This resource is the companion example newsletter portfolio webpage resource that accompanies the video presentation here. It has examples, tips, links and more for folks wanting to create their own newsletter, journal, portfolio or multimedia story. Although this is a fictitious newsletter, Rapid Creek Primary school used to exist and was my primary school during the 60's.
My name is Mark Christie
Generic components of our Newsletter. Or... things I will be talking about.
Welcome to this issue of a fictitious school with an equally fictitious principal. This Adobe Express Page is a demonstration of the varied uses is schools for this versatile, easy to use web page creation tool. This web page (newslettter) has a companion interactive video that you can watch here and when prompted jump to various additional information resources, including this webpage.
Newsletter Contents
- Video resource for this Newsletter Webpage
- Masthead or Banner Creation
- Principal's Message
- Assembly example
- Teaching Resource
- Creating a Table of Contents (like this)
- Creating and sharing libaries
- Real School Newsletters
- About Portfolios (and some Education Exchange connections)
- A couple of Firefly examples for your class
- SMOOTHIES
- Workshop - Creating a Portfolio with Adobe Express
Video Reference (with chapters and interactive links) for this resource
Principal's Message
A message from the principal welcoming teachers, student and staff to that portion of the year the newsletter covers is often the first thing parents see after the banner.
This is not a normal Principal's message. I am using it to provide some background to our education environment and how we combine the use of Adobe Products to create Newsletters, Presentations, Portfolios, Resources and more.
Our IT environment in the Northern Territory uses Microsoft Teams and 365 plus Adobe Creative Cloud licensing for more than 10% of our student and teacher population which in turn includes the full education version of Adobe Express for all students and teachers in the Northern Territory.
This provides a comprehensive common creative toolset that can be used from primary to secondary. This consistency in the provision of commercial quality tools like Adobe and Microsoft from an early stage builds skills early on a scaffold of common tools. Support and training for defined tools provides certainty for teachers, schools, support staff and most importantly our students who can move from primary to middle and then secondary with level of consistency in the software tools they use on a daily basis.
Pictures, Animations, Sounds, Videos and Words make up the multimodal ingredients for assignments, resource materials and newsletters.
Most who have already used Adobe Express will be aware that it has undergone a massive upgrade in recent months with a massive worldwide public beta which has introduced new features like animated puppets, comprehensive video editing in the browser and of course Generative AI.
I need to flag that the education version of Adobe Express does not have the Generative AI capabilities built in (Yet!) – but teachers and savvy students will still be able to access Firefly.adobe.com to create those awesome AI generated graphics
The Education Exchange has great resources covering a wide variety of subjects, year levels and tools. When I create an asset like this, it is easy to incorporate it into Adobe Express Webpages... and although in this case it has nothing to do with a Principal's message
Let's jump to the Principal Message Explanation Section
Assembly Example - SCHOOLS FROM THE AIR
This is a photogrid layout example. It is a good idea to click on the cog while in edit mode and provide the alt text that describes the photograph. This best for a photo album.
Glideshow Example
These wonderful photographs are from Adobe Stock - in this case I simply searched for "assembly". I can include links in here and I can locate the boxes to the right or left.
This time I have included text on the right.
For this example I searched for "School Assembly" in Adobe Stock.
Even teachers can have assemblies.
This is more like a lecture than an assembly.
Jump down to media content type descriptions or Back to Top (Table of Contents)
A Glideshow is an interesting way to incorporate a hero image or several with a story about each image that can contain text, buttons with hyperlinks, embedded videos and photographs. I have used a Glideshow for the Principal's message which you can view by clicking on the link.
A "How To" Resource
I find Adobe Express is great for creating a PD Document which I can use as a running sheet, not surprisingly like I am doing right now. It enables me to expand time during a PD session by limiting my video to the required timeframe, yet allows me to inject expansion on topics for those who want to click and go down the rabbit hole. In delivery and receipt of PD, we can be live, delivering synchronously where the Adobe Express page can provide that takeaway reference document that you can continually update and reshare… or it can be an asynchronous experience like this where we have a set video piece which I have added interactive hotspots to that can take viewers to more information contained in the companion Adobe Express Page. Whether you start with the page or the video is up to the viewer/reader.
Here is an example of a resource created and shared with not only the school concerned, but with others in our jurisdiction. By using the "Table of Contents" method, I could actually link to a specific heading level item within the published resource.
This resource was created for the teachers of Berry Springs Primary School. Even after the day was complete, I was able to add and update the resource, sharing the same link with not only the staff at Berry Springs, but also other schools can use the resource which is really just a curation of links to tools that we use in our education environment.
