You are currently browsing our archives.
July 12th, 2007 by: Pete
Congratulations UVA! You have one the guest blogger entry for this week’s theme “iD Greening.”
Also, look at the other AWESOME iD Greening Guest Blogger entries from UC Santa Cruz, MIT, Fordham, Wake Forest and University of Central Florida. These additional posts appear below Thank you all so much for being guests on the blog–but, more importantly, thanks for doing your part to reduce the footprint iD leaves each summer. I love the creativity and follow through!
-Pete
July 12th, 2007
Posted in: Summer Camps
July 12th, 2007 by: Pete
MIT Guest Blog! Week 3, July 9th!
Hello Pete and all the hundreds of staff that are working at various camps around the country this summer! We here at MIT (the best camp in the country) want to share our “iD Green” stories with you to show you how we’re saving the world, one day at a time.
Because we’re a day camp here at MIT, we have 14 staff members who must commute, day in and day out, to ensure that they can deliver the best possible experience to our wonderful campers. How do they get there? Glad you asked, because we here at MIT only have three parking passes to work with! One has to go to me, and one has to go to the Assistant Director Suzanne, so we can run to the doctor or the store when the situation arises.
So what do we do with the third parking pass? We gave it to Gerry, Keith (stolen by Ben at Merrimack for this week), Dwight, Evan, and even Alfred (missing this week). Five guys crammed into a car! Nice!
Pictured left, these staff members must get from Worcester MA (home of the great R. Little at UCLA, formerly of MIT – we hear he misses us a lot) to Cambridge MA, everyday. That’s about 45 miles a day, one way! Don’t believe me? Google maps it: maps.google.com
That means our buddies here get at up at 5:30 am to get here on time! How dedicated are they??!!
That’s great, but what about the other great staffers? Everyone else relies on the good old Boston MBTA, in one form or another, or they travel by bicycle! Yes, we have staff AND campers that bike to and from camp every day!
Staff that travel via the T arrive at Kendall Square from south, west, and north of Boston. We’d show you some pictures of them on the T, but we’re pretty sure that taking pictures on the T is illegal or something, and we need everyone to be here for the rest of the summer.
Not only do we employ the greenest of green strategies for getting to camp, but we also insist that computers are powered down at the end of the day in all of our five rooms – that’s about a 100 computers and monitors saving electricity! Not bad!
We have, to date, three cell phones and two ink cartridges for donation to recycling – we’re getting there!
Lastly, I’d like to say on the behalf of everyone MIT, we wish you a great summer and hope you’ll join us in doing a small part to fix a big problem. Remember; ditching your car can not only help the environment, but also your wallet, as the Dwight and Gerry found out during Week One! Stay green!
-Mike S., Director MIT
iD Tech Camps at MIT, we salute you! Way to go! Keep it up! Thanks for making iD Tech Camps greener. We thank you and so does the planet. Every little bit helps, and you are doing your part!
-Pete
July 12th, 2007
Posted in: Summer Camps
July 12th, 2007 by: Pete
You know you are at iD Tech Camps when kids are getting excited about “protein folding”.
As a product of the Quaker education model, the act of incorporating service into the work/school day is a very familiar habit for me. At the Quaker school I attended, there was actually a five hour block built into our work week in which students could volunteer with different organizations, depending on the student’s interest. This was not only beneficial to the institutions we supported, but also served as a valuable hands-on opportunity for students to learn outside of the classroom walls.
So, as a believer in compulsory service, I’m delighted that iD Tech Camps encourages a variety of service related projects, the only difference really being terminology, here it’s “iD Greening”. I would like to take this opportunity to describe a service project that I’m very excited to have brought to iD Fordham, hopefully setting a trend for all iD’s to follow.
The project is called “protein folding” and I’ve been at it for about two years. On a regular schedule, my computer downloads a set of data, in my computers idle time (when a screen saver normally runs) my computer analyses that data and then reports it findings. All this information is passed to and from and organization called “Rosetta@Home” (http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/).
