Adobe Express

Enjoyable and practical design tool supports creators of all ages

Learning rating

Community rating

Based on 18 reviews

Privacy rating

Expert evaluation by Common Sense

Grades

2–12

Subjects & Skills

Arts, Communication & Collaboration, Creativity, Critical Thinking

Great for

Creating Media, Presentation, Productivity, Social Media

Price: Free
Platforms: Web, Android, iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, Chrome

Pros: Create and share a wide variety of visual media all in one platform.

Cons: As a primarily visual platform, the tool might be challenging for students with varying accessibility needs.

Bottom Line: Beautiful templates and user-friendly tools empower students to turn their creative ideas into professional-looking media.

To get started, use a premade template to customize a quick poster or graphic organizer for your classroom. If you have an hour, visit the Adobe Education Exchange website for the K12 version. Here you can search for lesson templates and watch short, self-paced videos that teach you the ins and outs of Adobe Express and how to maximize creative learning.

Adobe Express is good for making teacher materials, but the real magic happens when you hand it over to your students. Create a free Adobe Express classroom account or work with your technology department to connect students to Adobe Creative Cloud. Adobe Express integrates with the most popular learning management systems, making it easy to assign and manage projects. Students can invite each other to collaborate on a shared project and can share it in a variety of ways.

Still trying to figure out how to use Adobe Express? Here are a few ideas: As an intro to the platform, have students create an "About Me" poster or timeline of their life. In language arts class, build a graphic organizer to analyze literature or do some pre-writing prep. History students can design a faux newspaper or broadside about a historical event, perhaps from a firsthand perspective. In science, ask students to create an infographic to illustrate lab results or share research data. Though print media is the simplest way to get started in Adobe Express, you can also use the platform to create and publish videos. And if you really want to get your students' attention, do a project in which they create memes or GIFs.

Adobe Express is a media creation platform that's available on the web as well as via a mobile app. There's a free K12 education platform for schools that also includes access to the Adobe Photoshop Express mobile app and Adobe Premiere Rush, a desktop video creation platform. Teachers and students use their Google Education accounts to log in to Adobe Express; teachers can provide students an access code to join.

Most novice users will start by selecting a template for a presentation, poster, or other type of document and then modifying it to fit their needs. You can also use Adobe Express to create videos, edit images, make PDFs and GIFs, and generate QR codes. Students can invite each other to collaborate on their projects. It's super easy to share and publish work too. You can share it via link, email, social media, Google Classroom, or Microsoft Teams, send it to Google Drive, or download it to your device. Adobe Express also supports several types of integrations with a variety of popular classroom platforms including Clever, Classlink, Canvas, Blackboard, Book Creator, Wakelet, and Flip.

Full Disclosure: Adobe and Common Sense Education have partnered in the past.

The learning potential of Adobe Express is dependent on the quality of your lesson plans. Take a little time to explore the templates, watch a few videos, or read the Adobe Express blog to imagine the product's full potential and spark some creative learning and help students stretch the boundaries of their creative thinking. Be sure to take advantage of the Publish and Share features by giving students an authentic audience. Collecting finished projects in Google Classroom is fine, but don't stop there! Build an Adobe Express website or use another platform like Wakelet to share student projects with parents and friends. Allow and encourage students age 13+ to share their work on their own social media accounts. For those poster-style projects, find a ream of large-format paper and display color prints along the hallway or classroom walls where students can take pride in their work and learn from each other.

Learning Rating

Overall Rating
Engagement

Students can customize to their heart's content, plus collaborate with peers and easily publish their work with a click.

Pedagogy

A vast library of templates and media provide scaffolded support, so students can create beautiful visual media projects. Teachers can build upon premade lesson plans to inspire authentic learning opportunities.

Support

There are video tutorials and helpful tips at every turn, but some students who depend on accessibility tools may struggle with this highly visual platform.

 

 

Common Sense reviewer
Melissa Powers
Melissa Powers School Library and Technology Specialist

Community Rating

Easy to navigate and serves many purposes

The site is organized very well. They offer plenty of visually unique and stunning templates for many purposes or areas. The features I found most interesting were the video and picture quick actions, that allow you to convert videos to mp4, increase or decrease speed, reverse the video, merge videos, etc. They also offer actions to quickly convert pictures to JPG, PNG, etc. Many other sites require you to watch ads or take too long to do these actions, but this site gets it done within seconds. The site also has a free social media scheduler, where you can connect your platforms to your Adobe Express account and schedule your posts. This can help with preserving quality of photos and videos for posting. Overall, I have no complaints.

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Privacy Rating

Data Safety How safe is this product?

  • Users can interact with trusted users.
  • Users can interact with untrusted users, including strangers and/or adults.
  • Profile information must be shared for social interactions.

Data Rights What rights do I have to the data?

  • Users can create or upload content.
  • Users retain ownership of their data.
  • Processes to access or review user data are available.

Ads & Tracking Are there advertisements or tracking?

  • Personal information is not shared for third-party marketing.
  • Traditional or contextual advertisements are displayed.
  • Personalised advertising is not displayed.

Continue reading about this tool's privacy practices, including data collection, sharing, and security.

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