What types of projects are your students working on this school year? Setting up a creative project for your students doesn’t have to eat up all of your planning time. There are lots of ways to inject creativity into your classroom without taking up oodles of the time allocated for your lesson planning.
In today’s blog post, I’ll share a few tips to help you bring creative activities into your classroom. If you’re a regular reader of the blog, you know I’m a big fan of all things Adobe. I’ve shared lots of their free resources for educators and students over the past few years. Adobe Express for Education is completely free and a fantastic choice for students of all ages.
The resources inside Adobe Express can help set up you and your students for success this school year!
Save Planning Time for Your Next Creative Project
Do you want to save planning time for your next creative project? I have five strategies that can help. All of these strategies work for different subject areas and grade levels. You can tailor each one of the five tips below for your next creative project.
Use a template
I love templates, and there are many places to find templates for your next project. A template, by the dictionary definition, is essentially “a gauge, pattern, or mold (such as a thin plate or board) used as a guide to the form of a piece being made.” You can find lots of templates inside Adobe Express that provide a guide and vision for their next creative project. There is also the option to create your own template for students to remix.
Participate in a challenge
If you want to inject creativity into your classroom but aren’t quite sure where to start, joining a challenge can save you lots of planning time. The steps and sequence are already set up for you. And you can use the challenge resources as is or adapt them to a specific goal or need of your students. Here is a list of some fantastic challenges that are ready for you to explore.
Find an add-on
To save you time in setting up a creative project and introducing students to what to do next, you might want to keep them in a familiar space. Are you already using a spot like Google Classroom? Several popular tools, including Adobe Express, let you install a special add-on to help keep creative workflows simple. This can save you lots of time planning how to introduce something new (Adobe Express) if students are already familiar with one of the spaces (Google Classroom).
Locate an exemplar
A project exemplar helps students envision what is possible for their creative endeavors. An exemplar helps communicate expectations and the possibilities for a new project. Creating an exemplar can certainly take up a chunk of your planning time. You can head to Adobe Express and search for a great example of a project to share with your students. Typing in “infographic,” as seen in the screenshot above, pulls up lots of excellent examples.
Revisit a favorite tool
Last week I helped kick off the Illinois Education & Technology Conference (here’s a picture with accidental “jazz hands”), and I used a favorite phrase – open-ended creation tools. To help you save planning time this year, you can revisit a creative tool over and over again if it provides lots of options for student creativity. Adobe Express is an excellent example of an open-ended tool. Students can use it to create videos, web pages, graphics, and many creative projects. Revisiting a tool you and your students love with a different focus or task is a great way to save planning time.
Ready to put these five strategies into action? Head to this page to try out Adobe Express for Education, or use this link to learn more about this year’s creative challenges.