The data it’s analyzing are different amino acid sequences, which are the building blocks of the proteins that carry out virtually all functions of the human body. The amount of computing power which would be required to definitively map all these sequences is virtually infinite; hence, software such as BOINC (http://boinc.berkeley.edu/) allow people to donate their computers idle time to assist in this process.
By now, you are probably wondering what the significance of this data is; it is very significant. By defining potential 3-dimensional protein shapes we can assist in finding cures and treatments for some of the most threatening diseases in our world today. The organizations collaborating with this project are using this data to find potential cures and treatments for:
HIV
Malaria
Cancer
Alzheimer’s
(further research info at http://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/rah_medical_relevance.php)
Members participating in Rosetta@Home are able to track their progress through credits; every set of data the computer crunches awards them credits. Some members even like to get competitive about who can earn the most credits in a period of time. There are two ways to increase the rate at which you earn credit:
1: over clocking your computers processor and/or using a very high end machine
2: combining the processing power of multiple users, all benefiting a single member account
For some time now, I’ve been running an account between my laptop and desktop yet I’ve always wanted an opportunity to deploy BOINC/Rosetta@Home on a much larger scale and harness the computing power of an entire office or even company. Since I started my account two years ago I’ve gained 3500 credits. The account I’ve started at iD Fordham earlier this week, FoldingWithiD, is installed on about 30 machines and will far surpass the personal credits I’ve gained, probably by the end of tomorrow.
The fun part about this project is that BOINC/Rosetta@Home has really cool visualizations; you can actually watch the protein shapes being folded. My overnight students and I had a BOINC/Rosetta@Home install-fest and then enjoyed trancing-out to the trippy visualizations of protein folding on 30 different monitors at once. Prizes were awarded to the students who could install BOINC/Rosetta@Home the fastest. My day students are eager to learn about the cool visualizations that replaced their default screensavers.
I hope that other campus’s follow our lead! We are all able to operate under the same account and the combine computing power of all of iD’s computers would be a dominating force within the folding community. It is also a very cool collaboration for iD as it allows all of iD’s locations to work together on a singular project spanning distance, time zones and potentially every single student’s computer!
To get involved:
1: Install BOINC http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
2: Attach BOINC to the Rosetta@Home project: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/
(optionally)
3: If you are an iD employee, e-mail FoldingWithiD@gmail.com for account info so that we can all fold for the same account and collectively earn credit for iD
iD Tech Camps at Fordham, we salute you! Way to go! Keep it up! Thanks for making iD Tech Camps greener. We thank you and so does the planet. Every little bit helps, and you are doing your part!
-Pete
July 12th, 2007
Posted in: Summer Camps
July 12th, 2007 by: Pete
At iD Tech Camps UCF, we take various measures to stay green. Whenever we leave our labs, whether it be for lunch or an activity, we power down all the computers, including the monitors and speakers. Also, we always turn off the lights.
We’ve minimized the number of garbage bags we use to one a week for all the overnight campers’ trash. Although we’re in Florida (it’s hot and humid), we try to respect the amount of energy the dorm room Air Conditioners use by not setting them on the High settings. Finally, we have been successfully recycling our, as well as the campers’ families, old ink cartridges and cell phones.
Next, we reuse, as much as possible, all our drinking cups.
Our commuter staff has taken to walking to work instead of driving, despite the heat
Be Green!
Low-power-consumption game: Checkmate!
iD Tech at UCF, we salute you! Way to go! Keep it up! Thanks for making iD Tech Camps greener. We thank you and so does the planet. Every little bit helps, and you are doing your part!
-Pete
July 12th, 2007
Posted in: Summer Camps
July 12th, 2007 by: Pete
The staff and campers at iD Tech Wake Forest have embraced iD’s green philosophy. She also explains the importance of conserving energy by habitually turning off computers, monitors, printers and lights that are not in use. We have found that campers are committed to protecting the environment in all areas of their life.
