Teach Creativity with Adobe & Khan Academy: Curriculum Overview

Teach Creativity with Adobe & Khan Academy

Curriculum overview

When students are given the opportunity to apply their knowledge through creating, designing, imagining, and self-expression, their learning becomes deeper, more engaging, and ultimately more meaningful. And with the rise of flipped, blended, and online learning, students and teachers increasingly use video and online content as a core part of their learning resources.

For over a decade, the non-profit Khan Academy has inspired millions with its mission of providing free, world-class educational videos, articles, and practice questions for millions of students and teachers across the world.

Adobe’s creative toolkit allows students to create and communicate using writing, images, video, audio, animation, and design. These modalities help students demonstrate deeper levels of knowledge, critical thinking, communication, and creativity. Adobe also enables opportunities for peer and teacher feedback by making digital creative work easy to share and make collaborative.

To bring the best of these two resources together, Adobe, Khan Academy, and expert educators collaborated to design 101 lessons, activities, and projects that are flexible, adaptable, and easy to use. Each activity in this collection begins with Khan Academy materials that are then extended with guided digital and creative activities. These materials also include a unique 14-lesson storytelling curriculum co-created with Pixar in a Box that teaches students to bring their stories to life in any course, discipline, or grade level.

You can find a full list of the activities below. We’ve also co-created a free, self-paced course for educators, Teach Creativity with Adobe and Khan Academy. The course is a fun and guided way to learn more about the pedagogy, design, and application of these materials, with examples and testimonials from educators like you. You can even earn a badge and 20 hours of accredited professional learning by completing this course.

List of activities for upper grades (secondary or higher ed)

ART & ART HISTORY
Produce a video essay explaining an art history concept	Produce a video reflection about historical art movements
CAREERS
Create a video career plan for a comic book artist Illustrate a thank-you note for first responders Design a poster presenting your dream career	Design a career networking action plan Illustrate a social media post to imagine a career in food Create a poster imagining a career in product design
COMPUTER SCIENCE
Make a pitch deck to solve the digital divide Film a video about how the internet affects your life	Create a news report about bias in machine learning
DIGITAL MEDIA
Create a user persona to help plan a content review app Create an interactive prototype for a review app Design a review app to build digital media skills	Create a mobile app design incorporating peer feedback Create a presentation to showcase your review app
GROWTH MINDSET
Create a video to reflect on past mistakes Make a website to share a 'SMART' goal	Make a website framing mistakes as opportunities
MATH
Design a simple webpage to plan a Pi Day party Design a mosaic using similar and congruent shapes Create a poster exploring rational numbers with memes Annotate math problems to practice developing a growth mindset Present an infographic visualizing angles and transversals Design a neighborhood map using geometry concepts Create an infographic to visualize triangles in architecture Create a presentation to walkthrough word problem solutions	Design a mileage sign with the distance formula Produce a video about understanding the universe through math Design a poster identifying the golden ratio in art and nature Illustrate a story about exponential growth Design a web page as a collaborative math reference text Illustrate a geometry concept using city maps Design a poster relating speed, distance, and time Design a poster presenting costs for an imaginary store
SCIENCE
Annotate articles about women's roles in STEM history Design an infographic about natural selection Present a project outlining an ecology application Produce an explainer video about a scientific concept Design a virtual zoo display to explore speciation Design a poster explaining cell functions Create a web page outlining a scientific experiment Illustrate a cell diagram as a map Design a Lewis diagram to represent molecular structure Illustrate the relationship between biology, gender, & identity Make a web resource visualizing how cells communicate Illustrate a poster to teach others about DNA structure Design an infographic to show the mass of a molecular compound Create a video about experiment design and the scientific method	Create a Punnett square to analyze heredity Design visual elements to enhance a mobile application Create a user profile for an ecology review application Build a wireframe to review ecological principles Create a sports presentation about the human body Develop a prototype for an ecology application Create a climate change public service announcement Create an infographic about a STEM concept Design a phase diagram of water on a newly-discovered planet Design a web page to raise awareness about sustainability Create an infographic about DNA and inherited traits Create a poster representing molecular structures Design an infographic about how cells send messages
SOCIAL STUDIES & HUMANITIES
Create a poster raising awareness of Juneteenth and emancipation Create a reflection poster about a historical event Design a web page reflecting on a social movement Create a government communication to share important news Design a tourism poster about the impacts of global trade Design and create a website exploring US history	Create a reflection video about a historical event Make a captivating graphic that tells your story Create a branded graphic for a historical cause or event Create a social media post for a historical person Produce a video about government and civics Create historical pamphlets to foment social change
STORYTELLING
Design a poster to share an important memory Film a video about an imaginary or hypothetical situation Design a webpage to share your world and characters Make a poster identifying your character's obstacles Make a web page to outline the structure of a story Create a web page to plan the first act of your story Make a poster to describe a character inside and out	Design a poster to experiment with color, light, and tone Create an image using a line to chart an emotional journey Design a graphic to capture a single image or emotion Illustrate a storyboard for one scene in your story Make a web page to pitch a scene from your story Make a poster to collect feedback and generate new ideas Film a video converting a storyboard into a feature film
⭐Learn more about our dedicated Pixar in a Box storytelling curriculum here.⭐

