a problem to solve and a technology provider who sees in the community partner an opportunity to explore untapped applications for their product. This ecosystem of stakeholders would then collectively define and deliver innovation in the sectors represented by our community partners. The college itself could be designated as its own community partner and derive benefit from the creation of a cutting-edge knowledge ecosystem that buoys up underserviced areas. For instance, the simple inclusion of closed captioning as part of any workflow by student researchers creates a direct benefit of inclusion for a broader swath of the community!

Just In Time
The benefits of access to pre-release (beta-level) engagement with toolsets are significant. Instead of reacting to change, participants would have a role in shaping the changes affecting them by occupying a seat at the table where decisions are being made. This ground-sourced form of participation is a trend that will continue to grow and be incorporated in the development and marketing strategies of most leading companies. Any institution that can incorporate this form of dialogue into its program cannot help but assume a leadership role in shaping future trends and, as a corollary of this approach, its students are given significant lead times that allow them to anticipate and prepare for the changes that will effect their respective industries in ways that are profitable to them and the organizations that they work for.
Already the wheels have been set in motion with Apple Computer and Adobe Systems with respect to high value strategic relationships that involve this sort of cutting edge research and curriculum. Eventually, I envision an evolution of the lab where a multi-disciplinary team of students works with faculty, IT, a community partner using pre-release technologies that are being tested on real world problems—moving from scenarios of theoretical use to actual case use. Students and faculty would not only gain experience in emerging technologies ahead of the curve, they would get to apply it in particular instances relative to a problem identified in the community. They would also capture and curate this know-how and report to the various stakeholders on progress. The beta providers would gain access to a team of researchers who would provide critical bench testing of their wares and access data relevant to contextual use scenarios as well as proof of use for new markets/customers. They also would share in the warehoused knowledge and make this public on the release date. The fact that the beta providers could then offer the know-how material that was produced to their traditional user base as well as to anticipated new markets is a powerful incentive to participate.
The college would have the advantage of having know-how embedded in its participants but also in the form of searchable podcasts that could then be distributed to the broader community on the release date. The students, too, would have established a leadership position vis-à-vis this know-how and would have developed valuable research and collaboration skills in the process.
An opportunity also exists to license and distribute this content to create an income stream through Knowledge channels such as Lynda.com, iTunes, etc.
Strategically, Knowledge Capture and its curation are highly significant in adapting to the skills and knowledge vacuum created by the wave of succession caused by the Boomer generation’s exit from the workforce. Implicit knowledge held by Boomers, is in danger of being lost if it is not expressed, captured and repurposed for a smaller, younger generation taking the reins. Much work needs to be done in helping organizations acquire and utilize the capacity to capture and re-purpose the strategically important knowledge that constitutes their intellectual capital and competitive advantage. It is entirely reasonable to promote this form of Knowledge design and curation as a standard business practice.