In our staff’s opening greeting of new students on Sunday and Monday, Lead Instructor Kim S. routinely discusses the importance of recycling paper, aluminum and plastic, ink cartridges and cell phones.
Camper Zach C. sports a t-shirt sold by his class that supports the purchase of land to be preserved in the Rain Forest.
This type of environmental commitment is re-enforced by the abundance of recycling signs in the lab, and the easy access to recycling bins in the dorm and lab. 
Week 4 Day camper Eli C., who brings his lunch daily, crushes his soda can and discards it in the recycling bins near the lab putting into practice the three Rs: reduce, reuse, recycle!
iD staff members walk or carpool for personal errands off campus.
Director Kathy rides her bike around campus to handle iD Tech business.
We use traditional kitchen ware & cutlery in our dorm kitchen that can be washed and reused.
iD staffers carry reusable coffee mugs and green iD water bottles to reduce waste.
iD staff members hang their laundry to dry instead of using the dryers.
iD Tech Camps at Wake Forest, we salute you! Way to go! Keep it up! Thanks for making iD Tech Camps greener. We thank you and so does the planet. Every little bit helps, and you are doing your part!
-Pete
July 12th, 2007
Posted in: Summer Camps
July 12th, 2007 by: Pete
UCSC the Greenest of them all
Lab:
Motion Sensing Lights minimizes on time.
Nathan Green aka Acquired has written a script that controls all start up and shutdown of computers in the lab. This minimizes power draw.
Dorm:
All rooms have compact fluorescent bulbs (Maximum light and minimum energy use.)
All instructors have switched to Biodegradable Dr. Bronner’s Pure Castile Soap.
Showers are once daily. Toilets are low volume flush toilets.
Additive and dye free laundry detergent has been provided for staff. Staff combines laundry to minimize loads and energy usage. We used an empty dorm room to air dry our clothes.
Cafeteria:
Vegetarian and Vegan options are encouraged.
“Only take what you are going to eat” rule strictly enforced and rewarded.
“Salad and Vegetable” plates earned for tickets.
Recycling:
We separate and recycle cans, glass and plastic. Paper is sorted into mixed, color and white. Everything is then placed in its proper recycling bin.
Only 1-2.5 gallon jugs of water are used. After initial use they are refilled with filled water found on campus.
No disposable plates or plastic ware is used.
Others:
All overnight snacks are organic and purchased in bulk.
Director Skip Intro drives a 1985 Mercedes 300 SD powered by 100% recycled vegetable oil.
Laser aka Diane Ko drives a Hyundai Accent powered completely by love and appreciation.
We push Acquired aka Nathan Green’s 1992 Ford Explorer around = total manpower.
All Camp staff have declared a “Steel Strike” and will not shave this summer.
Activities:
Our lush and large campus assures that any CO2 we produce is turned into chlorophyll.
Lab to dorm walk is 1 mile. Overnight campers get a minimum of 3 miles walking per day! Day campers get 1.5miles not including afternoon outdoor activities.
Afternoon nature hikes are an option to campers. They are environmentally and historically informative.
This document is 90% true and recycled information.
iD Tech Camps at UCSC, we salute you! Way to go! Keep it up! (Even if it is only 90% true). Thanks for making iD Tech Camps greener. We thank you and so does the planet. Every little bit helps, and you are doing your part!
-Pete
July 12th, 2007
Posted in: Summer Camps
July 10th, 2007 by: Ryan
No s’mores at this summer camp-it’s high tech
By Cyrus Hedayati
Computer screens at Stanford University display the latest in high-tech software, from 3D modeling and animation to web design and video game development. Students make their own movies, websites, comic books and even robots.
But these students aren’t old enough to be in college, and most of them are too young to obtain a driver’s license. They’re attending iD Tech Camp, a nationwide summer program that teaches children ages 7 to 17 how to use industry-level software.
