Adobe Education Leadership Forum - 16 - 17 April 2008 Kuala Lumpur

The Adobe educational team was in Malaysia in conjunction with the Adobe Education Leadership Forum 2008 which had been going on around the globe recently. The event was held at Nikko hotel.

The theme is "Ride The Wave"



The educational market is Adobe's biggest vertical in the APAC.

For a glimpse, the business of Adobe in Malaysia is really
  1. 30% growth in 2007 for various licenses.
  2. 60% growth rate expected in 2008
The educational market is undergoing change. Adobe envisions that there will be four major trends that are coming our way.
  1. Personalization
  2. Distributed
  3. Collaboration
  4. Creativity
Creativity doesn't means just graphic designs and arts, it is about creativity in terms of problem solving skills and thinking out of the box.

So Adobe has products which help to make such trends a closer reality for the educational market and Malaysia is catching up.

And how the products connect to the picture?

Customized:
  • Flex
  • Captivate
  • Presenter
  • Connect
  • Air

Distributed:
  • Connect
  • Acrobat
  • Presenter
  • Buzzword
Collaborative:
  • Acrobat
  • Connect
  • Buzzword

Creative:
  • Photoshop
  • Illustrator
  • Flex
  • Dreamweaver
  • Flash
  • After Effects
  • Fireworks
  • InDesign
  • Acrobat
  • Premier
  • Soundbooth
  • Connect
  • Photoshop Elements
  • Premier Elements
Adobe doesn't have an office in Malaysia (yet) and major activities are done online and also the closest support would be from its partners in Malaysia. The operations are being oversaw via regional HQ in Singapore and they do have executives frequent Malaysia for various kinds of activities.

Adobe deals with the educational market in Malaysia by having direct relationships with the ministries, namely the MOL (higher learning) and MOE (primary to secondary schools).

The most recent business transaction was the purchase of 60,000 licenses of Adobe Presenter software for various segments of educators around Malaysia. No details are disclosed and 60,000 licenses really does means there will be 60,000 educators having access to the software, and not 60,000 machine installed. So it is a smart approach by Adobe because there would be more machines sitting around doing nothing (in the educational sectors) while there are lesser educators by head count. Flip-flopping this approach may jeopardize the values of Adobe's product.

The idea that Adobe has is that by adopting technologies, students would benefit from :
  • Knowledge Retention
  • Creative Learning.
  • Hands-on
  • Meaningful Instructions.
This is pretty cool.

And they really do envisions the educators like teachers to have hands-on with the tools and be able to create contents for their students. While at the same time, it is also highly anticipated that students would create contents for the sake of similar objectives.

So, the key word is 'Digital Literacy', which can be defined in two aspects.
  1. Digital Communication Skills
  2. Soft Skills Enhancing.
Peter Isaacson (VP of Worldwide Education) stressed that it wouldn't be just an ideal concept that lawyers, doctors, engineers and etc becoming creative people; which is to be highly expressive in terms of expression (presenting ideas, documentations, self-image and etc).

What this really means is that Adobe envisions individuals of the coming age to be able to do more than what they are supposed to do either socially or professionally. This means that a doctor may not want to engage a creative company to help with certain aspects of expression creations, as such that he or she may want to be the architect of the creativity envisioned. And the only way to achieve such confident is to practice your creativity with Adobe's product.

So, in a few words, it's noble to say that Adobe is enriching your life by making reality expression, creativity, communication easier; with software.

To give you an example of thinking-of-the-box-and-highly-expressive-content....


A Picture Worths A Million Words! Just don't be shy.

So, what really important are...
  • There is a need to push for a culture of change. Why can't scientists become more creative and artists become more articulate? Similarly, why can't students create own contents as part of the learning process
  • Adobe softwares are getting more and more intuitive and powerful, and will keep getting better.
  • Convergence of softwares with the educational concept; is it really important that history teachers are better off as walking encyclopedias or knowing the ways to have access to highly adoptable and meaningful instructions ?
In short, Adobe wants you to empower yourself by not investing more time into learning the tools and best practices, however, is by using it to nurture more times for achieving more things in life, because Adobe guarantees that you waste no more time in trying to convince yourself that your expressions are indeed the best ever.

C'mon ride the wave!

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