Inspiration for Leaders

Enjoy this news and reflection blog brought to you from the LHRIC Technology Leadership Institute!

Friday, April 8, 2011

Adobe’s Creative Suite of Products Unveiled

About 20 educators turned out for an informative session on Adobe’s Creative Suite of products for schools, which was held April 4th at our offices here in Elmsford. Led by Steve Adler, a solutions consultant for the company’s New York region, the half-day session was chock full of information on a new K12 school site license that includes Photoshop CS5, Illustrator CS5, InDesign CS5, Acrobat Pro 9, Dreamweaver CS5, Flash Pro CS5, and Fireworks CS5.

Before jumping into the technical aspects of these useful software products, Mr. Adler stressed the importance of moving students toward 21st century readiness. “No matter what students pursue, the need for effective communication and collaboration across many types of media is critical,” he said.

Here at the Model Schools, we couldn’t agree more, and were delighted to feature this wonderful resource to our school district educators and to some of our BOCES instructors at the Center for Career Services.

There are lots of new bells and whistles in all seven products, which make their integration into the curriculum so much more effective, noted Mr. Adler. For example, Photoshop users can easily create stunning 3D logos and artwork from any text layer, selection or layer mask with the new Adobe Repoussé feature. HDR (high dynamic range) imaging can very easily be achieved with the new version of Photoshop, and puppet warping is another tool that can be used to slightly warp something, such as the elephant’s trunk that Mr. Adler warped to make it turn upwards toward its mouth!

The page layout program InDesign has some cool new features too. Students can create sophisticated page layouts for print publishing (think school newspapers) with this new version, in addition to interactive PDF documents that include video and sound.

To become more acquainted with this new suite of products, visit Adobetv.com, or contact us for more information.