What We Need
The project has only tacit approval at this stage. The course outline has been submitted to both the Director, Luigi Ferrara and his Co-ordinator, Judith Gregory for approval. We will need:
Lab space: Room to accommodate 15-20 people with tables in the centre to facilitate face to face interactions. White boards around perimeter to allow dtailing of discussions and prototyping.
Podcast Server/WIKI server (already acquired)
Service contracts to guarantee QS. On system configuration and maintenance
10 new computers (preferably Mac)
High bandwidth Wireless connection to the internet
VPN clients for senior administrators
Pre-release Software/Hardware and reporting software
Cross-disciplinary liaison to assist with outreach and building connections to other departments.
Creation of cross-curricular (Gen Ed) Requirement or accreditation possibly incentivized by two credits.
Ability to extend tenure of particpants to more than one term.
Terms of Engagement Agreements/ NDA’s, etc.
Recruitment process.
Interview process.
Legal advise on streamlining a process for binding a diverse group of stakeholders to the obligations of a Non-disclosure agreement while upholding the rights of individuals or organizations bound by them.
The will and the vision to support the project.
Potential Downside
The success of this enterprise is contingent on a number of factors. First, if the institution and its leaders fails to understand what is at stake and what the benefits are, it will be difficult to promote the risk-taking necessary to facilitate the acquisition of adequate resources and to experiment with new approaches in delivery. Cross-disciplinary approaches are difficult to co-ordinate with willing partners. A climate of risk mitigation will minimize participation in unproven territory and will default to a wait-and-see approach that is anathema to innovation—cultural acceptance of risk taking is necessary. Binding agreements between stakeholders need to be negotiated in order to ensure longer term viability. This will require signatories at the management level to give the project the endorsement it requires and to negotiate relationships that work to serve the interest of all parties involved. Other faculty and managers need to be educated on the significance of the approach and how it is validated through research and is consistent with emerging trends in experiential learning and is ideally suited as an adaptation and innovation methodology.
All stakeholders must perceive advantage in engaging with this approach and must be given a role in determining the contours of the engagement. Exclusion of any one party could result in a disconnection and a failure to “own” and promote the process towards excellence.
Given its marginal, off-grid approach adequate IT support for this project has been ad hoc in nature. Proper resourcing of IT support will be crucial to the success of any joint venture and care has to be taken to ensure clear and open channels of communication between our internal support and those of our technology providers. Failure to ensure that our technology partners and our internal IT partners are aligned in their respective tasks will result in technical impasses that will delay the move forward with project-based research.
NDAs are extremely important to partners providing pre-release opportunities and cultivating a climate of discretion and secrecy will be of the utmost importance. An interviewing process and the signing of binders by participants can help to lend weight to this necessity and the violation of these agreements would, understandably, do irreparable damage to the partner, the beta project and the reputation of the institution. The lab and the participants will be under wraps until the release date at which point we will be at liberty to share our successes and leverage any content/processes.
Non participation would effectively render the ambitions of this project to being moot and, so, proper promotion of its merits to the college community, managers, faculty, students and the broader community will be key to its long term success. Failure to promote the enterprise will result in its marginalization and eventual decline.
Keeping the initial offering limited to a small, select number of students will constitute budgetary pressure on the local level but will be necessary in order to ensure manageable success. The research-based focus may well present opportunities to attract research grants from government agencies, internal funding as well as our partners who will already be supplying in-kind investments of technology for our use but may well provide additional funding. Our community partners may best be able to provide an infusion of financial support given that we are helping them to solve a problem. The lab should be kept to a small group of 10-15 students and the professors involvement would require a release of two teaching blocks to accommodate proper oversight. As the lab culture matures we may be able to move to a staffing model where a student from a previous year is given the paying position of research lead and reducing the amount of direct involvement by the professor.
Debriefing sessions will be crucial to monitoring the health of a project and for instituting best-practices that will guide and inform future project participants. This will provide an opportunity to garner feedback/ratings from the various participants. A reporting structure will be necessary in order to share findings with the management layer and provide transparency and accountability on performance. Where NDAs allow, opportunities should be sought for presenting findings in the public domain through conferences, workshops etc. and victories and accomplishments should be celebrated in vehicles that are accessible to all of the parties (Trade Magazines, Symposia, Conferences, etc.).
This project represents over seven years of methodically acquiring resources, experimenting with methods and promoting its potential. I have every confidence that, with the proper support and dedication to its vision, it will help to place our college in a leadership position not only in innovation in teaching and learning but in providing new capacity to non “design-oriented” domains that will allow them to leverage the power of the knowledge that they hold and to migrate that knowledge into more contemporary domains that provide efficiencies as well as revenue-generating potiential.
I am excited to begin forging bold new partnerships and building something new and powerful that will serve our communities for years to come.

Regards,

Jim Kinney

Appendix 1_K-Worker_Competencies & Relations

The ideas for this article came out of my reviewing the whole Rome process and the resulting software. What I could not stop thinking about was the question, what exactly do educators want… in software, in the digital world in general, in any way?

I was immediately struck by the huge assumption, and therefore the huge error, built into the whole question right from the get go – “educators” are not a homogeneous group. You can ask what we want any way you wish, but, unless you are prepared to understand just how diverse and downright different we are, your question will never really be answered. That is why any good designer / engineer / problem solver will start by asking, who are we… not, what do we want. There are dozens of books out now that discuss the value of the design process and design thinking which places the target or audience of a product ahead of the product itself. First understand your clientele, then build the product.

