July 24, 2010

By George Ma

Ray gun-wielding aliens from a distant planet unleash a barrage of blaster fire on gargantuan, varicolored jellyfish on a two-dimensional cosmic battlefield – all driven by a series of rapid mouse clicks and spacebar taps.

From his seat in front of a 19-inch computer monitor, a young boy turns, a look of glee painted clearly across his face. He motions his instructor over to witness the success of his new video game, which he had programmed just hours before.

At iD Tech Camps, kids ages 7 to 17 study gaming, film, and graphic design. Weeklong sessions at UC Irvine began June 27 and run through Aug. 20.

During the course, students use cutting edge equipment and software to create 2D and 3D video games, design websites with Flash, edit digital movies, write computer coding with C++ and Java, and turn their creative ideas into iPhone apps. The curriculum is hands-on and project-based.

“This camp is too good to be true,” said Kanishka Vatsa, 9. “I get to make my own game.”

Vatsa’s games, “Link the Hero of Dreams” and “World of Wonder,” feature a hero who battles through fiery, lava-filled landscapes while jumping over obstacles and other things that a 9-year-old would find exciting.

“We try not to walk them through every step, but to let them create things on their own,” director Greg Hulet said.

Each student works on his or her own computer and an average of six students are assigned to each instructor. iD Tech Camps also expose students to university life, as courses are held on campus and meals are served in the cafeteria. Those who are overnight campers sleep in on-campus dorms.

Most of the students hail from Orange County. Some, however, flew in from as far as Shanghai. Students Linde Wang and Yue Yue “Sapphire” Hou, both 15, came from China to attend iD Tech Camp.

“We came to learn how to use Photoshop and improve our English,” Hou said.

No matter where a student is from, attending iD Tech Camp keeps the mind mentally engaged – a concern that many parents have for their kids during the summer months.

“We’ll teach you how to make a box, then how to program that box to do other things,” Hulet said. “You can come in knowing nothing and still produce something good by the end of the week.”

Pasha Dastmalchi, 11, will be camping with iD Tech for five straight weeks.

“I’m taking different courses each week. This week, I’m doing graphic design. I’m doing Java and C++ next, then game editing, and probably iPhone app development as well,” Dastmalchi said.

iD Tech Camps is in its 12th season at UCI. The camp is part of a nationwide summer camp program that has hosted more than 100,000 students and one of many different types of summer camps offered in Orange County.

For more information visit www.internalDrive.com.

Contact the writer: gma@ocregister.com

Original article can be found here: ocregister.com

July 22, 2010

Amanda Maurer has found a way to make endangered species come alive on her computer screen.

In her second week at iD Tech Camp, a private computer technology course at California State University, Sacramento, the 13-year-old is building an interactive website about endangered marine creatures like the Maui dolphin.

July 20, 2010

By George Richards

Kid Wizards: Camp teaches children tech skills

July 18, 2010

By Sara Sonne Lenz

iD Tech Camp prepares St. Louis youths for future

July 15, 2010

CREATING WORLDS— Ken Gorman, the director of iD Tech Camps at California Lutheran University, helps Abigail Cohen, 7, of Woodland Hills create her own 2D video game during a session at iD Tech Camp earlier this month. For more information about the camp, call (888) 709-8324 or visit internalDrive.com.

July 15, 2010

By Dave Schwab

When asked in September how they spent their summer vacations, the students in a high-tech camp at UCSD will be able to answer: “Productively.”

While their peers were home playing video games, students ages 7 to 17 from La Jolla and environs and as far away as Shanghai, China, were busy creating them in iD Tech Camps.

“The idea is to plant the seed into students’ minds that things that interest them can be turned into a career,” said Sultan Rana, iD Tech Camp director from Toronto, Canada. “When they come here they realize there’s just so much they can do.”

In weeklong sessions – some day camps, in-residence – that continue through Aug. 6, beginning to advanced students were building their own 2D and 3D video games, as well as designing websites, iPhone applications, robots and 3D models and animations working in small groups in university computer labs.

ID refers to internal drive, and this is the 11th year in which UCSD has participated in the horizon-broadening youth computer camp program.

