St. Edward’s University

As appeared in The Daily Texan – iD summer tech camp includes design classes

July 24, 2008

iD summer tech camp includes design classes

Participants work for one week to finish video game projects

By Ines Min

On a UT blackboard Wednesday, 15-year-old Tyler Bautista worked out the equation for an algorithm to make his video game function properly.

Bautista came to the solution a few minutes later using the Pythagorean theorem and guidance from an instructor. The algorithm would keep the video game’s enemy from fruitlessly entering a tower’s line of defense and dying senselessly, Bautista explained.

For the past eight years, internalDrive, a family-founded technology education organization, has put on a summer technology camp for kids ages 7 to 17 on the UT campus. The camp is a technology-driven educational program consisting of week-long specialized courses in robotics and video game and Web design.

Every summer, the kids and staff members come from countries around the world, including Canada, Egypt, Norway and France, to participate, said Jennifer Suarez, director of the Austin program and first-grade teacher who has worked at the camp for two summers.

Up to 70 kids enroll each week and are allowed to take as many of the courses as they want. A week-long overnight course costs about $1,200, and a week-long day course is about $750.

The most popular courses at UT are 3-D game design and video game creation, Suarez said.

Kids in the 3-D design class build video games from scratch using a special design program. The robotics class started with a basic square bot and focused on making their robots able to move before making more sophisticated robots that can fight with each other using weapons.

“I was blown away by the kids here,” Suarez said. “They are all brilliant.”

Freda Li, a 14-year-old from Houston who took the Web design course, spent the week creating a Web site of her favorite bands and worked Wednesday to create an animated background for her site using Adobe Photoshop.

“I think it’s really fun. I like working with computers and we get lots of time to hang out,” said Li, who is one of three girls enrolled in the camp.

“We’ve found that the girls in the camp are really creative,” Suarez said, adding that the program is trying to recruit more girls. “They create the most visually appealing games.”

Peter Golightly, a 15-year-old who recently moved to Austin and partook in the program’s camp at Stanford University, based his work on a popular online game. Using a computer program, a designer creates a game by first starting with a model, then creating a skeleton, adding texture and eventually a script, Golightly said.

“It’s like a jigsaw, but the pieces can be molded to any shape you want,” he said.

Staff member Eric Cooper, 22, said the game can become as complex as the designer wants and depends on the time and effort put forth. Kids are given the entire week to finish a game, working for approximately six hours a day on the computer. Outdoor activities are integrated into the schedule.

Walker Summers, 13, spent his week in the game programming course. His game combined elements from the video game World of Warcraft III and the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

“It’s a lot of fun here,” Summers said. “[The programs] are easy to work with, and it’s fun to make maps.”

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