Let’s start by looking at a typical high school. Our school has approximately 1500 students and 100 teachers. Of those 100 teachers we have about 20 teachers who are already immersed in various aspects of digital technology, another 15-ish who are wading into the waters in varying degrees and the rest. The “rest “ represent widely varying perspectives. At one end there are those who would venture forth with lots of support and mentoring (hand holding is required). At the opposite end are those who are angry and or afraid… it really doesn’t matter which because the end result is the dismissal of digital technology and all that is has to offer. I cannot give you numbers or percentages for these two groups at this point. I can only tell you they definitely exist and that those against are vehement about their anti-technology point of view. I strongly suspect, based on the war stories I hear from other schools, that we are pretty typical of most high schools. To put this into perspective – if you are building software that appeals to somewhat experienced users then you are building for about 35% of our teachers. That means you are not appealing to 65% of them. It is that simple, and these figures may be overly optimistic.

I offer this insight into our mix of teachers because what the most involved would want in their software is quite different from what the others would prefer. And you are going to tell me you are going to create one software product that appeals to everyone equally? And serves them equally? Interesting…  (I am told it’s good to have dreams. )

I suggest we start with the most basic aspect of any technology – the names of the tools themselves. As I saw with Rome, applying very technical names to these tools may be perfectly logical for the engineers and for those who are very well versed in the technology but even those of us who consider ourselves immersed in this digital world do not know all of these terms. How, then, will new users ever figure them out? More to the point, don’t you want to make every aspect of the technology inviting, easy to access and use? Calling a tool by a technical name is a quick way to push a new user away, while using a term from common language makes the tool more accessible and appealing. Oh – one more note – do not make the names cute. That is worse than technical – at least technical assumes we will figure it out (rightly or wrongly). Cute is just insulting. Straightforward works well, it assumes normal intelligence and is accessible to most folks.

When planning the software, think like a new user. Keep the operations simple, the result clear and the process direct and easy to use. For example – explaining how to adjust, add or subtract keyframes will not make a new user happy – too many concepts at work here, and way too much to know right from the get go. Instead, think…   the story opens with ______; then this happens_____, then this ______. Finally, it ends when this happens ______________. End of story. The sounds will be _____, and so on until its built. Make it simple. All of that will work wonders for the teachers and for any users in fact, that want as close to drag-and –drop story telling as possible. Now – to add an underlying power to this software, you would need to make the resulting timeline fully accessible to those of us who play with such things… but not up front. Tell us how to lift the hood, so to speak, so we can access these details. I liken the whole thing to operating a car. Most folks do not want to know the details. They want the car to start, go and stop easily with simple instructions, not complex technical explanations and controls. Assume that the new users know virtually nothing and want to know only a bit more in order to make it work, at least in the beginning.

Now – if you are able to create software that works like this, go one step further – make it so it runs on old and new systems equally. Our school is running Windows XP on a variety of machines. The old machines have slow processors and about 512 Mb of RAM. The new machines also run XP and have 1 Gb of RAM. Our best machines in the school have fairly fast processors and 2 Gb of RAM… and nowhere are there any signs that point to better machines running Windows 7. Having said that, I know there are schools running brand new computers with tons of RAM and Windows 7… makes it quite a challenge, doesn’t it? We are never on the same page digitally, and you must assume the worst scenario possible. That is our reality and since there are no programs anywhere that are stepping forward with the billions of dollars necessary to not only equip schools with better computers but to also maintain those labs at that level indefinitely, this situation is not about to improve. I suppose you could go one step further and add that certain governments have education budgets on their radar screens – they consider them excellent sources of revenue. How they manage to also sleep at night is quite beyond my comprehension. I always thought that it was society’s job to invest in its own future, but apparently I was wrong on that point.

So – building new software for touch-pad technology? Great – schools may have that by 2020… if all goes well. Schools, which should be so much closer to the cutting edge of technology, are still fighting the belief that buying good computers is a luxury, not a necessity. And you want to create software that serves all educators equally? As is said at the outset, it’s good to dream. Therein lies all of our hopes for the future.

The picture shows us looking down – is that where we are headed, or is that where we have come from? I prefer the latter – you?

