Category: Adobe

Welcome back to a new school year! We are so excited to have students and teachers back in the buildings. This year, our department is using the new Jordan District Portrait of a Graduate as our professional development themes for each month. August is a big introduction to the Portrait and each month we will dive into deeper into each trait with more detail.

The new Portrait of a Graduate in Jordan School District outlines the essential skills and characteristics that students should develop to succeed beyond their K-12 education. These traits include:

• Curious Thinkers
• Creative Problem Solvers
• Engaged Citizens
• Empathetic Communicators
• Resilient Lifelong Learners
• Responsible Teammates

The district believes that academic excellence alone is not enough; students must also cultivate these broader skills to thrive in any career path they choose. Digital tools, like Adobe Express, can play a pivotal role in helping students develop these traits. For example, in the following table are a couple of ideas of how you could use Adobe Express to practice some of these essential traits in the JSD Portrait of a Graduate.

Engaged Citizen: Use Adobe Express to have students create Public Service Announcements about an issue important to their community.	Curious Thinker: Use Adobe Express to create a mini-documentary to ask questions about the world around us.
Curious Thinker: Create interactive PDFs with Adobe Acrobat to demonstrate student learning and curiosity.	Empathetic Communicator: Students can craft digital storytelling projects that share personal narratives or highlight diverse cultural experiences.

Check back each month as we dive deeper into these characteristics and all the many ways we can use our Big 6 tools to help our students become better prepared to enter the 21st century world.

This month's focus is Global Collaborator. This ISTE standard focuses on students using digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collaborating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally. Teachers can use Adobe Express to enhance their students' global collaboration skills effectively.

In Adobe Express, teachers empower students to create engaging digital content—such as graphics, web stories, and short videos—that can be shared with peers around the globe. This platform supports real-time collaboration, enabling students to work in teams, both locally and internationally, fostering an environment of shared learning and cultural exchange. Through these collaborative projects, students develop essential skills in digital literacy, critical thinking, and cross-cultural communication, setting the foundation for their future as adept global collaborators.

Check out this article "How Students Can Meet Their Peers All Over the World" from Becki Cohn-Vargas on Edutopia that has a bunch of resources if you want to connect your classroom to the wider world and get your students collaborating!

Once you've connected your students, you can use Adobe Express to create posters to illustrate their learning, or collaborate on get-to-know-you video, or design a webpage to underscore their new understandings of different cultures!

This month we want to focus on helping students become Creative Communicators, where students communicate clearly and express themselves creatively for a variety of purposes using the platforms, tools, styles, formats and digital media appropriate to their goals.

Adobe has many different tools that students can use to create - starting with the basics in Adobe Express and working their way up to more advanced programs like Adobe Audition, Premiere Pro, or Photoshop. Regardless of the tool used, there are some key elements that are at the heart of any communication - like connecting with the audience.

Check out this blog post from Adobe Express about storytelling in video for some inspiration on how to help your students start to share their stories in creative ways!