Meet Aqua by Adobe: The Free Creative Playground Putting Kids in the Driver's Seat

Jeffrey Bradbury (00:00)

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Teacher Cast Educational Network. My name is Jeff Bradbury. Thank you so much for joining us today and making Teacher Cast your home for professional development. On today's show, we're going to be featuring a brand new application from Adobe called Aqua. It is an amazing application that allows students of all ages to color, paint by number, and a lot more that we're going to get into. Stick around for this amazing.

Interview today with our friends from Aqua from Adobe.

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Jeffrey Bradbury (00:56)

My guest today is an entrepreneur and a co-founder of a fantastic new app called Aqua by Adobe. I want to welcome today, Miss Lydia Hall. Lydia, how are you today? Welcome to Teacher Cast. I am so excited that you are here today. I have been loving Aqua, getting a chance to play with it, getting a chance to draw, been doing a lot of the color by number. But before we get too far into that, tell us a little bit about yourself and how did you come up with a great idea like Aqua for Adobe?

Lydia Hall (01:05)

Thanks for having me. I'm doing great.

Thank you. Well, it wasn't just me. ⁓ like everything, it is a team effort. Pepe Ragusa, ⁓ my co-founder and I, we'd been at Adobe for a few years and we wanted to build something that could be used by our kids. So we went and presented to the Adobe Execs through the incubator and said, No, let us build something specifically for kids, like young kids, as young as four years old. ⁓ and out of that came Aqua by Adobe.

Jeffrey Bradbury (01:50)

And for those who aren't yet familiar, describe what it is. Cause I've been playing with it for the last couple of days. And I could say it's a coloring app. I could say it's an AI ⁓ adventure. I could say it's an iPad thing. I could say just go to the website and play. But how do you explain what it is to somebody?

Lydia Hall (02:07)

Yeah, it is a creative playground. And it's a group of islands. Each of them is a different art activity or way to design and draw. So you go and you can go on aqua.adobe.com, the website, or you can get it on iPad and now Android as well. ⁓ And you go and it's completely free. And our whole goal is to inspire kids to create more and to keep drawing. Since so many kids stop drawing around the age of eight or nine, we wanted to inspire them to keep drawing by giving them the same professional tools.

that other Adobe creative professionals use, but simplified in a way that works for them. And then a lot of just fun, inspiring activities, everything from color by numbers to learning how to draw your own ⁓ coloring book and learning from professional illustrators to pass and play games. ⁓ there's really a little bit of of everything. Yeah.

Jeffrey Bradbury (02:58)

Now I want to bring up something that you just mentioned, which is it's free to use. I've been playing with this. I did not once see anything that says students log in, which is fantastic. That means there's no privacy errors. Students of all ages can take advantage of this. Why is that important?

Lydia Hall (03:16)

Yeah, well, we've gone into real classrooms and we've realized that you have one teacher, you know, sometimes two, but usually one teacher, and twenty plus kids, they don't have time to be troubleshooting login for all of those kids. So we really wanted to solve for real world scenarios and make it as easy as possible for kids to use this.

Jeffrey Bradbury (03:34)

I noticed that there are, as you mentioned, there's a number of islands. I've been getting lost in the color by number ones. what age group would you say Aqua is for?

Lydia Hall (03:45)

⁓ as young as four

or five, I mean I have a four-year-old who uses this almost every day when I'm braiding her hair in the morning. But it ages up with with users. And so we we say it's it's primarily for kids ages five to twelve, though obviously I'm I I go a little younger. And ⁓ we also see people of all ages use it. We see adults using this too. And because it's free, it's used for co cozy coloring and just fun brain breaks.

Jeffrey Bradbury (04:11)

Well, I I will mention, and I'm gonna make sure that the links are over on our website here on our podcast episode. The YouTube channel is amazing. You've got all these different videos of kids showing off how to how to draw and how to make these different things. It has certainly kept my attention. It has certainly kept my triplets' attention for the last couple of days as I've been getting getting familiar with this. It's not a single use application or platform, I should say.

You've got it on the web. You've also can print things out. You've also got it as a a a QR code. Talk to us a little bit about how all these different platforms interact and maybe where the AI does or doesn't come in.

Lydia Hall (04:49)

So the whole app was originally created for iPad and iPhone, but now it has additional uses on the web and on Android. ⁓ but the original case was kids wanted to draw either on the iPad, on the iPhone, or take art that perhaps was pencil or paper drawing and scan it in. And then from there they could add more digital watercolor, digital oil paint, and turn their art into 3D, which they could then see and place in their room using AR.

so that experience is still fully available on the iPad, on iPhone, and as of last week on Android. ⁓ the web version, you can do most of it. You can't do the AR placement yet, but that's coming soon as well.

Jeffrey Bradbury (05:31)

Talk to us a little bit about the process to make this happen. You said that you were a part of the incubator program. Share a little bit about what that is with everybody. But what was the conversation like to actually bring this to life when you ⁓ pitched it to the Adobe team?

