Award-winning results from students.
High school prepares students for future education and careers with industry-standard Adobe Creative Cloud apps.
Prepare students for academic and career success
Products:
Objectives
Prepare students for future education and in-demand careers in digital fields with industry standard software
Provide greater opportunities for students in rural and unaffluent communities
Extend learning beyond the school to encourage creativity
Results
Prepare students for academic and career success
Train students using industry-standard creative tools
Leverage integration for efficient creativity
Improve cost efficiency with VIP licensing for education
“Adobe Creative Cloud is the industry standard, so the idea that we could teach students real-world skills with anything else is unthinkable.”
Matte Neckers
Teacher, Creative Media Art & Design, Green Mountain Technology & Career Centre
Industry-standard education
By helping students master academic, technical and employable skills, schools can help them to become successful in the workforce. That is the mission of Green Mountain Technology and Career Centre (GMTCC), a high school serving communities in northern Vermont. The school guides students toward high school graduation while teaching real-world skills in a number of fields that include nursing, automotive technology, culinary arts and electrical technology.
Matte Neckers oversees the Creative Media Art & Design programme for GMTCC. The best students in the district learn to combine art and technology in preparation for further education or careers. Students enrolled in the Fast Forward Dual Enrolment programme, a full-time, full-year programme with advanced classwork, can earn 12 college credits upon passing the Accuplacer college readiness exam. Students learn to work with every medium from digital photography to video and animation. One constant throughout their studies is Adobe Creative Cloud.
“Adobe Creative Cloud is the industry standard, so the idea that we could teach students real-world skills with anything else is unthinkable,” says Neckers. “Familiarising students with Adobe Creative Cloud apps is sure to help them throughout their education and careers.”
Understanding integrated apps
Students use Adobe Creative Cloud throughout their education at GMTCC. The Creative Media Art & Design programme kicks off with students using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom for photography projects. Neckers starts with Lightroom because it is so accessible, allowing students to gain familiarity with Adobe methods and interfaces. Once students understand basic photograph concepts, Neckers expands the lessons to include Adobe Photoshop for editing and digital painting.
Learning the technical aspects of creating beautiful designs or editing artwork is only the first lesson in using Creative Cloud apps. More importantly, Neckers uses lessons in Lightroom and Photoshop to kickstart conversations about visual metaphors in photography and effective communication through design in collaboration with Seattle artist Marilyn Montafur, who did a residency with Vermont Studio Centre. Learning how to communicate ideas to an audience is a skill that will follow students throughout their careers, no matter what field they settle on.
“Understanding the integration between Adobe Creative Cloud apps is key for students,” says Neckers. “Students need to learn what each app does best and use the integration between Adobe apps to work with the best tools for each situation. Adobe uses intuitive interfaces that allow students to quickly grasp how to expand on their knowledge and use new Adobe solutions.”
Empowering students’ creative success
GMTCC students have found great success working with Adobe Creative Cloud apps to build their creative skills. Student films have won awards in film competitions. One 2017 student documentary, Lucien Avery: Vermont Blacksmith, was even selected to air on Vermont PBS. Every year, GMTCC sends students to the annual SkillsUSA Contest in Advertising Design, Digital Photography and Digital Cinema categories. With the high level of training from GMTCC, numerous students have placed in the top three of their categories. In 2016, students swept the Advertising Design category, with the top winner moving on to the national championship.
The Digital Cinema category is a particularly unique challenge where students write, film and edit a short film within 24 hours. Students use Adobe Premiere Pro and other Creative Cloud apps to quickly and efficiently create winning films. Just as importantly, working with Creative Cloud apps throughout the semester teaches students how to manage complex projects and explore creative ways to solve issues that may arise.
“The wonderful part about Adobe Creative Cloud is that it’s such an intuitive solution that it opens students up to all sorts of possibilities. It gives me the potential to heighten students’overall artistic thinking while preparing them for future careers.”
Matte Neckers
Teacher, Creative Media Art & Design, Green Mountain Technology & Career Centre
Several GMTCC students have also found success in the Congressional Art Show. In 2015, student Natalie Reed won first place in the Congressional Art Show with her painting “Chicken Scratch.” Her artwork joined other winners in a special display in the US Capitol building. Now a student in the Animation programme at Massachusetts College of Arts and Design, Reed regularly works with a technique that involves shooting paper cutouts with the stop-motion software Dragonframe, editing the footage in Premiere Pro and then layering on special effects or additional animations using Adobe After Effects and Adobe Animate.
“When I was first introduced to Adobe apps, it felt like I was being gifted with the seasoning I needed to help my portfolio develop a whole new flavour,” says Reed. “My projects become more refined with the ability to communicate across the Adobe apps. Adobe liberates me and allows me to create the professional-quality work that I’m striving for.”
Other students are finding success outside of the academic environment. Current GMTCC senior Liam Lenel is translating his extensive experience in photography, design and film into an impressive portfolio of freelance work. In addition to photography and event videography, Lenel was hired by a local company to create a 30-second animated television commercial that will air across Vermont. Lenel created the assets in Adobe Illustrator, animating the video in After Effects and finished the video in Premiere Pro. With Adobe Creative Cloud, this student created the commercial in less than two months.
“Adobe helps me to express myself,” says Lenel. “Being able to immediately see my sketches in a digital form is revolutionary. As with any new platform, Adobe Creative Cloud seemed complicated at first, but as I worked with the apps further, I realised that Creative Cloud was very simple. Once you understand one programme, picking up other apps is a breeze.”
“The wonderful part about Adobe Creative Cloud is that it’s such an intuitive solution that it opens students up to all sorts of possibilities,” says Neckers. “It gives me the potential to heighten students’ overall artistic thinking while preparing them for future careers.”
“Just Past Dark” by Liam Lenel. Created by editing several images in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC and using Adobe Photoshop CC to combine the images for more depth.
Opens doors for students
“We’re a somewhat rural area, so students don’t have the opportunities for big internships that they might receive if they lived near New York City,” says Neckers. “The ability to give students access to Creative Cloud both at school and on their personal computers bridges the opportunity gap for our students.”
GMTCC purchased and deployed Adobe Creative Cloud to teachers and students under the Value Incentive Plan (VIP) at a price point of $25 per student. The VIP programme provides greater flexibility in purchasing licences, giving the school a cost-effective licensing option for a programme where the number of students changes every year. All students get their own iMac in the lab running Adobe Creative Cloud. But even more beneficial is the fact that the school can work with VIP to obtain personal licences for students to work on at home.
“With Adobe Creative Cloud, students have the freedom to experiment, explore topics that inspire them and connect with the broader Adobe community to get a head start on their careers or education,” says Neckers.
/cy_en/fragments/customer-success-stories/contact-footer-number
