Howard County teaches students to be responsible digital citizens with Adobe Express for Education

Photo Credit: Nicholas Griner, Howard County Public School System.

The Howard County Public School System (HCPSS) ranks as one Maryland’s top school districts. It educates more than 57,000 students in 78 schools with a focus on closing opportunity gaps to nurture the academic, social, and emotional well-being of all students.

One way that HCPSS encourages achievement is through a focus on creativity and technology in the classroom that inspires students to express themselves, become more engaged in lessons, and build confidence in digital skills that they’ll need in the modern workforce. Coordinator Julie Wray and resource teacher Carrie Trudden run the Instructional Technology program for HCPSS. They train teachers, develop curriculum, and find new ways to introduce digital tools into all levels of education.

Wray and Trudden share both a love of technology and long ties to the district. Both started their careers as HCPSS teachers, with Wray starting her career in the county 30 years ago. Having worked in the classroom, they aim to add technologies that get students excited about lessons, while being easy enough to use that teachers can quickly guide their students.

“Especially in elementary and middle school, our goal is to introduce a wide variety of technologies and encourage general digital literacy,” says Wray. “We hope that as students get older, they can choose from a range of familiar apps to find the best tool for any assignment.”

Wray and Trudden were especially excited to see what students could accomplish with Adobe Express. The “make-anything app” — free for education users — combines the best features from Adobe’s industry-leading creative tools and Adobe Firefly generative AI into in an easy-to-use tool that students and teachers can use to create multimedia content like infographics, video projects, and web page portfolios.

“Adobe Express helps students explore their creativity,” Trudden explains. “The templates and themes make it easy for students to dive right into work. It gives them confidence that they can create something that looks great and that they’re proud to share.”

Learning responsibility and safety in the digital age

HCPSS’ Digital Citizenship class is an elective available to all sixth-grade students that teaches them how to safely and responsibly navigate fast-changing digital environments. Topics include responsible use of technology, balancing media usage, and understanding digital rights and responsibilities.

Wray and Trudden laid the groundwork for the class, creating lesson plans, training teachers, and customizing templates in Adobe Express for assignments. Since the course is an elective taken by around 3,000 students each quarter across all middle schools, a variety of teachers — with varying curriculum expertise — teach it. Adobe Express provides a way to incorporate engaging digital assignments while being easy even for teachers who might not normally incorporate technology into their lessons.

Sophia Manela, a career and technical education teacher at Mount View and Folly Quarter Middle Schools, said teaching the Digital Citizenship class gave her the chance to learn new things about the changing digital world and pass on that excitement to her students. She appreciates how Adobe Express infuses creativity into assignments and gives her students important digital skills.

In one unit, students create infographics in Adobe Express that map innovations in communication technology, such as the evolution from the telegraph to the text message. In another unit, students use the Generate template feature in Adobe Express to personalize templates and respond to questions about their digital footprint, such as what social media accounts they have, where they shop or stream online, and what games they play.

“Working with Adobe Express helps students understand how design elements fit together to create a compelling presentation,” Manela says. “That’s something that all students will need throughout their educational and professional careers. I’ve been using the app during my own graduate coursework to create slides or multimedia presentations.”

Manela’s positive experience led her to introduce Adobe Express in other classes. For her Boost the Brain class, a reading and writing course that teaches students about their brains and how they work, students use generative AI in Adobe Express to easily communicate their ideas visually. To illustrate the executive function of organization, for example, a student might use text prompts to generate an image of a messy closet and then contrast it with a generated image of a neatly organized library.

“Working with generative AI helps students get ideas out of their heads and onto a page, showing them that they can be creative even if they aren’t confident in their artistic skills,” Manela says.

Inspiring creativity in the classroom

Many teachers introduced to Adobe Express through the Digital Citizenship course are actively embracing the app. In the last academic year, students across the district created over 35,000 projects with Adobe Express with a 50 percent year-over-year growth in monthly active users.

“What makes Howard County unique is that we have a very strong technology curriculum aligned to standards and focused on building students’ skills,” Wray says. “We’ve seen interest rise in our professional development around Adobe Express. Once teachers see how they can use the app to encourage student engagement and creativity, they’re excited to bring it into the classroom.”

With more than 800 teachers attending professional development sessions training them to use Adobe Express, HCPSS is equipping educators with new digital skills and empowering them to integrate creativity and technology into their classrooms. The result is a student population even more ready to express themselves and become future leaders.

Learn more about using Adobe Express for Education here.