Kevin's Blog

  A Plain English Guide to the K-12 Onboarding Wizard So your school wants to use Adobe Express?. Great choice. It's a genuinely powerful creative tool for students and teachers alike — and here's the bit that often surprises people: it's completely free for K-12 schools . No budget codes, no procurement headaches, no per-seat licence negotiations. Adobe Express for K-12 is free and unlimited. But — and this is the bit that catches schools out — "free" doesn't mean "just download it and go." You still need to set things up properly so that students log in safely, accounts are managed centrally, and your school stays in control of who has access to what. That's where the K-12 Onboarding Wizard comes in. Before You Start — What Do You Actually Need? This is important, so read it before you click anything. The wizard requires the IT Admin to have either a Microsoft 365 Global Admin account or a Google Workspace for Education Super Admin account...

If you've been using Windows 11 over the past couple of years, you'll have noticed one thing more than anything else: Copilot, Copilot, everywhere. Buttons in Notepad. Buttons in the Snipping Tool. Suggestions in Photos. A sidebar that nobody asked for. It felt less like a feature and more like an aggressive sales pitch every time you opened a basic app. Well, Microsoft has finally blinked. What's actually happening? Microsoft's President of Windows and Devices, Pavan Davuluri, published a blog post committing to reduce Copilot AI integrations in some apps, starting with Photos, Widgets, Notepad, and the Snipping Tool.  The language used was telling — Microsoft wants to be more "intentional" about where AI appears, focusing on experiences that are "genuinely useful." In Notepad, the Copilot icon has been replaced by a "Writing tools" menu with options to rewrite, summarize and adjust tone or length. Settings labels are also being rename...

Data Centre's built to be resilant against cyber attacks but not cruise missiles OK, let's be honest. When most of us think about a conflict in the Middle East, we think oil prices, geopolitics, news headlines. We don't immediately think "is my Microsoft 365 subscription going to cost more?" or "will my AWS server go offline?" But here in April 2026, that's exactly the conversation happening inside the boardrooms of the biggest tech companies on the planet — and it should be on your radar too. Let me break down what's actually happening, and why it matters even if you're running a small business in Norfolk. The Targets List Nobody Expected This is the bit that genuinely stopped me in my tracks. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) issued a formal threat naming 18 tech companies as targets — including Apple, Google, Meta, and Microsoft — in retaliation for what it describes as their role in enabling US and Israeli milita...

Deploying Adobe Express for Education – new-clickz new-clickz plain-English tech for people who know enough to be dangerous Adobe · Education · Deployment Getting Adobe Express into Schools — The Right Way It's free, it's powerful, and Adobe have made it surprisingly straightforward to deploy at scale. But there are a few traps waiting for the unwary. Here's what you actually need to know. Kev Sait  ·  April 2026  ·  6 min read If you work in or around school IT, you've probably been hearing a lot about Adobe Express for Education lately. It's Adobe's web-based creative tool — think design, video, and image editing in a browser — and for K-12 schools it's completely free. That's not a trial, not a limited tier. Free and unlimited. Adobe have been rolling out some significant updates to their K-12 offering in 2026, including a new add-on collection that dropped in early April. So if your school has been sitting...

If you manage Adobe Express in a UK school, here's a scenario that might sound familiar. A teacher logs in, can't find the Classrooms tab, and reports that something feels "off" about their account. A quick check reveals they've been provisioned as a student. Frustrating — but fixable. Here's what to look for. The Symptom The teacher either can't see the Classrooms tab in Adobe Express at all, or their account is behaving like a student account — limited controls, no ability to create assignments, and no visibility of student work. The Classrooms feature is only available to users identified as educators, so if the system thinks your teacher is a pupil, they simply won't see it. The Most Likely Cause: Directory Sync If your school uses Google Workspace Directory Sync or Azure AD / Entra ID (SCIM) to provision Adobe accounts, the most common culprit is the teacher being pulled from the wrong group or OU — one that Adobe is treating as a stude...

 If you’re working in a school and haven’t looked at Adobe Express for Education recently, now’s a good time. The platform has moved well beyond being a simple design tool. There’s now a fully fledged Classrooms feature built in, and if your school is set up properly, it can make life genuinely easier for teachers — without creating more work for IT. Let’s walk through what it is, how to get it set up, and — importantly — how to make sure your student data flows into it automatically rather than someone having to type everything in by hand. What Is Adobe Classrooms? Adobe Classrooms is a digital space teachers create inside Adobe Express to organise students and assignments. It brings everything together in one secure environment where teachers can manage work, provide feedback, and track progress in real time. The key thing for teachers is that you can monitor student progress in real time and leave comments on student work as soon as a student starts an assignment — not j...