List of activities for lower grades (primary or K-5)

ART AND HUMANITIES
Design a poster to illustrate a grammar concept Film a video sharing an important story from your life Make a poster sharing a memory from your perspective Create a short video to share your imaginary worlds Illustrate a concept from modern art with a poster	Make a poster to distinguish common and proper nouns Design a poster to show how tone and contrast tell a story Produce a video to teach others about grammar Design a web page using tone and color to tell a story
GROWTH MINDSET
Create a video to reflect on past mistakes Make a website to share a 'SMART' goal	Make a website framing mistakes as opportunities
MATH
Create a poster identifying shapes all around you Design a poster about cooking to learn fractions Illustrate a math concept with simple graphics	Present a visual representation of a word problem Make an infographic to represent an array
STORYTELLING (FLEXIBLE FOR ALL SUBJECTS)
Design a poster to share an important memory Film a video about an imaginary or hypothetical situation Present a web page to share your world and characters Make a poster to describe a character inside and out Make a poster identifying your character's obstacles Make a web page to outline the structure of a story Create a web page to plan the first act of your story	Design a poster to experiment with color, light, and tone Create an image using a line to chart an emotional journey Design a graphic to capture a single image or emotion Design a web page using tone and color to tell a story Make a web page to pitch a scene from your story Create a poster to collect feedback and generate new ideas Film a video converting a storyboard into a feature film
⭐ Learn more about our supplementary Pixar in a Box storytelling curriculum here. ⭐

Information for teachers

The team of teachers who created these activities with Adobe intentionally made them available as free, creative-commons licensed, and as PDFs and editable Google docs that anyone can take, copy, and adapt to suit their own context, needs, and goals. You know your students best, so we encourage you to customize where needed to align to the content knowledge, depth, and length that best aligns to your lessons, units, or course curriculum objectives.

Most of these activities use Adobe’s free, easy to use, and cross-device tools like Adobe Express, and the creative principles and activities can be adapted to augment or work with other creative tools or technologies, digital or otherwise. Teachers should also feel empowered to use other relevant learning content, from Khan Academy, to textbooks, to other sources, in order to ground students' content knowledge.

Adobe Express and other Creative Cloud apps require an account and Adobe ID login. Keep in mind that children under the age of 13 are not allowed to create their own Adobe ID. Sign-in with social media accounts is also supported. You can learn more about Express and Creative Cloud login and technical details, including instructions for logging in if your district or school has Express deployed, by clicking here.

You can also find more free teaching materials, courses, and professional development for using Adobe in your classroom on the Adobe Education Exchange.

Information for parents or guardians

We hope you find these activities engaging and meaningful to do alongside your children and young learners. Most of these activities include opportunities for students to share their thinking, reflect on what they’ve learned, and express themselves, which make for fantastic discussions and conversations. We encourage you to join in and explore and learn new subjects, content, and digital skills too!

Adobe Express and other Creative Cloud apps require an account and login. Keep in mind that children under the age of 13 are not allowed to create their own Adobe ID. Sign-in with social media accounts is also supported.

© 2021 Adobe Systems Incorporated. All rights reserved. Adobe and the Adobe logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.