About Portfolios
The word portfolio means different things to different people. Adobe has its own portfolio tool available at HTTPS://portfolio.Adobe.com. Portfolio is the term used in an educational context and rather than me explain it here is an inclusion from a great student creativity challenge hosted by Abby and Dr Tim. Tim explains the different types of portfolios that students can create and use in a school, and in fact how you can use Adobe Express to create those portfolios. This is a very useful way to use Adobe Express to create and share your work.
additionally, you can check out the education exchange, specifically in the back-to-school hub which has no less than 3 portfolio template examples and a quick course by Adobe's own Rebecca Hare.
I like this destination so much, I've used one of the available templates to create a little infographic that I hope describes me in relation to what I do at work.
Workshop - Creating a Portfolio with Adobe Express
As an educator, when I think about a portfolio, I think of:
- My work examples gathered in one place to share with others
- The work examples of one student gathered in their single sharing place
- The work examples of my class students, aggregated into a single sharing place
Adobe Express Web Page is great for all three options because it provides one web address that contains words, pictures, videos that exist within the webpage or are linked to where the original asset lives. Changes to the web page can be made easily to incorporate additional items, content from other students and even links to their own web page portfolios created in Adobe Express Web Page creator - When I republish, the link stays the same which means that I have a living document that others can contribute to.
My classroom success story centred around a Newsletter which is a kind of portfolio, highlighting the achievements of the school at a point in time. It is a good example to explore the various media capabilities of Adobe Express Web Page creator and also the new features of Adobe Express.
Let's not forget that there is a dedicated digital portfolio tool available to all with a creative cloud account. Express Web Page can aggregate these pages into a single location, if for example, your students were using portfolio.adobe.com to present their work. Find out more about that tool here
Maybe portfolio contributions are an accumulation of Express Images (posts) created from many wonderful templates like this one from the Back To School section of the Education Exchange.
This 30 minute Lightning Learning Course allowed me to not only see how I could teach Portfolio creation in classes using Adobe Express, but I was able to create my own mini portfolio using just the Adobe Express Post component of Adobe Express. The course contains several portfolio templates for you to use with yourself or your students. Here is one I used to create my portfolio.
Creating a portfolio to showcase your best written work.
It is clear that Adobe Express is a one stop shop when it comes to creating portfolios. This great lesson plan and resource template is available on the Education Exchange. Use your adobe id to login or create one for free.
Some Firefly Ideas
The short cover at the top of this newsletter example was created in Firefly. I needed to make it extra wide so I then opened the same picture in Photoshop and got it to generate an extended panorama version of the picture. While it doesn't really look like my old school. It still looks beautiful.
Firefly and its technology is woven into Adobe products like Adobe Express so it would be remiss of me not to include a small segment about it. Check out Nalin and MJ's session which is focussing on Firefly. I include a little video here covering the dot points below.
- Text to Ai Graphics
- Words – Person’s name (short) something that describes them or something they like
- Using the examples for inspiration
- Saving them as headings for projects or Name Cards for students
- Generate pictures from words
- Students reimagine their school mascot using a description in Firefly. This can be done with house mascots as well if you have them. (Don the Kangaroo)
- Classroom Example (Dragons and Lassi)
- School house challenge
- Multi language example
School Mascot interpreted by students and Firefly
Asking students to describe their school mascot/logo or house mascot/logo with the intent to either make Firefly match the original as closely as possible. It requires language usage and adjustment to create variations on the generated images. This really highlights the strengths of generative AI as a fun way to increase language usage. A funny example here - Don the Kangaroo.
Created with Firefly. Edited and animated in Adobe Express. Goat also from Firefly. Don silos in West Melbourne.
A multi-language example
I can type in a description (Indonesian in this case) and Firefly generates pictures for me. The English is "A school next to a river situated in a tropical jungle". I am impressed that Firefly automatically detects the language. This is great for language learning.
SMOOTHIES
SMOOTHIES – Express Page brings together my weekly 15 minutes Teams PD complete with PD and Interactive chaptered Vimeo videos into a single location of teacher tips, tricks and experiences. The express page and Vimeo videos are available to all as are some of the PowerPoints. The focus is on getting the most out of our IT Classroom Environment which as mentioned is primarily Microsoft and Adobe. The teachers in the audience will know that they don’t have the luxury of serendipitous deep-dive journeys through the technology available to them. I try to distil that through SMOOTHIES which stands for Short Multimodal Online Opportunities To Help Interested Educators Succeed.
