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June 30th, 2006 by: Ryan
Any s’mores at this camp will have to be toasted digitally
By Hilary Parker
It’s like something out of a movie over on the Princeton University campus, where a kickball game run amok is leading to mind travel and other crazy shenanigans.
Wait.
It is a movie – created by the students participating in the Digital Video Production course, one of the many camps offered at Princeton this summer at iD Tech Camps.
“The border between what’s real and what’s not gets sort of skewed,” said Noah Bogdonoff, the 14-year-old camper from New London, Conn., who plays the mind-traveling kickballer. Using Canon GL2 digital camcorders, the middle and high-school students in the digital video course recorded footage based on scripts they wrote and then headed back to the lab to doctor the images and add special effects.
While the video creators started with real footage of real people, many of the campers in the other iD Tech Camps such as the new 3D Character Modeling course and Video Game Creation, are creating worlds with no basis in reality.
“You get to choose what characters you want to put in and your own theme,” said 9-year-old Madison Kirton of Newtown, Pa., as she ably threw snowballs at the “bad guys” on top of an igloo. While her stellar aim (she hit them every time) will soon allow her to advance in the game, she’ll have to wait a little bit; she has to create the next level first.
The students aren’t the only participants at iD Tech camps experiencing a new reality; three of the instructors are participants in the American Institute for Foreign Study’s Camp America, an international program that brings people to the U.S. to work at a variety of summer camps throughout the country.
One Camp America participant, Zara Phang of Malaysia, England and Scotland, is well versed in computer science, having already completed three years of study on the subject at the University of Edinburgh. While she is working with computers at iD Tech camps this summer, the experience is entirely different from her time at university, she said, due to the interaction with the students.
“They have so much personality,” she said. “They’re very enthusiastic. When people start getting older, they hold back a little more.”
While computers are iD Tech Camps’ specialty, said director of the Princeton camps Jonathan Olshefski, the campers also participate in those ever-popular summer camp games like capture the flag and laser tag. A Temple University graduate with a degree in film and media arts and English literature, Mr. Olshefski is now in his second summer with iD Tech Camps, having served as assistant director of the Princeton program last year.
Beyond all the high-tech knowledge and gaming, he said, the campers get “basic human contact – it’s an opportunity for kids to get to know each other and learn how to interact.”
Apparently, some of the campers have picked up on this as well. Dalton Ryan, a 15-year-old from Long Island, N.Y., said iD Tech Camps is “awesome.” In explaining why he likes the camp, he mentioned the skills the gamers learn in order to create multi-leveled games they can play with their friends. And then, he continued talking about other favorite experiences during his week as an overnight camper, the non-technological ones.
“We hung out, we talk,” he said.
June 30th, 2006
Posted in: Adelphi University, iD In The News, Princeton University, Seton Hall University
June 28th, 2006 by: Ryan
Youths focus on technology during programs at UCSD
By Meredith Wade
DEL MAR – Some Del Mar and Carmel Valley kids are learning skills at the iD Tech Camps that their parents hope will be with them for the rest of their lives. The campers are using the latest technology to program robots, design video games and decide on future professional goals.
Kevin Yanofsky, 13, is returning to the camp for a second year.
“I am a computer person, so for me learning programming language and to write simple programs is really fun,” he said.
The iD Tech Camps will hold weeklong sessions during their seventh season at the University of California San Diego from July 2 through Aug. 11. Participants ages 7 to 17 enroll in either day or overnight camps. Students choose from courses including: adventures in gaming and Photoshop, Web design and Flash animation, digital video production, programming and robotics, video game creation and 3-D game design.
Kevin’s mother, Sherry Kempin, believes the iD camps are different from other summer programs.
“He is having fun but he is learning a lot at the same time. Other computer camps are mostly just the kids playing games all day. This isn’t the case with this one,” she said.
Barbara Edwards had similar reasons for enrolling her son Ben in the camp. “This is a wonderful way for him to learn more advanced skills in the area of technology,” she said. “He gets some of that in school, but it is very basic. This allows him to pursue his interests farther.”
Ben, 12, is obsessed with monkeys. Last year he created an animated Web site featuring anything and everything related to the primate family.
“It is so cool that you can customize your projects to be whatever you want, as long as it is appropriate,” he said. “We use new technology and new products, so it is very interesting.”
Every student works on his own computer and leaves camp with a completed technology project. The themes of the students’ projects vary widely.
“Everyone has really different ideas during the classes,” Kevin said. “You would think that people taking similar classes might think the same way, but it is really interesting how people’s projects and attributes and ideas are so different from each other.”
Kevin occupies most of his free time playing video games, so learning to design them seems like a potential career choice. He is enrolled in a class that will teach him to come up with his own video game and edit an existing game based on his own ideas.
“I think I want to do something in computers, so I think that all of this will help me choose what I want to do in the future,” he said.
A staff of industry professionals, upper-level college students and recent graduates with degrees in technology-related fields coach the campers through the classes. Organizers of iD Tech Camps hope the crash courses will result in computer skills for campers and a working knowledge of the industry.
The iD Tech Camps are operated at 40 colleges around the world, including Stanford, Princeton and Northwestern universities, University of California Los Angeles and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. For more information go to http://california.internaldrive.com/ucsd or call (888) 709-TECH.
June 28th, 2006
Posted in: iD In The News, UC San Diego
June 12th, 2006 by: Ryan
Camps where you can see, learn and do
By Doug Margeson
The next time your progeny claims to be bored, simply place the following list within their field of vision and let the facts speak for themselves.
Kids can learn all kinds of useful things this summer and have a heckuva lot of fun doing it. If your kids have a hankering for it, there’s probably a summer camp for it. If they can’t find something on this list, suggest they mow the lawn. Then, as if by magic, scores of fascinating summer camp opportunities will suddenly appear before their eyes. Read on.
iD Tech Camps. Located at 40 universities nationwide, including the University of Washington. Day and overnight computer camps. Day camp runs 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. Friday. Weeklong sessions run from June to August; camps vary by location. Coed. Ages 7 to 17. Call 888-709-8324 or go to http://www.InternalDrive.com.
Weeklong day and overnight summer-technology programs. Create digital movies, two dimensional and three-dimensional video games, 3D models, Web sites, robots and more.
June 12th, 2006
Posted in: iD In The News, University of Washington
