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
April 18th, 2007 by: Ryan
Creating tech heads
By Susan Hong
Most parents discourage their kids from spending too much time playing games on the computer. But 13-year-old Jaxon Welsh, a student at Jane Lathrop Stanford Middle School, has found a way to turn his passion for video games into academic credit. He created a video-game calculator to do his algebra assignment.
“It’s just fun to program,” Welsh said. “You can make it whatever you like. If you don’t like something you can change it.”
His algebra teacher, James Sperry, recently gave his class an assignment to calculate the minutes in which “Rotten Robby,” a video character who stands at the back of lunch line, would get served if Robby cut “x” number of students.
“It’s different,” Sperry said of a student bringing in an animation of the assignment. “But the kids never surprise me with their creativity. They always come up with interesting things.”
More and more students are using new technology such as movies, animations, blogs and video games as means to accomplish their homework.
JLS Middle School teacher Maureen Willis supervises the 2-year-old afterschool “Girl Tech” club, where kids learn to exercise their creativity using software.
Seventh-grader Paige Morkner created a 2-minute song on GarageBand at Girl Tech.
“You can take clips from other songs and mix them to create a new one,” she said with a smile. “Or you can record stuff onto it and mix your own songs.”
Another student in Girl Tech animated a poem.
“It was the most beautiful thing. It was just incredible,” Willis said. “The art that went into it and the creativity — it brings tears to your eyes, sometimes, the things that these kids can create.”
Science teacher Ryan Fletcher has 50-75 of his students use iMovie and iPhoto to make a year-end project. Last year his class created a movie on earthquakes and an animation on the life cycle of plants.
His students loved it.
“I really enjoyed editing. It was fun to learn and play with iMovie,” one student said, while another labeled it “awesome!”
“They’re much more engaged” when learning through technology, Fletcher said of his students. “I see the overall benefits with the kids.”
Students, like Welsh, have taken proactive steps to bring more technology use to the school. When Welsh approached Sperry about starting a Video Game Creation Club last year, the teacher had five old P.C.s donated from a local company. Now about 10 kids meet during lunch every Monday to create video games using a software called Multimedia Fusion.
Welsh, as leader of the club, passes on his knowledge of the program that he learned at iD Tech Camp at Stanford University last summer. Recently, he enthusiastically described the use of a function in the program to a group of four boys.
The club gives students who have an interest in programming a place where they belong. “They’ve really turned it into a more social activity,” Sperry said. “I really like that.”
Welsh has loved computers since he was a toddler, according to his mother, Jamie Jarvis, a chemical engineer. Jaxon’s father is a computer engineer.
“He would change the display so it would look totally different, it would be reformatted and have different graphics. And he’d download software,” Jarvis said of Welsh when he was 5 years old.
“He’s a shining example of why a differentiated curriculum works,” social studies teacher Shauna Rockson said, referring to how the school district allows its teachers to help students learn in their own way.
“It’s actually been around for a while, but it’s really coming to the forefront now more than ever,” she said. “One size does not fit all.”
Kids are aware of the debate around playing video games and their effects, especially wasted time.
“I know people who play 10 hours everyday. It’s sad, you know. It’s fun to play video games, but that should come last,” student Colin Kelly said.
“It kills your brain cells. It makes you stupid. You’ve gotta limit yourself,” he added, saying his mother limited his playing time to a half-hour a day. “It’s self-control.
Even since limitations were placed on him, Colin said he’s been engaged in a wider variety of activities.
“I get homework done. I love to read. I love to write and sing. I absolutely love to play soccer. That stuff’s a lot more important than a little virtual world.”
Willis said that computer games can be a gateway to a bigger future for kids in technology.
“We know this is a watershed time — sixth, seventh, eighth grades — and you don’t want to get it into anybody’s head that they can’t do that (technology),” she said. “They are digital natives, and we’re digital immigrants.”
“I love it when they first discover that they can make it (a character) move where they want it to go,” Jean Babb, an associate supervisor for Girl Tech, said. “It’s like, ‘I’m in control.’ And how many people can say that about our lives?”
“We need to understand that we have important relationships with video games, one of them is as a teacher. If we play an educational game, they are natural teachers. All games are natural teachers regardless of whether they are intended to be,” Iowa State University Professor Douglas Gentile, an expert on video-game addiction in children, said.
“I think we need to think about what are the implications. We want to open up the conversation,” Indiana University Professor Sasha Barab, creator of educational games, said.
“Games provide very rich experiences in which to begin a conversation with kids about all kinds of issues,” he said. “They allow kids to try on all kinds of identities, and they put kids in a position where they really have to think through the consequences of their actions, which is something a kid may not think about (in their everyday world).”
On top of his love for computer games, Welsh plays the piano and competes on a football team several days a week. He spends an hour a day on the computer and has so far programmed a handful of games.
“It’s easy,” he said. “You can have a sense of pride.”
April 18th, 2007
Posted in: iD In The News, Santa Clara University, Stanford University
