In this video, I'm going to show you how to make an end of year showcase project
using Adobe Spark Post. Adobe Spark Post is one of my favorite creativity
platforms. It's really easy to use and the end products that students create
with Adobe end up looking incredibly clean and professional. I always like to
cap off the year with a showcase, where students show off all the different cool
projects that they did throughout the year. An Adobe webpage is a perfect
platform for students to do that. My name is Sam Kary and this is my YouTube
channel for The New EdTech Classroom. If you appreciate the tips that I share in
this video, show your support by hitting the like button, sharing it with other
teachers that you know, and subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell
to make sure you don't miss any of my weekly updates. You can also visit my
website at www.newedtechclassroom.com for additional tips and resources about how to
use education technology in your class. In this video, I'm going to show you some examples of final projects that
students made in my class. I'll also go over some of the basic planning and preparation that I have my students
do in order to make their webpages. And lastly, I'll show you how easy it is to make an awesome looking Adobe
Spark webpage so that you're prepared to teach your students how to do it. I teach Ancient
Civilizations and part of what we learn is about the important achievements of
each civilization. So for this showcase project, I had students choose what they
believe were the top three achievements in human history up to this point. You
can see that students included an image to represent the achievement as well as
some text to explain why they chose that achievement. Then beneath the final
argument that they made, they included some of their best projects from the
year that showed the different achievements of all the civilizations we
studied. Here you can see that students included images of their projects, they
also included links to other websites where you could view the project on that
site, and they even embedded different video projects. Alright now that we've
seen how really awesome those final showcase projects look, I'm going to go
through just a little bit of how I prepared
my students to actually make these webpages. First I pushed out a Google
Slide to them that had a list of all the different projects that we had created
throughout the school year. Then I had students go to different websites where
they had already created projects and either screenshot images of those
projects or download copies of them, so that they can put them up on their
website. I also like to send my students to websites like Unsplash and Pixabay,
where students are able to get images that they have copyright access to and
then have those images ready so that they can put them up on their web page.
Then I had students create a folder on their desktop where they could put all
the different images and screenshots of their final projects. The only new piece
of this showcase project was for students to make an argument about what
they believe the top three achievements of the ancient civilizations were. So
here I gave them a graphic organizer, where they could look over all the
projects that they had already created and come up with their top three
arguments. And lastly, I made my own demo web page, just to give my students an
idea of what their final projects could look like. So in order to create a web
page, students are first going to go up to the blue 'Create a Project' button. From
the drop down menu, they'll select 'Web Page.' There you'll see a very basic
template and the first thing that students can do is enter a title for
their project. Below the title you'll see an 'Add' button where students can add an
image that will become the header background of their website. So here I'm
just going to use the internal search function for an image and I'm going to
go ahead and search for the Great Wall of China, since again, I teach Ancient
Civilizations. Once students find the image that they like, they simply select
it and it will show up in the background on their web page. Next on the top right
under 'Themes,' you'll see that there are some different options for the website
theme that will change the way that it looks and once I've picked a theme that
I like I'm going to go ahead and start adding more content. When students scroll
underneath their title, they'll see that they have a bunch of different options
for the type of content that they could upload. So here I'm going to go ahead and
start with a Glideshow, just to show you what that looks
like. The Glideshow allows you to upload multiple images at the same time. So here
I'm going to select all the three images that I chose to represent the three main
achievements that I was going to choose for my final project. Once those images
are selected, students can rearrange the order if they need to and then after
they click 'Save,' they'll see that the images show up as full page backgrounds
on their website. So here I can see all three images that I chose and it already
looks really professional. I'm going to go ahead and go back up to the top of
those images and choose to add text in order to make sure that this section of
the webpage is labeled. You'll see that students can customize the alignment of
the text, as well as the size. And next students will scroll down to the first
image where they'll be given different options for the type of media that they
want to overlay on top of that image. So here I'm just going to add some text to
indicate which achievement I've chosen and then below, write why I chose that
particular achievement. And here you can see I'm also playing around with some of the
formatting tools to make it look the way that I want it to look. Now for the next
two images, I'm going to repeat the same process of adding some text overlay with
a title for each achievement, as well as a short explanation about why I believe
that achievement was the most important. Here it would be a good idea to provide
students with some sentence starters to make sure that their explanations are
matching your expectation. After students have included what they believe to be
the three most important achievements, they're going to start adding different
projects that they created throughout the year. So here I'm going to start with
some text again, just to indicate that this section of the web page is now about
final projects and this time, rather than the Glideshow, I'm going to go ahead and
choose 'Split Layout.' You'll see when you get to Split Layout that students are
able to add an image on one side, as well as text on the other. So here students
can add a screenshot of one of the projects that they chose and then on the
other side, write the title, as well as a short description of that project. Next
I'm going to show you how students can directly embed video content onto their
web page. Earlier in the year I had students make a video in Adobe Spark
Post about the most important achievements of ancient India. First
students are going to go back to their video projects and make sure that they
have the Publish link copied. Then students will choose to add the video
option and paste the link in as an embedded video. You'll notice that
students can also choose from YouTube or Vimeo as well, and then you'll see that
the video shows up directly on the web page. Next let's look at how students
could create a hyperlink that would take viewers out to another app or web page.
So for this digital book project that my students made about the Han Dynasty,
using Book Creator, an option would be to first copy the direct link into their
digital book. Then students could choose to add a button, paste the link to their
book, and customize the text that they want to show up on the web page, as well
as how they want the button to be oriented on that page. And lastly let's
look at how to embed an image directly into the web page. In order to add an
image, students will go to 'Photo' and then they can add a screenshot from that
folder that they made of a project that they created. You'll see that students
also have some different options for the way that the image appears. I'm going to
go ahead and choose 'Fit to Screen' here to show you what that would look like. So
with the 'Fit to Screen,' option you'll see that the image kind of glides in and has
a really cool look and that there's also a caption on the side, where students
could overlay some text on top of that image to explain what it's about. Then
when they're ready they can go up to the 'Preview' button at the top to take a look
at what their final product looks like. So here you're going to see a very
professional, clean, aesthetically pleasing webpage that took me a very
short period of time to make. Students love making these webpages because they
look so cool and it makes them really excited to showcase their work with
their peers and their families. Lastly in order to share the published link for
their web page, students will go up to the 'Share' button, then you can have
students copy the link to the web page, and then have them share it in whatever
way seems best for you. I'm personally going to make a Padlet and have all my
students post their different websites onto the Padlet, so that everybody in the
class is able to see all the really cool work that their peers did. If you have
any questions about how I've done showcase projects in my class with Adobe
Spark Post, please ask in the comments below. Thank you so much for watching my
video to the end. If you found the tips that I shared helpful, please share it
with other teachers that you know, hit the like button, and subscribe to my
channel and hit the notification bell to make sure you don't miss any of my
weekly updates. You can also check out some of the other tutorials I have on my
channel by clicking on one of those two videos above and if you're interested in
downloading any of the resources that I've created and show on my videos,
please visit my website at www.newedtechclassroom.com. Lastly if you want to
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all in the description below. Thanks so much and have a great week!