5 Solid ways to use Adobe Express in the world language classroom

Have you ever used Adobe Express (formerly known as Spark)? If you haven’t heard of it, it’s program that allows you to make graphics, videos and web pages. Students can use their own images, or free ones within Express. They can upload videos and add text, graphics, and animation on top of it. Or, they can make a quick and easy web page. While there are other programs that do similar things, Spark is super easy to use and free!  Here are some ideas for ways you can use Adobe Express in the world language classroom.

Some ideas for using Adobe Express post in the language classroom:

• Have students make a meme in the target language. Find an image, add some text – that’s it!
• Use Express to make vocabulary cards – put the image as the background, then the text for the term.
• Make conversations or tell stories by using the images and text – this could be really fun if you have one person start the story with one image/sentence and share it with the next student. The next student will then write a new sentence, and so on. Put them all together at the end and see what story you end up with.
• Use the image header function to make the image for your flipgrid topics. It’s very simple to make great-looking headers for each prompt when using Express post.
• Cultural/field trips – you can easily make graphics of various cultural things with some text explaining the cultural item or location.

Exxpress Page is the web page creator function. You can use Express page to build webpages that students can share with just you, with their classmates – or the world! If you like to do some sort of cultural report – like a visit to a country where the target language is spoken – Spark page allows your students to put their information in a format that is attractive and accessible. Or, you could do a biographical project.

Express video allows you to create videos that have text, music, and more. You might use this for students to do speaking tests, or to act out skits.  If you’ve studied some sort of cultural information such as greetings, giving/getting directions, buying something at the market – you could make a quick “how to” video that not only shows the dialog but also has text subtitles or explanations. 

It’s pretty easy to use, and can be very quick to put together, unlike some video programs. There are free and paid versions of Spark.  If you already have a creative cloud membership, it’s included in that.  But there are also free programs for educational users that allow you to set up student accounts.

Note: You can also use Adobe Express to make anchor charts. This blog post is about using Canva, but the process is largely the same in Adobe Express.