With global collaboration and a flat world in mind, this group of Adobe Education Leaders (primary through post secondary education) is sharing their expertise and thoughts on the use of technology in the school classroom and at districts and college/university campuses around the world.
Welcome to my grade ten communications technology class. They are pure energy, talking and thinking and creating like a hive of loud, busy, bees. While grade nines may have invented “sociable” it took the grade tens to evolve it into a higher art form and they are continually polishing the concept. If you were to be a fly on the wall on any given day then you’d say, there is so much noise. And that is how it felt to me for the longest time, until they taught me otherwise.
Their project was a digital poster to be created in Photoshop Elements 8.0, to appear on our classroom TV’s (every class in our school has a 25” TV hung from the ceiling – we use them for our daily announcements and for school broadcasts). Our school was supporting the Toys for Tots campaign and it needed more publicity so I thought these posters would work well as a purposeful and quick end-of-term project. What I did not expect was how different their responses would be.
One created a design that was so simple and yet, so articulate and I was not prepared for that. Her design was in stark contrast to the other works that used every Christmas colour and seasonal font imaginable. It turns out she is also a wonderful singer, but that only came up because she suddenly, quietly, started singing in class. I would have never otherwise known. Another wanted more powerful colours – we explored the possibilities of layer blends together and she was delighted – that poster is still in progress but looking very promising (so much for deadlines!). Yet another was taken by the idea that there were students whose parents could not even afford food, let alone gifts and treats. How, in our school, could this happen? Very easily, as it happens, because we are a diverse community with many people in every demographic, including poverty. I am not sure she will ever finish her poster. I think her “poster” is still being formed inside her mind – a newly expanded and more aware mind than the one she had before. These are all voices being formed amidst the noise.
At our end of term Christmas concert I got to see that some of my grade 11 students are also well practiced musicians. Some may be struggling with Flash but when they are playing their instruments they sound fabulous and proud. I am so glad I got to see this other side of them. Their work in Flash made me think of a musician still learning the fingering for an instrument – initially very mechanical and not at all musical but later – fluid and intuitive. First we learn the basics – their voices will follow soon after and their “music” will flow from there. Once again, individual voices appear from amongst the noise of my classes.
It was meet-the-creature night (parent teacher interview night) and my interviews were done. I was chatting with another teacher when a couple came in and asked if anyone knew where they could find – me. It turned out they were the parents of a girl I was helping with her photography, and they wanted to express their appreciation for everything I had done. But – there was more. Mom was very concerned about how her daughter was going to earn a living as a freelance photographer. Her daughter has already found her voice – it is photography. We all know how important it is to her and while mom does not want to get in the way of her daughter’s dreams she also wants to be sure her daughter will be safe and secure. We talked about the realities of life as a photographer and faced the reality that there were no guarantees. At the end of the conversation she seemed better with it all. We’ll talk again. I will talk and work with her daughter and her daughter’s voice will continue to grow. Another voice will emerge from the din and the noise.
It is the end of the day and I am sitting alone in my lab surrounded by 30 very quiet, very peaceful computers. Everyone has gone for the Christmas break. The silence is wonderful, but strangely out of place. I miss their noise. As we pause for Christmas I hope you love the silence but also love the noise and all of the voices it contains. May they grow and learn and prosper.
The new Adobe Education Exchange is a web-based community that allows people to collaborate, share resources, network, and generate ideas and discussions around using Adobe solutions in and around the classroom.
Members of the Adobe education team, along with input from a group of Adobe Education Leaders, have been working on this project for months and are thrilled to announce that the project has now been officially launched and is available for anyone to access and use!
This is a resource for all facets of education: K-12, Higher Education, Colleges, Universities… admins, faculty, staff… whoever is working with Adobe technologies in education.
You can see a small subset of materials and resources available by visiting http://edexchange.adobe.com/, but to truly get the most out of this resource, you will want to sign up with your Adobe ID and fill out your personal profile.
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?
“It’s a dumbed-down, sealed-shut device designed to make its owners into passive consumers.” - Cory Doctorow
So I was recently asked something to the effect of
“I am trying to decide if I need an iPad and have been reading mixed reviews with regards to the ability to use them at various Universities. I’m personally pretty Mac-resistant, but I don’t have a terribly good reason for it. Other than that they’re expensive and want to kill Flash and have some of the most irritating marketing EVER!”
I believe that I gave a fair and reasoned response to the question and present it here for anyone else that may be in need of an opinion around this subject.
So while on the surface, a lot of people are thinking that students will be able to have all their textbooks on the device, you need buy-in from all the assorted publishers and I do not see that happening.
The largest downer though, as you implied, is that there is no support for Flash or even AIR… rendering educational tools like VoiceThread (and our own CourseMedia system) useless on the device. A lot of educational tools are built in whole or in part upon the Flash Platform and Apple is blocking them as well as anything authored in Java, Lua, Mono, Unity, et cetera…
On the other hand, we see a slew of Windows 7 and Android tablets being readied for launch with the additional promise of Chrome OS tablets. Microsoft is being a lot more open lately, and Google/Android is a no brainer in that regard. In fact, Google recently announced that Flash will be integrated into their Chrome browser and (one would assume) all Chromium projects, while Google, Mozilla, and Adobe are working together on a new plugin architecture that will elevate content such as Flash to the level of HTML and JavaScript in the browser.
