All Learners and Teachers in Wales Now Have Access to Adobe Spark

By Claire Darley

Today we’ve announced that we’ve been working with Hwb (Digital Learning for Wales) to make Adobe Spark available to all learners and teachers in primary and secondary schools in Wales for free – that’s over 1,500 state schools and more than 500,000 users! It’s part of our ongoing commitment at Adobe to make creativity and digital literacy a possibility for every young person, irrespective of their age, background or where they live.

Hwb is a countrywide platform of online educational tools provided by the Welsh government, and we’re proud to be supporting the government in providing the right tools to support the development of digital skills within schools.

Wales’ Digital Transformation

As the Welsh government’s technology partner, we are supporting it in implementing its digital transformation strategy by enabling access to Adobe Spark for Education and empowering teachers and students to use creative technology to their lessons and coursework, such as creating visual essays in English, presentations for a History project or videos for Drama class.

The Welsh government is transforming the curriculum by giving digital skills equal importance to literacy and numeracy and is funding programmes that aim to improve the infrastructure in schools, something that I personally believe is a pioneering move that will bring many benefits to both students and teachers across the country.

Making Adobe Spark accessible via Hwb was originally planned for later in the year but has been brought forward in response to the current Covid-19 situation. This will allow us to more quickly support teachers and students in Wales who are in need of simple-to-use, but effective, online tools, and help with the government’s aim to improve digital skills across the country.

Future Plans

This is the first nationwide implementation of Adobe Spark globally. To support the adoption of Spark, we are developing a Welsh language version of Adobe Spark Web, along with future expansion plans to encourage further creativity in the classrooms.

Supporting Teachers

We’re aware that this will be the first time many teachers have used Adobe Spark before, so we’re working with Hwb to host a series of webinars to introduce teachers to the new tools and provide practical advice and example lesson plans that show how they can integrate Spark into their teaching, irrespective of what subject they teach.

Details of the webinars can be found here.

Adobe Spark for Education has and always will be free for education – you can watch examples of Spark in action and get access for your institution here.

Visit the Adobe Spark_ page to learn more about how to create graphics, visuals and videos, and for information on other Hwb tools please visit here._