Example of a recent episode of SMOOTHIES
I try to maximise the capabilities of Vimeo by ensuring that there is a transcript that is clickable along with chapters within the video which goes for less than 20 minutes on most occasions. The most powerful and useful feature is the interactivity which allows me to add hotspots to the video where viewers can click and jump out to supporting web documentation such as an Adobe Express page and when they're done reading or researching they clicked back into the video and resume where they left off. This is a super cool way to integrate all of the multimodal tools that we have at our fingertips to share with our teachers.
I have been delivering smoothies since before the pandemic and it was because of SMOOTHIES that I ended up being responsible for the delivery of training on how to use our primarily Microsoft and Adobe software teaching tools to teachers who potentially we were going to need to deliver in an online environment. Luckily in the Northern Territory. We weren't as affected by COVID as many other places in the world.
Presentation Sections
Masthead or Banner Creation
A masthead or banner image so you know what the website/newsletter is about
I have created an image using Firefly and I want to have a short banner style picture rather than a large image. Unfortunately I can only create square or 16:9 ratio images. I want a really wide skinny banner. Let’s see how I created that starting in Adobe Express to create my banner size and then added text generated imagery fill in Firefly, expanding the the left and right side to create a nice narrow banner. I then download the final image and import it into my newsletter.
This video above takes into consideration the Generative AI capabitilities now available for Teachers and Students in Adobe Express education version. The video below was created before Generational AI was available in Adobe Express for students and teachers. Both are valid.
Principal's Message
A message from the principal welcoming teachers, student and staff to that portion of the year (or week/fortnight if you publish that often). I have used a Glideshow element with just one photo from Adobe Stock of my fictitious principal with some words, pictures, hyperlinks and even videos appearing as you scroll down through this image. This overlay glideshow with its own multimedia elements for each picture can be positioned on the left or right of each image. This adds great depth of additional information to each picture you include in a Glideshow. We will see two different versions of the Principal’s message – One being a video of the Principal with students and another with a traditional photo of the Principal with her message.
Creating Newsletter content headings and ToC
So we have the Banner, Principal’s Message (picture and words or even better picture, video and words) Then we get into the body of the newsletter. The list here is just a sample and some headings will not be relevant… Although the notion of news and common repeatable messages as groupings probably is… This is where the timesaving magic starts by creating your headings with clickable links and saving that as a reusable file.
Creating a Table of Contents in Adobe Express Webpage for newsletters, Journals, Assignments, Reference Guides makes your production so much more user friendly and of course easier to navigate. This video goes through the process of creating the Table of Contents for your page.
News
- News Items of events held
- Education News
- Assembly celebrations
- Staff news
- Student Voice
- Infrastructure news
- Computing news
- Pre-School News (for Primary Schools)
Common messages
- Uniform
- Canteen
- Upcoming Events
- Enrolments (info sessions)
- School Council Matters
- Responsibility reminders
- Attendance tasks and contact details
- Fundraisers
- Promotion (advertising to be blunt)
- Tips and tricks (for parents and students)
- OHSC (Outside Hours School Care) – Primary School
- Pre-School information
- Contact information
These videos - same topic but created at different times covers the process of creating a table of contents. The first is probably the better video. I’m now going to cut to a super quick segment showing how to create these hyperlinked content items.
- Create heading two labels for each item you want in your chapters
- Add a right aligned “Back to Top” text before each of these Heading Level 2 text labels
- Create the Label “Table of Contents” and make that Heading Level Two
- Add dot points under that heading level two matching each of the chapter “heading level 2” headings you created
- Publish your newsletter and open the published newsletter in a new tab with the editable version in another tab
- Hover to the left of each heading level 2 in the published version, you will see a link appear. Click on it to copy the link to the clipboard
- Go back to the editable version of your newsletter, highlight corresponding dot point in the table of contents and paste the link you copied. Repeat for each heading level two.
- Finally copy the heading level two link for the title “Table of Contents” and go back to the editable version selecting each “Back to Top” text and paste that same link against all instances of “Back to Top” so when folks click on that they will jump back to the table of contents. Republish and view your handiwork
Another recording of creating Clickable Table of Contents in Adobe Express Web Page
Create and Share Creative Cloud Libraries
If you put in all this effort to create these headings with links, we should save this newsletter as a template to reuse.
If you do start of term and end of term newsletters – that’s a total of 8 newsletters and if you wanted to check your annual calendar in advance, you would be able to pencil in the headings for that issue… school fete, show day, harmony day, sports day, naplan, book day, school photograph day – many of these events are known and the headings for the newsletter can be included in template versions and saved into a shared files location. Eg
Rapid Creek Primary School – Term 1 Start, Term 1 End, Term 2 Start, Term 2 End, Term 3 Start, Term 3 End etc
Or you could just start with one…
Content (With Real newsletter examples)
Your content sections – what media formats to choose?
