The Santa Cruz Sentinel – July 4,…
As appeared in Orange County Parenting…The Chapel Hill Herald – July 7, 2008
Camp for Computer-Age Children
By Rob Ikoku
CHAPEL HILL-For many children, summer camp offers the opportunity to get away from mom and dad, make new friends and have all kinds of fun on the lake. But for some children, camp involves more conditioning. Air conditioning, that is.
Campers at iD Tech Camp at UNC take the summer camp idea and turn it inside-out. Designed to cater to the computer crowd, the camp, based in UNC’s Spencer dorm, offers classes ranging from programming to video game modification. Open to kids as young as 7, the weekly camp caters to those who have frown up surrounded by an electronic culture, and who represent the future of a booming industry, explained cam director Kathy Trimble.
“For this age group, it’s a very natural thing,” she said. “Each child takes their own track and makes their own custom-designed project.”
As she spoke, fingers clicked away at keyboards as games of all types were being constructed, tested and tweaked. Mason Garard, 12, of Noblesville, Ind., took time away to describe his 12-level creation.
“I guess it’s an adventure game,” he said. “The spider’s name is Cirrus and he’s fighting Nimbus, the demon. I’m going to sell the idea to Nintendo.”
While it might be a few more years before the designers behind titles such as blockbusters Halo and Grand Theft Auto take notice, it’s not as far-fetched as it might seem, Trimble said. “We have iD Tech campers who have published games.”
For parents who might second guess sending their children to a computer camp, Trimble was reassuring, insisting that the game-based camp offered an opportunity to be creative rather than just an escape.
“It’s logic based,” she said, referring to the game design software, before adding that every game “has to be carefully designed and built.”
As for video games in general, the freedom involved with constructing is the real draw, but that freedom has limits, said Andy Arminio, a camp counselor from Flagstaff, Ariz. He spoke at length concerning violence in video games and the balance between allowing campers to build them as they wish and ensuring they keep violence to a minimum.
“It does look a lot more realistic,” he said, referring to the violence in some of the advanced campers’ creations. “But in the end, you’re responsible for what you do. It’s always a trade-off between freedom of expression and the public good.”
In the end, the camp gives all comers the opportunity to work with computers and do what they love, Trimble said. “It gives the campers the change to live a college life and also experience being independent.”
This article first appeared in the July 7th edition of the Chapel Hill Herald.
August 21st, 2008
Posted in: iD In The News