Continue reading…

There is a strong push in educational administration to use data driven decision making. On the surface, it looks to be a very sound concept. What are the test scores, what subsections are strongest, what needs to be improved? In the test driven educational environment, it is difficult to argue with those priorities.
Yet as educators, we know there are always two faces to tests. There are the hard scores, ideally (But not always – see Texas ) based on non-politicized, well researched questions, and there is the story of the individual students, some of whom make heroic gains while struggling against incredibly difficult home lives to make substantial gains.
We have always known about this in education, and consequently, research has branched into two widely respected fields, quantitative research, (by the numbers) and qualitative research (by the case, or individual). My concern and the concern of many is that we have gone too far to the side of numerical analysis, and over reliance on test scores, and have ignored the qualitative aspects.
So why write about this in an Adobe blog? Because Adobe provides a tremendous amount of qualitative support options for education. Acrobat’s ePortfolio capabilities provide educators a chance to look in-depth at what students are doing, how they are doing it, and how they reflect upon that process. While it is not the only tool around for doing this, it is certainly an effective one.
When looking at the Adobe product line, there are many, many tools that assist in the achievement of higher order thinking skills, and 21st century skills and few that contribute to quantitative analysis. This is because it is harder to measure higher order thinking quantitatively, not because of any lack in the toolset. As I have mentioned elsewhere, the new digital divide emerging, one where rich kids go to school to learn how to tell the computer what to do, and to create, and one where poor kids go to school, and learn how to take orders from the computer, and how to do worksheets in a computer.
What experiences would you like your child to have? What products have they produced this school year?

I get a lot of requests for Face to Face training, often in situations where we already have an online course. Sometimes it is because a department or school wants it fast and all at once, but most often it is because of a comfort level they get having someone to answer their questions as they think of them. This is all well and good, but in today’s economy our district is pushing more and more to have training online. Most courses are asynchronous, taking away that personal contact that you get in the face to face classroom.
So, I am running an experiment the next couple months. I am meeting with my participants face to face, but online. The course will be training the use of Adobe Connect Professional. All delivery will be done using Adobe Connect Professional. This will immerse the participants in the product they are learning and remove the need for travel for both the participants and the instructor. My curiosity is whether online face to face will meet that personal need of participants that typically want to be in the same room as the instructor.
Let me know what feedback you have from participants on face to face versus online versus blended versus asynchronous training and professional development programs. I will add comments to this posting in late May after I get feedback from my participants.

Many educators have heard about the wonderful ways you can use Adobe Acrobat to create classroom materials like worksheets, forms and portfolios. Don’t get me wrong. This is really cool stuff. But today I want to talk about a hidden gem. Bundled with your Windows version of Acrobat Pro or Acrobat Pro Extended is a lesser known, elegant and robust application called LiveCycle Designer ES. LC Designer is a full-featured form design application that enables you to create electronic forms using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) interface. I will be honest here. LC Designer is not for the novice user. If all you want to do is take an MS Word document, convert it and make a nifty form, then by all means use the Form Wizard in Acrobat. But if you want more form options, a more flexible layout, and the ability to easily edit your form design, then you really should give LC Designer a test drive.
Last year, I was asked to make changes to our school’s progress report card. I had previously created the progress report card in MS Word and then used Acrobat’s Form Wizard to create a pdf form. This seemed to be a great solution until I had to make changes to the content in the progress report card. Of course, I couldn’t edit the text in the pdf document. To make the necessary changes I had to revise the original MS Word document, convert it to pdf and then create all of the form fields again. I had close to 80 form fields in the progress report card and I wasn’t happy about having to create them again. Clearly, I needed a different product to tackle this job. Out of desperation I scoured my hard drive for something else and stumbled across LC Designer. With LC Designer I was able to create all the elements I needed in my form from scratch, including static text, design elements and a wide variety of form fields. I had more control over the layout and functionality of the form, and best of all, it was a breeze to edit when I needed to make changes after publishing the form. The following screenshots show the LiveCycle interface and what the final progress report card looks like in Adobe Reader.

The Adobe Education eSeminar Series begins August 14, 2008.
These free of charge online events will cover topics such as distance and eLearning projects using Acrobat 9, creating interactive PDF files, electronic portfolios for students and educators and much more.
The presentations will be conducted by Adobe education product experts and/or Adobe Education Leaders.
This is a great opportunity to learn from the experts right from your computer.
Details and registration