ZDNet Education

Christopher Dawson

Adobe Education Exchange - resources galore

By Christopher Dawson | June 28, 2010, 11:10am PDT

Summary: Adobe’s new Education Exchange is set to become an important destination for anyone looking to really explore the company’s tools in the classroom.

I think that I’m probably the only Ed Tech guy on the planet who’s not at ISTE right now. If this weren’t a somewhat professional blog, I’d make a sad emoticon. Oh well. Duty calls elsewhere this year. That doesn’t mean that I can’t cover some great highlights, though. The first is Adobe’s formal launch of its Education Exchange site, a real windfall for educators looking to get the most out of Adobe software.

It’s pretty rare that I recommend too much in the way of expensive software. Adobe CS5 is an exception to the rule. When I reviewed it from an educational perspective a few months ago, I was so blown away by its features that I immediately began dreaming up ways that it could be used in the classroom, whether in technical education, comprehensive schools, or universities. I started thinking of what teachers could do to create more interesting and engaging content and suddenly I realized just how little I actually knew about the inner workings of Adobe’s leviathan of content creation suites.

Sure, I could make my way around and I could go through the help files, figuring out snazzy ways to use Photoshop or how to create really sharp video in Premiere Pro (which makes iMovie look just silly, by the way). But I was only scratching the surface. And, frankly, I was still thinking more like a geeky content creator rather than an educator. Enter the Adobe Education Exchange.

While this community site has been around for a while now in quiet beta form, its more widespread introduction and call for contributions and feedback at ISTE marks the beginning of what should be *the* social resource for educators looking to use any of Adobe’s CS5-based suites, as well as all of their other software, most of which is quite powerful, but can have a fairly steep learning curve. Adobe Presenter, for example, takes PowerPoint presentations and turns them into online e-learning content. If you’d care to know how to do it, there’s a resource on the Education Exchange for that.

Adobe’s goal is to get as many educators involved as possible, both as contributors and consumers of the resources. The Education Exchange employs a Twitter-style social network, allowing users to follow other users who have particular expertise or shared interest. Looking to learn more about Flash? Then find a content expert and follow him/her to see what resources he/she posts.

It’s a great model and, although in its infancy, the potential of the Exchange to provide educators with free resources and peer support to complement the not-so-free (but oh-so-powerful) software is clear. Join the Exchange - I’ll be watching to see what new resources bubble to the top of the social network now that Adobe has formally launched it. I have no doubt that I’ll learn a thing or two.

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Education, Adobe Systems Inc., Planet, Education & Training, Christopher Dawson

Chris Dawson is a freelance writer and consultant with years of experience in educational technology and web-based systems. In 2011, he became the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., a virtual classroom and learning network SaaS provider.

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Christopher Dawson

Christopher Dawson is the Vice President of Marketing for WizIQ, Inc., by day and a freelance writer and educational technology consultant by night. Well, most of his colleagues at WizIQ are based in India, so really he's working with them whenever he can stay awake. He has worked for his local school district as a teacher and technology director, for the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, and for Biogen, Inc. (now Biogen-IDEC, Inc.). He has also consulted with STATNet and Cytyc Corporation and retains close ties with X2 Development Corporation (now owned by Follett Software, the supplier of the student information system he administered for several years). Follett is paying him a monthly honorarium to act as a presenter for their "SIS Voices for Student Achievement" community (he produces occasional blog posts and hosts a monthly webinar on the use of student information systems to inform data-driven instruction and school-wide change. He regularly purchases and/or recommends Dell hardware. This is because Dell makes good hardware and has truly committed itself to education in innovative ways, particularly with their "Connected Classroom" initiative. It isn't because he has dealings with the company through his role at WizIQ (which he does) or because they have provided him with long-term loans of a variety of equipment for in-depth testing (which they have). Intel (reference designer for the Classmate PCs he has implemented in his local schools) has provided him with long-term loans of Classmate PCs for testing, as have Dell and Lenovo with their educational offerings. He may report on any of these companies as his experiences with them have direct bearing on educational technology; positive reports are not necessarily an endorsement and he receives no direct financial compensation from these companies or any others. Intel paid all expenses for his attendance at the 2009 Intel Classmate PC Ecosystem Summit which he attended as the sole representative of the technology press. He was invited to attend in 2010 but his wife would have killed him if he spent 3 days in Vegas geeking out and left her home alone with a new baby. Acer provided him with a 50% discount on an Aspire One netbook in early 2009 after he tested it for 30 days through their educational seed program. He liked the netbook at the time but it has since broken and sits unused in his office. Canonical sent him Ubuntu lanyards, t-shirts, and mousepads for his kids. He stole one of the lanyards and proudly hangs his keys from it and occasionally features his 8-year old wearing an oversized Ubuntu t-shirt on his Facebook profile. Gunnar Optiks sent him a pair of computer glasses to evaluate for a holiday gift guide. He is wearing them now as he types this because they never asked for them back and they rock out loud. Seriously - they work brilliantly and make it much easier to spend 20 hours a day staring at an LCD. If they ever asked for them back, he would fork over the $99 and buy a pair. Microsoft gave him 2 free copies of Office 2010 professional, a desktop clock, and a useless book on Office 2010 when he attended the launch of Office/Sharepoint 2010. He occasionally uses the SharePoint lanyard they gave him instead of the Ubuntu lanyard for his keys, but feels dirty afterwards. Adobe provided him with a pre-release version of the CS5 Master Collection for evaluation and ultimately provided a full, licensed copy for ongoing testing of educational applications of this admittedly expensive software. Like the Gunnars, if the license expires or they come out with CS6, he'd actually go out and buy it himself. Which is saying something, because he's actually pretty cheap. Any other companies wishing to send him cool things to evaluate, wear, or otherwise adorn his kids are more than welcome to; he promises to disclose it here if he keeps any of the stuff. Finally, because WizIQ is a virtual classroom and learning network provider, Chris, as VP of Marketing, frequently interacts with, seeks out deals with, and directly or indirectly competes with a whole lot of LMS, SIS, and other Education 2.0 companies. In general, he'll limit his reporting about these companies to news that does not impact his relationship with them or with WizIQ. If he reports on them, it's because what they are doing is newsworthy or worth the attention of his readers and not because he's trying to broker some deal, damage competition, or otherwise advance his position in his day job. LMS and SIS companies, along with other online learning communities, are a pretty important part of Ed Tech. If he stops reporting on them completely, there won't be a whole lot left. He'll be sure to call out any overt conflicts of interest if they are unavoidable. Finally, Follett Software Company pays him a little tiny honorarium every month to present on their SIS Voices webinars and to write the occasional blog or discussion thread for them. Since Follett recently bought X2 (maker of an awesome web-based SIS that Chris just happened to have used, served in advisory groups for, and frequently reported on), this is probably also worth disclosing.