Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark is a website that allows you and high school students (13yo min age on the siteNot true anymore!) to create posters, flyers, websites or videos. They can be printed, but they're digital so of use for webpages, emails, and online family communication tools. This product has the ability to narrate your videos so it becomes like screencasting--perfect for asking students to put their own content into slideshow projects (think prezi, powerpoint, or Google Slides). This webpage also allows people to create webpages as beautiful as Weebly but WAY easier. When you or your students are ready to move beyond Smore as a delivery for such "newsletter" looking content, you could use Spark to create an online presentation or project. Or yes, this could be your teacher webpage! But wait there's more! Remember when the only cool graphics were from really technical people who knew how to use Adobe Photoshop? Not anymore, because Spark also guides you into creating killer image-text pairings that are Instragram worthy!

Here's their page selling examples of their product's uses to educators. Please look over the examples found there, and sign yourself up via Google. Adobe Spark is free! If they try to pitch you the $100/yr subscription, you don't need it... might be something to think of for people who adopt this webpage and use it a lot--I'm thinking of teachers who run clubs or sports teams, or small business owners, or teachers who want their students to use it for projects. Spark is only 2 years old and is already widely used at colleges. It would be an appropriate product to encourage high schoolers to use for projects.

To get credit for this course, I'd like you to create a post, page, or video. Take some extra time to make something of use to you in Sept. Maybe it's a digital poster that will help remind families of parent night as you send it through your Remind, Seesaw, or Bloomz, or maybe it's a video show of your family and summer you want to share with your class. You could make Spark Posts as classroom signs to hang around the room! In my how-to videos you will see me make a family flyer for a special event, a book club page for use by both my students and their families, and a discussion video for that book club.

After you spend some time thinking over what to create, think of what media you will need. Sparks comes with a library of high quality images, but if you're going to make a video/slide show or want actual classroom photos on your signs, you are going to need to get that media first. Some of you might want to go take videos or pictures and download them in a way you can access them again (hint: never just download things you care about to your "download" folder on your computer). Using custom media isn't required... feel free to use their stock images.

So now you've looked over the Sparks examples on the educators page, thought about what to make, and collected any special photos you want. Here's my intro video on posts and pages. Here's the 2nd video on pages and videos. After watching both of my videos, if you need more help let me know because I kept it short and this is by far the most robust product I've focused on during the summer online classes! Be brave!

You may share your creation with me through the sharing aspect of Sparks or via email: linsem@victorschools.org.