Kids are inspired by iD Tech Camp, Rana said. “You have those teachable moments when the kids ask, ‘What made you want to be what you wanted to be?’ And you tell them about the forks in the road and your approach and how you made your (career) decision and that really helps a lot of kids.”

On a tour through Warren Student Activities Center on UCSD campus last week, teens were bent over computer keyboards thoroughly engaged in video game manipulation. And the games being created and played by them were as whimsical and imaginative as they were stimulating and challenging.

Courtney, a pre-teen, was busy originating her own video game involving theft of dinosaurs.

“You can make the game in five days,” she said.

An older student, Sean, said he was getting a lot out of the program.

“I’m really learning a lot about computer programming,” he said. “I get to make my own games, make the characters. It’s all really fun.” The degree of difficulty varied though, he added.

“Making the characters really is pretty easy,” he said. “Programming them is harder.”

ID Tech Camp students can work together or independently and all skill levels are accommodated.

“We make sure, whatever level you’re at, that you’re going to come in and hit the ground running,” Rana said. “We never exceed the ratio of one (teacher) to eight (pupils).”

When students “graduate” from the camp, they also get a bonus: discounts on Adobe, Apple and Microsoft software.

For more information visit www.internaldrive.com or call (888) 709-8324.

Article on lajollalight.com

NBC 17 visited iD Tech Camps at UNC-Chapel Hill  on July 15, 2010.  Click here to see the interview with our UNC camp director.

CBS 13 visited iD Tech Camps at Sac State on July 1, 2010.  Click here to see iD Tech Camps in action!

CAMPBELL, CA – June 30, 2010 – iD Tech Camps, North America’s largest youth technology summer camp, has recently dedicated over 3,000 computers to running Stanford University’s Folding@home application.

The software – which allows all users to band together to form one large supercomputer – uses intensive computational methods to help scientists more thoroughly understand “protein folding, misfolding, and related diseases.”

Specifically, proteins are the underlying keys to biology, but before they can begin to work for our bodies, they must fold.  While the process is still very much a mystery, it is known that protein folding is linked to a number of diseases – when proteins fold incorrectly, results can include Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and many cancer-related syndromes.

In all of this, the role of the computer is to provide accurate simulations which permit scientists to better understand results – more so than if they were to gather information solely from experiments.  While the simulations don’t replace experiments, they are useful because they go above and beyond what can be seen in the lab, opening new avenues to hopefully finding cures and new preventions.

With an average of 50 computers at 60 different summer camp locations, iD Tech Camps powers these 3,000 computers each and every summer, giving kids and teens from all parts of the country the opportunity to take a course in video game design, programming, web design, graphic arts, robotics and more.

“We actually spend a lot of time planning, projecting and staffing to make sure there is never a need for our campers to share computers while working on their projects,” said Pete Ingram-Cauchi, President and CEO of iD Tech Camps.  “But, by installing the Folding@home app on our camp computers, as a company, we are very happy to share our computers with Stanford’s scientists.”

Because the Folding@home application runs in the background of the CPU, it utilizes otherwise unused CPU power, virtually working unnoticeably to computer users.

“We thought installing Folding@home would be a very useful way to take advantage of the many computers we use during the summer season,” adds Ingram-Cauchi. “While protein folding is a very complex subject to understand and unravel, every computer contributes at least a small amount towards gaining a better grasp on what it is exactly that causes such diseases and syndromes.”

As iD Tech Camps’ involvement shows, anybody can easily assist with the study of these diseases by simply running the piece of software.

More information about Folding@home can be found at http://folding.stanford.edu/.

About iD Tech Camps

iD Tech Camps is North America’s #1 provider of summer computer camps and technology camps for kids and teens with programs at 60 elite universities in the USA and Canada. Locations include Stanford, Princeton and Harvard. Established in 1999 in Silicon Valley, the company is family-owned and operated. iD Tech Camps offers technology courses including Video Game Design, 3D Game Modding, Maya®, Game Development, Programming in C++ and Java, Programming iPhone® Apps, Robotics, Web Design, Flash® Animation, Graphic Arts, Digital Photography and Video Editing. The summer camps consist of weeklong day camps and sleep away camps, and multi-week teen academies. Courses are appropriate for beginner to advanced learners. The company teaches the latest technologies from Apple®, Adobe®, Microsoft®, Autodesk®, Sony®, Valve® and more.

