Adobe grabs its share of Rudd schools laptop largesse

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 21 April 2009 11:18

Business IT - Technology

Adobe is set to grab $20 million of revenue from the New South Wales Government’s schools’ laptop program.

School teachers and students in NSW from kindergarten up to year 12 are to have access to design, development, photo-editing, video and collaboration software following a contract deal between the State education department and Adobe.

Under the contract, valued at around $20 million, Adobe software will be provided to 741,000 state kindergarten students and 50,000 kindergarten teachers, half a million TAFE students and 10,000 TAFE teachers. The Adobe contract announcement follows the signing of a massive contract by the NSW government with Microsoft and Lenovo to supply sub-notebooks to NSW schools, as reported in iTWire at the beginning on the month - http://www.itwire.com/content/view/24175/1231/ .

The NSW Department of Education and Training says the selection of Adobe software is part of the joint federal and state government Digital Education Revolution initiative, which it says “contributes sustainable and meaningful change to teaching and learning in Australian schools, by providing students with skills they need to live and work in a digital world.” 

Julian Quinn, VP Asia Pacific at Adobe, says the contract provides for year nine through 12 secondary school students to receive netbooks preloaded with various Adobe software combinations, including Adobe Photoshop Elements, Premiere Elements, Captivate, Contribute, and Adobe AcrobatPro.

Quinn says the department has also licensed Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro software for web conferencing and teacher training, and Flash Media Server software to provide streaming video and real-time communication.

“Adobe has participated in several efforts around the globe to integrate technology in large education systems.,” Quinn said, adding that “this effort in NSW represents a bold step forward by simultaneously addressing career and technical education, cross-curricular use of technology and teacher professional development, and Adobe is proud to participate in a comprehensive effort to improve student learning at this scale.”

The New South Wales Premier, Nathan Rees, said “NSW public schools lead Australia in providing computer resources, giving our teachers and our young people the vital skills they need to help them succeed in the 21st Century.”

“The combination of the hardware and the software contracts we have signed will open our classrooms up to the world. Using this software, teachers and students will be able to create videos and presentations, edit photos, and collaborate on class assignments and projects.”

The education department says that to ensure a successful roll-out, the government is investing in teacher training, teaching resources, technical and curriculum support, and will incorporate the standards-aligned resources from Adobe into its modern approach to teaching and learning.