Learnshifting

Spark Tools by Adobe now more Education Friendly!

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Adobe Spark is a set of tools every teacher and student should be aware of. They are free and fun to use. Now they are even easier to use in a school environment because Adobe has integrated them into the administration dashboard (which is something that your IT Services department Adobe expert would know about). … Read more

PowerPoint as an image editor

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Although Photoshop and illustrator are typically the graphics tool of choice, never underestimate the power of PowerPoint. Many schools in Australia have signed up to use the Adobe Creative Cloud, but for those who haven’t there is a very strong chance that your school computers have PowerPoint on them and with the following tips provided … Read more

Adobe Max – View all the workshops, keynotes and more online!

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I would have loved to go to San Diego and be among the 10,000 creative people at the Adobe Max conference. What is sensational is that I could watch the keynote live (okay it was 3am in the morning for me) but laying in bed watching the keynote live and laughing through Jason Levine’s presentation, followed by Bart Simpson was a reasonable second.

Watching these sessions makes me a more knowledgeable person in regards to saying to people I meet in schools… “Do you know you can do this with…?” in respect to the products. I am by no means an expert, but when I see something that I think students will go “Wow” I try to remember and share it.

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Back to building iOS apps – the good, the bad and the frustrating

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About three years ago I tried my hand at not only building an iPhone app, but publishing it in the store. It was free and didn’t have any in-app purchases or advertisements. For the pleasure of building an app and publishing it, you need to pay Apple 150 Australian dollars per year and in my case pay for the application development tool. For essentially the hobbyist app developer, this is something that not only doesn’t generate revenue to cover the cost of the tools or subscription but can’t be deducted as  a business expense because, well, you aren’t doing business.

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Automatically creating graphic files from photoshop layers

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http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshop/2013/09/introducing-adobe-generator-for-photoshop-cc.html When you create apps for various sized mobile phones and tablets, there is a requirement to create icons and splash screens of different sizes – Sometimes up to 20. The sizes are very important and need to be accurate. There are some very nice templates around that use actions to output the various sizes … Read more

Hour of Code December 2016 – Let’s run an event!

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I received this in my email and thoroughly support its intent. One question I had was “When is the hour of code” – thinking it was a little like “Earth Hour” with specific date. I include the detail and encourage you to conduct your hour of code. The support material contained in the links below are quality resources and easy to follow.

When is the Hour of Code for 2016? For us in Darwin we will hold an online event on Friday the 9th of December 2016 and we would like to see schools in the NT do the same! Click the read more link below for information on how to sign up and run your own event. We will have volunteers to assist either in person or online. NT folk can contact me for more localised information. This information will also appear on our http://skills2021.educationnt.net site
Anybody can host an Hour of Code anytime, but the campaign goal is for tens of millions of students to try an Hour of Code during December 5-11 2016, in celebration of Computer Science Education Week. Is it one specific hour? No. You can do the Hour of Code anytime during this week, or anytime before or after!

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Setting the correct language in your word processor (MS Word)

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A lot of MS Word documents you will receive have their spelling defaults set to US English. With Word 2013 (and possibly even Word 2010) and beyond you can quickly change this default to Australian English.

If you see words like “magnetise” and “categorise” showing with the wiggly red line indicating that Word thinks they are misspelt…

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Mixing ATAR with life skills…

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Joe is currently at the Millgrove outdoor centre with his class and is loving being a part of Melbourne High – With over a hundred years of history (The first continuation school in Australia and Victoria’s first state secondary school) – They are leaders in a number of areas…

Interesting example… There is talk among universities that the ATAR is diminishing in relevance and a coupling of a diploma from their graduating school (like US college diploma) carries as much university entrance weight as the ATAR. The Melbourne High Diploma is not awarded for simply completing 4 years of 9 -12, There are genuine achievement standards that must be met in order to be awarded this certificate.

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