Lydia Hall (05:47)

Yeah, like I said, Pepe, my co-founder and I were already at Adobe. ⁓ and we had worked together on some of the other education initiatives at Adobe. And so we we knew sort of ⁓ all of the amazing capabilities of products like Adobe Illustrator and Fresco, ⁓ Express, Photoshop, Premiere. ⁓ we had a ton of experience working with those.

But we also knew they weren't made for young kids. And so we wanted to bring the incredible capabilities to younger users and make them very, very easy and accessible. And that's how we pitched it. We just said, like, let's get kids excited about Adobe from a young age and make this something that they'll want to play with.

Jeffrey Bradbury (06:32)

And you decided to do that through a little bit of K pop, I understand.

Lydia Hall (06:36)

Yes, well, like I said, students, kids, they're telling us what they want. And one thing we heard many times was they would love to do more K-pop drawing. And at first we did it by having templates they could design the K-pop artists' costumes. Then we decided, you know what, we want to do a first game and and we brought in art so they can design all the food that goes into their K-pop kitchen.

Jeffrey Bradbury (07:01)

Now again, the website is aqua.adobe.com. That's aqua.adobe.com. ⁓ completely free platform. And you you just mentioned that it is now available both on iOS and Android. What does the future look like for a platform like this? I know you're excited. I'm gonna be excited to be going to ISTE in the next couple of weeks here, but obviously, as this new school year comes up, what exciting things could this platform possibly morph into? Yeah.

Lydia Hall (07:29)

Yeah.

⁓ and something else that's coming up with World Ocean Day is the ability to design your own fish and then see it swimming in a sea. ⁓ it's all about inspiring kids to create more art. So if you think about just different ways that you would want to draw and color something and then see it come alive, that's what we're we're going to build into these different platforms.

Jeffrey Bradbury (07:51)

Again, if you're looking for more information, head on over to aqua.adobe.com. Speaking today to Lydia Hall, all about being an entrepreneur and bringing these ideas to life, solving problems for the people that are around you. Lydia, I want to talk to you a little bit if we can about being an entrepreneur. So many students out there are starting this journey of I have an idea. I have a YouTube channel. I have a concept. ⁓ you know, things like ⁓ you know.

AI tools that are now readily available, sometimes even free, are helping students take that first step and really become the entrepreneur they never thought they could be. How can we as teachers support that? How can you, as Adobe, which that's a big thing, but how can companies support our students becoming entrepreneurs? And how can we as teachers nurture that love in our students?

Lydia Hall (08:46)

That's a great question. I think just asking that is a great first step. You know, how thinking how can you nurture it? And then also, you know, asking chatbots how to do it, how others have done it. ⁓ it's easier than ever to share an idea and and have it act as your co-founder and say, if you were the CMO in my startup, how would you launch this? If you were the CTO of my startup, how would you build this?

And you can ask ⁓ a chatbot how to do that and really serve as ⁓ a partner to think through things. We use it all the time as we're thinking about dish different initiatives to hypothesize what the impact will be, but you can do that from the very beginning. And it's wonderful all of the ways that you can ideate with a chatbot now.

Jeffrey Bradbury (09:35)

One of the things that I've been talking to my students, I I teach middle school is this concept of your tech stack. When you out in in the Bay Area are working on these projects, what's in your tech stack? What are you using? What's in your back pocket? What do you what is in your tech backpack? Where do you go for inspiration? And how do you get a digital CTO?

Lydia Hall (09:57)

⁓ I mean honestly, we have Adobe like that we're pulling in all of this amazing technology from. So we're leveraging Firefly to be able to turn your art into 3D. ⁓ and and that that's really made all the difference for us. We're only using first model ⁓ because we want it to we don't we want to know that it's safe for the kids who are using it. So in that sense, our tech stack is probably a little bit more ⁓

It is not as as wide of a net that than you might cast, just because we want to make sure it's really safe for all of our kid users. But when it comes to ideation, Claude, Chat GPT, Microsoft Copilot, ⁓ depending what the question is and what topic it is, like we we have all of those internally that we're using and and on a doing that on a daily basis.

Jeffrey Bradbury (10:47)

You know, there's a lot of teachers out there right now, especially as we're heading into the ISTASCD season where we're having those conversations about how do you bring in the AI? How do you teach? Should you teach? I mean, even as a middle school teacher, you can't not bring AI into the conversation. It is part of Google search, it is part of Microsoft Search, it is part of everywhere. What advice would you have as somebody who's deep in this for teaching our new generation of

Lydia Hall (11:14)

Yeah.

Jeffrey Bradbury (11:17)

I don't even want to call them coders. I don't want to call them pro but just students. How do you suggest introducing these concepts to our youngers?

Lydia Hall (11:27)

We have the mo ⁓ sort of the the motto start with your art that we stick to. ⁓ there was one point where we were debating having the ability to generate coloring pages. And we got rid of it because we didn't want kids to see that as a way to to cheat drawing on their own or to compare what they were able to draw with something that was generated. ⁓ I think as

you introduce AI in the classroom, it's the same thing where you can use AI as a thought partner, but it shouldn't be doing the initial work of doing it for you. ⁓ you should still be writing a first draft of something. You should still be creating and drawing on your own instead of having a bot do that for you. There's so much that you need to refine and and and do, but for ideation, it's it's still fun.

