Yay, I completed the Adobe Youth Voices online course!

Recently I have been one of 12 teachers in South Africa participating in the Adobe Youth Voices programme where youth are encouraged to make video media that gives a voice to an issue. The idea is that the teachers do the very comprehensive, well-designed course and then teach their students what they have learned. The 12 of usfrom South Africa joined a group from around the world in this online course and viewed each other’s’ progress along the way. During the course we learned how to use Adobe Premier for video editing and Adobe Photoshop Essentials for editing still photos. This was really a superb though demanding  course (especially when time is at a premium) and I was thrilled when I received my Certificate of Participation for completing the course!

Unfortunately my Grade 7, 8 and 9s didn’t get their media completed in time to enter the Adobe competition. Howver the winners have been announced and can be viewed on this post Celebrating the Adobe Youth Voices Awards Winners

Introducing Adobe Youth Voices to my students

My Grade 6 Adobe Youth Voices group at school

At the end of last year I was very privileged to be part of an online Adobe Youth voices group of 22 teachers from around the world. This was facilitated by SchoolNet in South Africa. For three months we did an online course with weekly tasks and a lot of interaction as we learned how to use Adobe Photoshop Essentials and Adobe Premier for editing movies. A great part about this was that Adobe gave our school the software and licenses for 25 computers for free! Now my task is to pass this on to my students at school. The idea is for them to make movies about matters that need to be voiced. One thing that has amazed me is how digitally creative our young students are even at primary school level. They pick things up just like that. One of the groups made a very thought-provoking movie this term which is what Adobe Youth Voices encourages - giving the youth the voice to express real world problems. Here is a picture of this particular team adding narration to their movie.