This camp doesn’t stick young people in front of a computer screen all day. They learn how to use the programs–from Flash Animation to Final Cut Pro–in small groups of five or six, led by a camp counselor. In between, they eat meals together in the cafeteria and play team-building activities and games, just like any other summer camp.
“It gets them to think about how much time it takes to do animation. They learn that it takes a team to get it done. It’s not just, ‘Hey, I can do this all by myself,’ ” said counselor Bryan Woods–or as he’s known to his group of kids, “Maverick.”
Woods is one of the few counselors who are also alumni of the camp, entering when he was 17. Too old to continue the program, he decided to continue learning by teaching.
“I’ve had a lot of kids who are just so excited to be learning this stuff,” said Woods, a counselor for the special effects program. “It teaches them to think outside the box. When you get into high school, you start to lose that creative drive.”
One of Woods’ students this week, Savan Patel, began his education in animation with a video editing class at Redwood Middle School. Now going into his sophomore year at Saratoga High School, Savan is working on a short animation from footage he shot himself.
“The whole movie is that I walk down the street, and I see a car, and I don’t like that it’s there, so I erase it,” he said, pointing to his super-imposed hand using an eraser to wipe the vehicle from the screen. “Then [the car owner] wonders where his car is.”
Savan is interested in a potential career in computer graphics, though he said he might be a little too young to think that far ahead.
“It’s so fun to see the final product and say, ‘Oh, I did that,’ ” he said. “Any ad that anybody sees [these days] has animation.”
Based in Campbell, iD Tech Camps was founded by two Los Gatos High School graduates–Pete and Alexa Ingram-Cauchi–who envisioned a new kind of summer camp at prestigious universities across the country. But if most summer camps teach young people to brave the great outdoors, tech camps teach them to brave the ever-changing high-tech marketplace.
“We live in such a media-packed culture. We take that, break it down in sections and let the kids hold onto it,” said Tricia George (aka “Sunshine”), who teaches Fusion, a drag-and-drop game-making program. “A lot of these things, because we’re bombarded with them every day, they seem untouchable.”
Kevin Pan, going into eighth grade at Redwood, is using Fusion to make a game about a space marine trying to destroy his enemy’s nuclear power supply. He’s not sure what to call it, though he’s considering “Bob Super Soldier.”
“They’re like sponges; they soak up so much,” said George.
At the rate many of her campers are progressing, they could move on to advanced game development within a year, said George. Learning at iD Tech Camps is modular-based, so each camper uses programs according to their level of experience and advances at their own pace.
“It’s really amazing that kids this age are using 3ds Max, because it’s really industry-standard software,” said John Conelea (aka “Yani”), who teaches the 3D character-modeling program.
Several of Conelea’s students are designing 3D versions of Kirby, the popular pink Nintendo character, whose pictures are taped above the students’ computer screens.
“I asked [the students], ‘What’s on your mind?’ And they said Kirby, so I had them download some reference images,” said Conelea.
Three of Conelea’s students, Nate Morrison, Vincent Wu and Kevin Benzing, are also going into their sophomore years at Saratoga, and said the camp is way easier than trying to learn the software on their own.
“It’s fun making 2D things into 3D things,” said Kevin, who is modeling a 3D robot complete with tank treads, a jetpack, a spiked mace and a dinosaur head. He’s had fun playing around with 3ds Max, and even found a glitch in the program that allows him to give his robot spikes that never end.
“[Yani] taught me how to chamfer something,” said Kevin, referring to the process of rounding off the edges of a 3D image. “I said, ‘What happens if I do it again, and again, and again?’ ”
Though most of the youngsters are too young to know if they want to pursue high-tech careers, some, such as Savan, said they want to work with computers. While he is leaning more toward designing logos, he is also impressed by the animators behind this summer’s big budget Hollywood movies.
“I saw the new movies, Pirates of the Caribbean and Transformers, and it’s just amazing what animation can do these days,” he said.
Each subject is taught in a weeklong course, and many still have availability for this summer.
For more information, visit internaldrive.com.