Words, Pictures and Videos are your options.
I am going to show examples of three real newsletters created with Adobe Express and the fictitious one I created so I can jump between the editing mode and viewing mode – or what the parents, student and teachers would see in the final product.
Words
Use hyperlinks to jump out to continuing stories, other links, reference documents. Use the “mailto” to create a mail link that folks can click on from within your newsletter. Words are great, hyperlinks are better. mailto:markc@xsymetrix.com.au This is the format of the link.
Pictures as Separators
I like the use of a custom designed border image by Dripstone to separate sections. Create that easily in Adobe Express.
Single Pictures
A single picture can be placed inline, but you have choices of how big it appears on screen and where the focal point is.
Photogrids
Next level are the photogrids, great for the hundreds of photos taken on sports day – all grouped together into a photogrid where folks can click on a picture for the bigger picture. If you have less than 10 for a story, leaving the pictures “inline” ie added one after the other allows people to scroll through rather than have to click on a picture and go back to the album. Your choice.
Glideshows
For a dramatic way sharing an image story with support words, more pictures and even videos – the Glideshow is impressive. I would use that to tell a story within your newsletter eg the opening of a new STEAM centre where you have some “Hero” photos that form the background set of pictures that glide through with overlayed words, hyperlinks, pictures and videos that expand on that part of the story… (getting the plan and funding for the STEAM centre, Building the STEAM centre, Launching the STEAM centre, Students and Teachers working in the STEAM centre) These four part of the STEAM centre story can have their own substory or plot. Always test and set the focal point of the hero images and remember you can move the scrolling overlay to the right or left so it isn’t covering key photo elements.
Video
Finally – video. You can include video from youtube or Vimeo. We are fortunate enough to have a license of Vimeo that permits us to create interactive videos – but both youtube and vimeo free accounts allow you to create chapters and if your video is over 1 minute and has more than one talking point, create chapters and tell people about chapters (and interactivity) otherwise all your hard work will be wasted.
Example embedded Vimeo video with chapters, Closed Captions, Interactive Hotspots and clickable hyperlinked transcription.
These showcases are from real newsletters created using Adobe Express Web Page by a primary school and two middle schools. There is nothing like the real thing!
SCHOOL NEWSLETTER SHOWCASE
Ben Andrews from Nakara Primary School speaks about his experience creating newsletters using Adobe Express.
Tips for Content Creation and Management
A few tips are:
- Use a premium education account not just a free account. Most educators in Australia would probably have access to the premium education account at express.adobe.com
- Make sure that account is a school account that will stay around after teachers and students have moved on. It is great having students work on the newsletter, but if you are using a grade six student’s account as the main newsletter account, there are a number of things that can go wrong with that – not the least when they move schools into middle school after graduating.
- A good idea is to have a couple of co-editors – typically the owner account will be the teacher or front office account and students or other teachers can be added as editing accounts. Let’s see how to do that.
- Create and store reusable assets in shared libraries specific to the task. Here is how I have done it with my Rapid Creek School Library. This way my fellow teachers or students in my class can create visual assets like logos, infographics or just upload photographs, create videos or animate puppets with audio to add life and their character creativity to the presentation.
- If you use a video from the provided Adobe Stock and then produce a video that you upload to YouTube, you may need to provide a code to YouTube to release any copyright claims. It is a small and easy process, but the first time you receive a message like this saying your video may have contravened copyright rules might come as a shock. The steps for this are located here.
- Create a structure with headings and save that as a template. Unlike other assets at the moment you cannot make a formal template in Adobe Express but you can duplicate an express page and populate that as your newsletter.
Publishing and Sharing
When you publish, you get a link you can share. That is what you email out to parents. The Newsletter page can also be downloaded as a PDF, but of course it won’t have the videos or glideshow elements nicely presented in the PDF form.
What is cool is that when you make a change – eg you’ve spelled a child’s name wrong and the parents are mortified – you can quickly edit the page from anywhere you have an internet connection and publish. The link stays the same.
Firefly and some Lesson Ideas
- Text to Ai Graphics
- Words – Person’s name (short) something that describes them or something they like
- Using the examples for inspiration
- Saving them as headings for projects or Name Cards for students
- Generate pictures from words
- Students reimagine their school mascot using a description in Firefly. This can be done with house mascots as well if you have them. (Don the Kangaroo)
- Classroom Example (Dragons and Lassi)
- School house challenge
- Multi language example
Remember to let "FAIR" guide your creativity! Fun, Aspirational, Inspirational and Respectful
Thank You - Questions