...  But They Don't Tell the Whole Story Either There's a lot of noise around Microsoft 365 Copilot right now. Microsoft's marketing machine is in full swing, and the headlines look impressive. But if you peel back the numbers, the reality is a bit more nuanced — and frankly, more interesting. The headline figures Microsoft 365 now has more than 450 million commercial seats worldwide, yet Microsoft 365 Copilot has reached roughly 15 million paid seats — that's around 3.3% conversion. Seventy percent of Fortune 500 companies have adopted Microsoft 365 Copilot, but for most, adoption means pilots and phased rollouts rather than enterprise-wide deployment.  The market signal is clear: Copilot adoption is broad but shallow. Enterprises across industries are testing the waters, but few have fully committed. The biggest blocker isn't cost or capability — it's governance. Since Copilot can access data from across the M365 tenant — SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, and E...

  Adobe Express Add-ons for K-12 — The Rollout Has Moved to 6th April Kevin Sait  ·  March 2026  ·  Adobe Technical Evangelist If you have been keeping an eye on communications from Adobe about the K-12 add-on collection for Adobe Express, you will have seen that the original rollout date was 23rd March 2026. That date has now been pushed back. Adobe has confirmed the new date is  6th April 2026 . What is actually changing on 6th April? From 6th April, the Adobe Express K-12 add-on collection will be enabled by default for all users in existing K-12 organisations. This is a curated set of add-ons designed specifically for K-12 students and educators, and includes integrations such as OneDrive, Google Drive, Quick QR Code, Google Photos, Dropbox, SharePoint, and a range of creative tools including a Contrast Checker, Creative Coding tools, and an Equation Generator. Students will only see the K-12 curated collection. Educators will see the full collection in...

With the recent launch of the Macbook Neo, I was on the verge of getting my first Apple device, just to experience the world of Mac OS. Why you may ask?, well as I have written about before Windows 11 is going through a bad patch. January & February were not good for Windows Updates. It was hit and miss for Windows users, you may have lost your wi-fi, had issues with Outlook Classic or simply lost access to your device. Windows 11 has continued to be the vehicle to continue to ply CoP ilot to every user on the planet. Microsoft has been struggling with CoPilot revenues (along with other major AI players) and at the end of the day we just want Windows 11 finished with a half decent user experience. So really that is why MacBook Neo really appealed to me, however since having a look at the Neo in my local store, Windows OEM's have reacted it seems to Apple's full frontal attack on the market, and I thought I would let you know about it. The disrupter £599 for a MacBook Pro  O...

  Adobe Express on Chromebooks — Are Your Students Actually Logging In Properly? If your school has Chromebooks and you are using Adobe Express, there is a question worth asking your IT admin this week. Are your students logging in seamlessly, or are they hitting a wall asking for an email verification code they can never actually receive? I have been speaking with a number of schools recently and this comes up a lot. Teachers set up their Adobe Classrooms, share the class code with students, and then nothing works quite right. Students can't join, or they get stuck in an email verification loop, or everyone ends up sharing one account just to get anything done. If this sounds familiar, the issue is almost certainly how Adobe Express has been deployed, not anything the teacher has done wrong. The root cause When Adobe Express doesn't recognise a student as a properly provisioned user, it falls back to email verification to confirm who they are. For primary school students, ...

 If you are an IT admin in a school, college, or business that uses Adobe Express, there is a date you need to have in your diary right now. On 23rd March 2026, Adobe is enabling the K-12 Add-on Collection for Adobe Express, which means a whole set of third-party add-ins are going to become available to your users automatically. Let's take a look at what that means in practice, and crucially, what you can do if you don't want all of them showing up in your environment. So What Are Adobe Express Add-ins? Add-ins in Adobe Express are essentially integrations with third-party services that sit right inside the Express editor. Think of them a bit like browser extensions, but baked into your creative workflow. Things like QR code generators, stock image libraries, video tools, background removers from third-party providers, and productivity connectors. For a lot of users these are genuinely useful. A teacher building a classroom poster can pull in resources from connected servic...