July 10th, 2007
Posted in: iD In The News, Santa Clara University, Stanford University
July 10th, 2007 by: Ryan
Brainpower in summer
By Jeff Rubenstein
The July sun shines brightly outside, but the students don’t notice. They remain nearly motionless inside a classroom at UCF, staring at computer monitors.
A deadline is on its way, and another full day of programming awaits. They won’t be graded, though. This isn’t a course for computer-science majors. In fact, college is far off in the distance for most of these kids.
This is iD Tech Camp, a summer camp for aspiring video-game creators, mostly boys, ages 7 to 17.
As the name implies, “Tech Camp” isn’t about sports, campfires or singalongs.
Celebration High School student Dan Lipman doesn’t miss them. “In most camps you do physical activities” he says. “And I’m not very good at those.”
Many other kids apparently feel the same way. While this is the first summer that iD Tech Camp has set up shop in Central Florida, it’s not the only one of its kind. The Orlando Science Center, working with Full Sail Real World Education, held a two-week Game Development Summer Camp in June.
Learning to make video games might not be a traditional camp activity, but it isn’t brand-new either. This is California-based iD Tech Camp’s ninth season of operation.
The company — whose Web site says it seeks “to ignite the internalDrive in each student” — holds a series of weeklong sessions at 50 colleges in 22 states. The six sessions at the University of Central Florida continue through July 27, and iD Tech is in discussions with UCF about expanding the program next year.
In a modified conference room at UCF’s Fairwinds Alumni Center, iD Tech campers don’t raise their hands with questions; they place neon-green cups atop their flat-screen monitors.
Even though the subject matter is “gaming,” there is still plenty of work involved.
Getting up to speed
Campers typically spend the first day of a five-day session learning how to use software such as Beyond Virtual or Torque Game Builder. From there, it’s up to the individual how to proceed toward the goal of making a simple, playable game. Minimum standards are posted, which typically involve designing and constructing the layout of at least one virtual “level,” or playing field.
Dan is nearing completion on a map he’s building for the military-themed PC game Battlefield 2. “I’m working really hard,” he says, “but it’s been really fun.” Dan says he doesn’t mind spending the summer months in a learning environment because it’s “more free-rein.”
Dan’s level is designed to pit virtual Allied and Chinese military forces in a “capture the flag” contest, in which each group attempts to return an icon to its own base first.
During the course of a week, he created the level’s infrastructure and topography, including a valley that he thinks will be a crucial “showdown point.” When completed, he’ll be able to take on a live opponent on the map and see whether his project is fair and fun to play.
Despite the difficulty of the camp projects, the 20 kids — including only two girls — seem to be enjoying themselves.
July 10th, 2007
Posted in: iD In The News, Rollins College, University of Miami
July 5th, 2007 by: Pete
Hello iD Nation!
First of all, Happy 4th of July!
We looked at the summer computer camp photos today and selected some great ones. This week’s theme was, naturally, the 4th of July. There was a lot of 4th of July spirit across the country and it was fun to see the creativity. For all the camps that participated in making camp a little something extra special this week–thank you.
The winning computer camp Photo-of-the-week:
University of Miami. Congratulations!! Students and Staff at the University of Miami will have extra funds to spend at camp today and tomorrow! Congratulations, guys!
There are a lot of great pictures posted at EVERY iD Location. How do you view them all?
1) Students/Staff: Go to the iD Student Corner.
2) Parents: Log into “My Camp Account” .
Winner, Photo-of-the-Week, University of Miami
Please note the University of Miami photo was removed because it inadvertently offended some people.
Runners Up:
Stanford University, Fireworks
Northwestern University, Reenactment
University of Houston, Watermelon
UNC Chapel Hill, Lab Decorations
MIT, Fancy Photoshop
Colorado College, Patriotic Robot
Emory University, Patriotic Party
Have a fantastic week, everyone!
-Pete
July 5th, 2007
Posted in: Summer Camps