CAMPBELL, CA (PR Web) June 20, 2010 – For their upcoming 12^th season, iD Tech Camps, the largest youth technology summer camp in North America, has partnered with local Massachusetts filmmakers to offer an extensive course in Digital Video Editing and Special Effects.

We’ve all been guilty of playing “arm-chair film critic,” sitting at home or in the theatre wondering how we would change the movie to make it our own.  A scene transition here, special effects and a new soundtrack there–even if it’s a wildly successful top quality film, the creative bug in all of us itches to make changes. While years ago it would never have been possible, kids and teens in today’s world now have an outlet to satisfy their creative need.

The course, geared towards students with an interest in filmmaking and film production, features Freedom Park, an award-winning, independent family comedy, which ran for a combined 15 weeks in 9 different Massachusetts theatres.  The film features Boston sports greats Louis Tiant, Lyndon Byers, and Jerry Remy, and follows two buddies, who after running into debt trouble with a Vegas crime boss, return to their hometown of Freedom Park, Massachusetts to start a gambling ring on Little League baseball to pay off their debt.

Within the weeklong video editing course–which is offered at various university locations including Harvard, Bentley and Merrimack in Massachusetts–students will use actual footage from Freedom Park to learn to mark and trim clips, add music, sound effects and other special effects with the industry’s top software and tools.  Also, at the end of each camp session, finished products will be showcased on YouTube^® and each student will take home a copy of Freedom Park on DVD to see how their edited version compares to the actual film.

The film’s Producer Andrea Ajemian and Writer/Co-Director Jon Artigo formed the company Artigo/Ajemian Films, which is based in Worcester, MA.  Their teen drama Still Green was released nationally on DVD in the fall of 2009, after winning “Best Ensemble” at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival, as well as “Best Narrative Feature” at the New England Film and Video Festival.

Their latest feature film BoyBand: Breakin’ Through in 82’ was shot entirely in Massachusetts in 2008, and is currently playing in select theatres in Massachusetts.  The film is about a high school quarterback who quits his football team to turn his heavy metal band into the first ever boyband in 1982.

In addition to starring 11 Hollywood actors including Robert Hoffman (Step Up 2, She’s the Man), Ming Na (Stargate Universe, ER, The Joy Luck Club), Ryan Hansen (Party Down, Veronica Mars), Michael Copon (One Tree Hill, Scorpion King II), and Laura Breckenridge (Gossip Girl), over 30 local actors have roles in BoyBand.  Freedom Park Executive Producer Victor J. Melfa, Jr. recently Co-Produced the documentary The Lost Son of Havana, which was produced by the Farrelly Brothers and is the story of Cuban born Red Sox star, Louis “El Tiante”’ Tiant.

iD Tech Camps summer programs in Massachusetts have already started, and will be running through late August. Gaining hands-on experience with actual footage from Freedom Park, this summer season’s batch of inspired students hope to soon be the one’s in the director’s chair.

ABOUT iD TECH CAMPS

iD Tech Camps is North America’s #1 provider of summer computer camps and technology camps for kids and teens with programs at 60 elite universities in the USA and Canada. Locations include Stanford and Harvard. Established in 1999 in Silicon Valley, the company is family-owned and operated. iD Tech Camps offers technology courses including 3D Game Design, Digital Photography, 3D Game Modding, Maya®, Game Development, Programming in C++ and Java, Programming iPhone® Apps, Robotics, Web Design, Flash® Animation, Graphic Arts and Video Editing. The summer camps consist of weeklong day camps and sleep away camps, and multi-week teen academies. Courses are appropriate for beginner to advanced learners. The company teaches the latest technologies from Apple®, Adobe®, Microsoft®, Autodesk®, Sony®, Valve® and more.