Case Study: Langley Park Girls’ School
How Langley Park Girls’ School uses Adobe Creative Cloud to enhance GCSE Photography lessons.
Langley Park is an all-girls secondary school with around 1,600 students in Beckenham, Kent. Recently, increasing numbers of students have been applying to do GCSE photography. This is despite the fact that art-based courses aren’t typically as well subscribed, because students often feel they don’t have the right skills. So, why is photography so popular? We spoke to Langley Park teachers and students to find out.
Meet Ted Fox-Joyce, Head of Visual Arts.
Ted says that one of the reasons GCSE photography is so popular is because students “can actually take great images. They can manipulate those images and tell their story, which is what they’ve always been trying to do artistically.”
As part of the photography course, students use Photoshop and Lightroom; photo editing, processing and compositing resources that are part of Adobe Creative Cloud. Ted says, “Adobe Creative Cloud has been really advantageous for staff and students, as students are very well-versed in using digital technologies. They know what they’re doing, they know how to use apps, and they pick them up very quickly. As a school, we’re trying to catch up with that knowledge and offer it within the classroom environment.”
Using this software, Ted and his GCSE students have been able to work in a number of different ways across different platforms, and have adopted a more fluid and mobile process of learning. Ted says, “The flexibility of these apps enables students to progress, try things out, take risks, and challenge themselves much more than they were able to before.”
“The flexibility of Adobe Creative Cloud enables students to progress, try things out, take risks, and challenge themselves much more than they were able to before.”
Ted Fox-Joyce, Head of Visual Arts
Collaboration in education.
Ted enjoys the fact that he’s no longer sitting in front of his class, teaching facts to his students. Quite the opposite, he says, “It’s very much a dialogue between us now, and it’s about collaboration, which is really the kind of environment we should be learning and teaching in nowadays.”
“We’re looking at making the course fully digital, and for me that’s where Adobe Spark comes in. It’s a fantastic way of documenting ideas, progress of work, and being able to share that work with others.”
“I envisage what I can do in Lightroom or Photoshop to that picture, and that affects how I change the model and how I position them differently.”
Izabellah, GCSE photography student
What the students say.
Feedback from students has been overwhelmingly positive, and as GCSE photography student, Chloe says, “The lessons are fun because you can edit pictures in many different ways, and there’s no end to the possibilities of what you can do”. Fellow student, Phoebe, agrees, saying, “I do think the apps make it easier for us to be creative.”
“Photoshop allows you to do what you want to do with a photo and express how you want the photo to look, and you can invent yourself.”
Phoebe, GCSE photography student
Ted’s final thought.
“As a visual arts teacher, I’m really excited about the future possibilities of using apps and digital technology with my students. I think there are some really exciting times ahead of us.”
See how the apps are supporting pupils.
Adobe Express
Adobe Spark is a free educational tool for making presentations, graphics, posters, videos, web pages and more.
Creative Cloud
Adobe Creative Cloud is a collection of more than 20 desktop and mobile apps and services for photography, design, video, web, animation, and more.
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