Education Today Education Today Magazine
We, at Adobe, are inspired by the educators we meet around the world who use technology to improve the way students learn and build creative problem-solving skills. Our research showed that this is important to nearly every educator and policymaker, because jobs which require creative problem-solving are less likely to be impacted by automation, and more likely to pay high salaries.
The study also confirmed that many of the barriers to teaching these skills, seen in classrooms, are universal — some of the biggest of which are limited budgets, access to technology, and time to learn new apps. As teachers shift their classrooms to incorporate creative projects that build these skills, over at Adobe, we are also shifting our offerings to give them an affordable, easy, and quick way to succeed.
In January, we announced we were providing access to Spark for Education, a set of storytelling apps with premium features and additional capabilities for primary & secondary schools as well as higher education institutions, free of charge. On April 9th, this offer launched and is now available to primary & secondary schools and local authority and multi-academy trusts.
From 15 May 2018, the full suite of Adobe Creative Cloud apps will be available to primary & secondary schools to provide to their students and teachers. Like Spark for Education, Creative Cloud for primary & secondary schools provides a method for schools to deploy licenses to students of any age in a way that is consistent with data privacy laws. And, it can be setup with single sign-on so that students and teachers can use their existing school ID to access Creative Cloud.
What we’re most excited about is that it allows students to access apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, XD, and more, wherever they are and on any device. Sharif Karmally, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Creative Cloud for Education recalls visiting a high school class where the students were using Photoshop to create posters for a social cause they care about. They were so excited to have a visitor from Adobe that they all applauded. But then a hush fell over the room, and one of them asked their teacher, “how will I finish my project if I can’t work on it during this class?”
Talking to the teacher more, Sharif learned that because access to Creative Cloud was limited to the computer lab, they had to dedicate most of their class time to students working on their project. They could not spend as much time as they wanted teaching students the principles of design and visual communication. With Creative Cloud for primary & secondary schools user licensing, students can continue working on projects at home, and on any device, simply by logging in and opening the apps they need.
These licenses will be available to individual primary & secondary schools starting at £2,495 per year for 500 user licenses (£4.99 per license) to provide to students and teachers. Local Authority and Multi-Academy Trusts are eligible for this offer starting at £12,475 per year for 2,500 licenses which can be spread across the district. For more details, primary & secondary schools and local authority and multi-academy trusts can contact their authorised Adobe re-seller.
In addition to making Creative Cloud more accessible, Adobe is working to provide additional professional development resources to educators. From next year, Adobe will begin conducting hands-on professional development workshops both in schools around the country and online to teach educators new project-based use cases for Adobe Spark and Creative Cloud. This is all in addition to the Adobe Education Exchange, a place where educators can access free courses, workshops, & teaching materials.
We are on an exciting journey, collaborating with educators to empower the next generation to be lifelong creators. With these two new offers, Spark for Education and Creative Cloud for Primary & Secondary schools, we’re equipping teachers with the apps, training, and support they need to make this happen. We can’t wait to see all of the amazing things students create on their journey to becoming the creative problem-solvers of the future.
Sharif Karmally, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Creative Cloud for Education
Sharif Karmally, Sr. Product Marketing Manager, Creative Cloud for Education, manages the K-12 (Primary & Secondary) education market for Adobe. In this role, he is the voice of students and teachers within Adobe. He works with product, marketing, and other teams within Adobe to provide schools with everything they need to bring digital creativity into the classroom. In his time at Adobe, Sharif has also been a Product Manager on the Photoshop team, working on features to help beginners succeed. Outside of Adobe, Sharif is a Lecturer at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, teaching courses on Storytelling and Leadership, as well as an Improv Theater actor. He holds an MBA from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.