Jeffrey Bradbury (12:24)

I noticed that about the stuff that you guys are doing at Aqua. I'm going back to the YouTube video, specifically the one I just watched a couple seconds ago, ⁓ drawing the volcano, right? Anybody can create a cone and put some things in front of it, but the video really walked you through this process of what do you want it to look like? What are the colors? How do you do it? It's not 3D, but you know, you are working in colors and layers and stuff like that. How does all of that put together?

Lydia Hall (12:34)

Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey Bradbury (12:51)

That puts students in the driver's seat and puts their creativity first. That gives students an advantage.

Lydia Hall (12:56)

Exactly. Yeah. And

so all of the YouTube videos that we have that are in the app as well, you can go to Capture Cove and see them. They are videos created by children's book illustrators. And the point of that is to say, instead of just reading a book, why don't you create your own? And so we wanted to show kids how children's book illustrators created the artwork in their books ⁓ and really put them in the driver's seat. So again, it's it's all about inspiring you to create more and to make more art.

⁓ and yeah, it's it's a personal connection that you have with an illustrator now.

Jeffrey Bradbury (13:31)

I completely agree with that. And I and I see that in my own kids. ⁓ right now with my kids, we're we're we're building at restaurants, we're redesigning schools, we're building mascots and logos. When you tell the students what to do or how to do it, they freeze. When you say, What would you like to go? What would you like to do? and just stand back, amazing things start to happen. And then they can take their imagination and run wild with it. I mean, I could.

Circle this around and go, that's exactly what Aqua is doing. But really, that's what the whole Adobe Suite has been there for. Taking people's imaginations, no matter what their project is, video, audio, painting, whatever, and just giving them the tools. AI is just that extra layer on top of things to maybe make it go a little faster. But what do you want to build today is really the motto here for everybody.

Lydia Hall (14:23)

Exactly.

Jeffrey Bradbury (14:25)

When we're looking at everything moving forward here, and we're looking at ISTI, and we're looking at Adobe and ISTY, when we're looking at going out to these conferences, what questions should teachers be asking? I know there's a lot of teachers right now that are worried about student privacy. There's a lot of teachers right now that are looking at too much screen time, but really, we've got a wonderful summer coming up here. What questions should

Teachers and school districts be asking of their ed tech partners.

Lydia Hall (15:00)

That's a great question. It's part of the reason we've hired former teachers on our team. ⁓ because we wanted to get them in there with Aqua, inspiring what it is that we're providing to them and actually be the people who are connecting with teachers at these conferences. Since I've been on the tech side my whole career, I haven't been in the classroom. So I was like, let's bring the people in the classroom and have them ⁓ actually tell us what we should be building and how do we communicate that.

What I've seen from those conversations since I go to the conferences alongside our former teachers are a lot of conversations about how what the workforce will look like in the future and how you know students can be prepared for those changes. So we think about that a lot because we want to give them access to professional tools in a way that is accessible starting at a young age. But yeah, I think just thinking about the changing landscape and how you can.

Get kids excited about it versus fearing what's happening.

Jeffrey Bradbury (16:02)

What are you excited about this year when it comes to the ISTI conference? We had talked a little bit before we started recording that we're both going to be down there. We're going to be looking forward to being there in sunny Florida at the end of June when you are there from the entrepreneurial point of view, from the Adobe point of view, and you're just walking through those massive football fields full of vendors and and sessions and teachers. What excites you and what will you be looking for this year?

Lydia Hall (16:26)

You know, I've gone to a few educator conferences, the the state ones that are, you know, a lead up to ISTE. And the things that excite me so much is just how much kids are able to build in the classroom now, where there's so many, you know, the 3D printers, the robotics, the tech that kids have access to now, where they're able to go and and really get their hands dirty and and

pla role play in these very creative roles, that excites me so much. And I love that teachers are leaning in to bring it into the classroom.

Jeffrey Bradbury (17:00)

Talking today to Lydia Hall, all about the amazing application called Aqua from Adobe. You can find it more over at aqua.adobe.com. Lydia, as we mentioned earlier, please feel free to come back on the show. Would love to talk to you guys as we're heading into the school year. And thank you so much for being here and sharing all the great stuff. I'm looking forward to stopping by the Adobe booth and seeing you and your team at ISTE and ASCD conference this year.

Lydia Hall (17:25)

Thanks, Jeff.

Jeffrey Bradbury (17:26)

And that wraps up this episode of digital learning. Today I want to say thank you to Adobe and the Aqua team and Lydia Hall for coming on the show. If you like to have any more information about Aqua, we're gonna make sure we have all the different links in our show notes. You can find this over at teachercast.net forward slash podcast. And again, all the links that we mentioned are gonna be in the bottom of our show notes. And that wraps up this episode on behalf of Lydia and everybody here on Teacher Cast. My name is Jeff Bradbury, reminding you guys to keep up the great work in your classrooms and continue sharing your passions with your students.