On one hand we see a bunch of great tech minds working together to open up platforms and make the computing experience better for everyone (and this will translate onto the upcoming tablets based on Android, Chrome, and the like) – on the other hand we have closed off, expensive, limiting Apple products.
Part of the university experience should be about exploring and studying the world around us- being open to different technologies in such an environment should be no different.
I’m sure there are plenty that would disagree with several of my points in this opinion piece. I’m open to that.
With all the nonsense being put out in some circles placing HTML5 and Flash content at odds with one another atop highly exaggerated claims that HTML would “replace” or “phase-out” Flash within the next few years (what?), it might be heartening for those students looking to work in the field of RIA to know exactly where they stand with current job trends.
I was alerted to a recent study of indeed.com data made by Jonathan Campos that I believe should give future graduates a more solid outlook if they’ve been at all rattled by the recent debates.
Some of the highlights are revealed in the following charts (keep in mind that July 2009 is probably the height of the current global recession):
We can see from the graph above that Flex is still the leading RIA technology. Sure, Dojo (representing the HTML/JavaScript area of RIA) is doing nicely as well- but HTML/JavaScript and Flash are complementary technologies and in no way supplant one another aside from their specific strengths and weaknesses.
Happily, we see here that practitioners of RIA technologies still get paid nicely for their work. Students- you have nothing to worry about. Don’t let the trolls frighten you!
Adobe recently released a new Air application that “provides an easy way to learn about, track and share workflow best practices.” WorkFlowLab provides a collaborative environment that will allow designers, developers, and project managers to communicate and share workflows.
I imagine that students could use WorkflowLab to help manage their classroom multimedia projects (think an interactive Gantt chart) …and heck, it’s free!
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/workflowlab/
Walk down any high school or junior high hall and you will notice how popular mobile devices are. It seems that just about every kid has access to a “smart phone.” However, students have been unable to access engaging and rich web content delivered in the Flash format. This is starting to change.
Recent releases of certain mobile devices are realizing how much content is delivered via the Flash format (over 80% of web video is distributed as Flash video) and will, in the near future, support Flash Player 10.1. Students that carry smart phones that include Flash Player 10.1 will be able to visit sites like National Geographic and Brain Pop (just to name a few) and teachers will gain an exciting instructional delivery tool! Read more…
WatchKnow
Dr. Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, has created a website that sifts through the fluff and delivers only educational videos. Dr. Sanger says, ” think of it as YouTube meets Wikipedia, filtering out everything but quality educational videos.”
All the videos on WatchKnow are hosted by external websites (National Geographic, YouTube, etc.) which may cause issues with filtering software, but so far, I’ve found it easy to use and loaded with lots of great content.
Visit www.watchknow.org WolframAlpha
WolframAlpha is a “computational knowledge engine.” A normal search engine returns links based on search parameters. WolframAlpha returns answers.
For example, I typed in “December 25″ and Wolfram returned:
Testing your web sites in multiple browsers is a drag.
I typically test web pages in Safari, Firefox, and the latest release of Internet Explorer. However, I have found it necessary to test in older versions as well. This can prove difficult because I don’t have older browser versions installed on my computer(s).
Adobe BrowserLab comes to the rescue!
“Adobe® BrowserLab is an online hosted service that lets you test the pages of your web site across a variety of web browsers and operating systems. The service works by taking screen shots of your web pages in different browsers, and then displaying them in the BrowserLab application window.
You can use BrowserLab as a standalone service, or integrated with Dreamweaver CS4. The standalone service lets you test pages that you’ve posted to a server within the context of a web browser. If you use BrowserLab as an integrated service with Dreamweaver, you can test your pages from within Dreamweaver without publishing your pages to a server.”
The following browsers are supported:
Firefox 2.0 – Windows XP
Firefox 3.0 – Windows XP
Firefox 3.5 – Windows XP
Chrome 3.0 – Windows XP
Internet Explorer 6.0 – Windows XP
Internet Explorer 7.0 – Windows XP
Internet Explorer 8.0 – Windows XP
Safari 3.0 – Macintosh OS X
Safari 4.0 – Macintosh OS X
Firefox 2.0 – Macintosh OS X
Firefox 3.0 – Macintosh OS X
Firefox 3.5 – Macintosh OS X
BrowserLab also gives you the ability to view your page in “2-up” view and the very cool “Onion Skin View.” Two-up view allows you to scope-out a web page in two different browsers in a side-by-side layout. Onion Skin View overlays the pages so that you can quickly spot any major layout problems.
Visit Adobe Browserlab 2-up View Onion Skin View
Scott Trudeau www.tutorialstop.com
The other day I had to create a contact sheet from a folder full of images. I opened up Photoshop CS4, clicked on File > Automate, and…to my surprise… the contact sheet options were gone. Vanished! Where in the heck did the Contact Sheet plugin go? Well, Adobe now provides us with a much more elegant solution via the “Adobe Output Module.” Using the Output Module script, you can create Adobe PDF contact sheets that include header and footer information or throw together a PDF presentation in just a few clicks. Here’s how
