Today, I’m fortunate to be visiting the East Room of the White House to be with the winners of the first-ever White House Student Film Festival and their parents, along with cool celebrities like Kal Penn and Conan O’Brien. Without a doubt, this is one of the best things about my job at Adobe – seeing what students are creating with digital media tools. The winning videos lined up for today will undoubtedly be impressive.
Unleashing creativity in all students and teachers is critical as we prepare this generation for the careers of the future. Today’s students live in an increasingly digital and visual world and must do more than just consume digital media. They must create it in order for their ideas to take shape and their voices heard.
Today, Adobe is happy to announce that it is joining the Department of Education and the President’s ConnectED initiative by making world-class creative tools available to schools across the country, along with innovative professional development and curricular resources to educators. 
Adobe has committed over $300 million to help advance digital learning, teaching, and administration in 15,000 U.S. schools.
This is a continuation of Adobe’s longstanding commitment to education. Over the past 20 years, Adobe has empowered K12 teachers and students and celebrated their creativity:
The Adobe Education Exchange is the largest online community of creative educators. 127,000 teachers from across the globe connect with each other, learn from free professional development, and explore standards-based resources.
Adobe Youth Voices is the Adobe Foundation’s global initiative to ignite young people’s creativity through the power of storytelling with digital media. Youth develop original media that highlights an issue they care about, identify solutions, and in the process, foster critical creative skills and a passion to make a difference. Since the program’s launch, more than 5,000 educators and 150,000 youth from over 58 countries have developed original, thought-provoking digital media.
Adobe applauds the President’s bold vision for U.S. schools. We share ConnectED’s goal that allstudents should have access to the world of ideas and the tools they need to build the future.