Adobe introduced Adobe Express a platform for Education with new generative AI features designed to improve student engagement and make them more creative. Powered by the company’s in-house developed Firefly AI mode, the new features will allow students to generate templates for posters, brochures, flyers and original colouring pages. The company is also rolling out new multimedia presentation and animation features and a new assignments feature that will help connect teachers and students in real time offering feedback to students working on projects. Adobe Firefly AI in MagicSchool will help students and teachers create lesson plans, essays and school projects visually attractive and impactful.
The AI features in Adobe Express for Education support students in creativity and critical thinking, making it easy for students to unleash their imaginations and incorporate graphics elements.
New AI Features
- Generate Text Effects and Image
- Generative Fill, with the recent update, brought some new AI-powered tools like Generate Template, which lets students create things like book report posters and club flyers, and even make their very own templates using text prompts.
- Generate a colouring page, which, as the name suggests, lets students make their colouring pages using generative AI and even paint them with multicolour and decorative brushes.
- Enhanced Presentations”, which enable students and teachers to add music, data charts, animations
- “Animate characters” functionality lets you animate a character’s body and face.
AI In A Supporting Role
Adobe Express has done an excellent job of keeping generative AI in a supporting role. The emphasis is on having generative AI create images or templates that are readily editable by the student. Generate template takes a text description and generates a set of editable templates that students can use as a starting point for the designs. AI is also used to simplify the user interface. Tools like generative fill allow students to describe what they want added to or removed from an image. For students who have never been able to draw and may lack facility with complex user interfaces, such tools can unleash dormant creative potential.
Benefits of Adobe Express
- NEW Enhanced presentations —presentations now include music, video, animation, and Present mode! Choose from 150+ new templates to get started quickly.
- NEW Drawings — Students can generate their colouring pages through generative AI prompts and colour them with decorative brushes!
- Animate characters — animate a character’s face and body for a presentation or to narrate a video.
- Web pages — create simple web pages for a fresh take on reports and field trip journals in a few clicks.
- Videos and GIFs — easily move up from static to motion-based creations
- Animations — Have precise control over timing, speed, and more.
- Seamless creative assignments and easy collaboration
- Get support from a community of like-minded educators
Keep AI In Its Lane
Access to generative AI, especially in a middle school context invites disaster as students are likely to generate all manners of inappropriate content. Adobe has integrated guardrails ensuring that the prompts and outputs from generative AI are appropriate for classroom use. They also allow districts to toggle these features on and off so that the tool will remain compatible with various possible policies. Also noteworthy is that Adobe does not use student projects in the generative AI training datasets, providing an added protection layer to safeguard student privacy.
The Importance
As these tools become ubiquitous, teachers must devise assignments that lead students through learning to use them effectively. As with any tool, this will be a balancing act, being the cost in time spent that it takes to learn to use the tool, the intrinsic value gained from being able to use the tool, and the learning gain that comes from using the tool in the process of learning the target subjects. Unless the gains outweigh the costs, the learning will suffer no matter how enjoyable the tool is. As these types of tools become common in the workplace, it will be increasingly important that students are comfortable around them and effective in their use. In addition, Adobe Express for Education should encourage student engagement; thus, the amount of time and effort students are willing to invest in their learning, the net results should be positive.
Teachers and students have always been able to work together in Adobe Express by commenting on projects – now, the new Assignments feature lets teachers monitor each student’s progress in real time and provide live feedback. This unique feature enables teachers to support students on an individual level throughout the creative journey rather than waiting until work has been submitted.
