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July 25th, 2007 by: Ryan
July 25, 2007
By Jennifer Wake
During summer, it is not uncommon to see children of all ages blissfully spending hours playing video games or controlling robotic toys, but how does it all work?
Thirteen Lamorinda kids, ranging in age from 7 to 15, enrolled in iD Tech Camp at Saint Mary’s College last week to find out. The weekly camps offered at local colleges and universities teach campers how to create video games, build robots, and develop Web sites.
For 11-year-old Nick Barendregt, from Lafayette, the robotics camp was a far cry from his previous Lego work. “I’ve always been interested in robots,” he said, “but this is hard-core robotics, and a more hands on real-life experience.”
Barendregt and six other campers have been building two robots: one being encoded using Easy C programming language, the other using the VEX Robotics Design System. “I’ve started to get into more robotics languages and coding, and will be able to use it outside the camp,” Barendregt said.
Other campers participated in Video Game Creation Xtreme, where they used Clickteam Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer software to develop their own video game animation. It was the third time 12-year-old Amanda Griggs from Moraga has attended the camp, and her first time taking Video Game Creation Xtreme – the more advanced course.
“We’re working on making our characters move when you move, so they jump and fly,” said Griggs, who developed a game where her creatures collect orbs and bring them back to a specific location. “The hardest part is making each level harder, and to make it go to the next level. I’ve learned it’s really hard to make the complicated video games you buy in stores.”
First-time camper, 8-year-old Carter Wirtz of Orinda, built a game called Animal Wars, where animals attack each other, but the hardest thing was “making the guy move, and stuff and make the enemies bounce around.”
“I have kangaroos as some of the enemy and they bounce,” he said. His game also includes a scorpion that shoots venom and dragons that shoot fire balls.
Lead instructor Sean Mauney (called “Professor” at camp, who taught the younger campers Video Game Creation) expected the class to be a little harder to teach. Mauney, who is a full-time 3-D Animation student at the Academy of Art, was surprised how bright the campers were and how easily they picked things up.
On the final day of camp, parents get to see their children’s work on display. “At the end there’s a presentation: every computer shows the project name and they can view the projects,” Griggs said. “And then we have a sponge fight.”
The final camp at Saint Mary’s ends next week. For more information about iD Tech Camp, you can visit www.internaldrive.com or call 1-888-709-TECH (8342).
July 25th, 2007
Posted in: iD In The News, St. Mary's College of California, UC Berkeley
April 29th, 2007 by: Ryan
Setting up summer camp
By Delfin Vigil
School is almost out. Everything on television is getting, like, totally boring. And marshmallow prices are starting to skyrocket.
All that can only mean one thing: Summer camp season is upon us.
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean summer camp itself can be defined as one thing. These days, finding the right summer camp for you and your kid can be like trying to agree on a box of cereal.
Let’s see: We’ve got sports camp, space camp, computer camp, diet camp, magic camp, rock star camp, art camp, travel camp, Spanish camp, Christian camp. There’s even Gandhi Camp in (surprise!) West Marin County.
Good grief! Whatever happened to good ol’ summer camp camp, Charlie Brown?
Of the approximate 11 million campers across the country, 10 million are children and 1 million are adults, according to Allison MacMunn, a public relations specialist with the American Camp Association. The nearly 100-year-old nonprofit group keeps tabs on camps of all kinds. One of the clearest changes in camp culture noted by the association is a 215 percent increase in family, adult and senior camps in the past 15 years.
More than likely, your kid won’t get as excited about a weekend bingo binge as Grandma will. And for many, getting a break from parents or kids can be the inspiration for seeking out a camp.
“The sense of leaving your neighborhood and going somewhere different where you have to learn new things and become part of another community is the whole point of going to a summer camp,” says Ann Woods, who opened Roughing It Day Camp with her husband, Hobie, in Lafayette 35 years ago.
The Woodses have watched the camp grow from about a dozen kids from just down the street to more than 200 from across the Bay Area last summer. With horseback riding, swimming and canoeing, Roughing It is a traditional and all-outdoor coed day camp headquartered at the Lafayette Reservoir.
The Woodses remember a time when other kids would be fishing and camping by themselves at the reservoir. Those days are gone.
“Nowadays, there are a lot more of what we call helicopter parents. They’re hovering over their kids trying to make everything perfect. But kids don’t learn from only having successes,” says Ann Woods, who remembers when parents would drop their kids off then head for tennis and two-martini lunches before even thinking of checking in.
While the Woodses try to emphasize a child’s need to work on being independent, they also embrace the technology to allow parents to keep in communication. That means photos that usually didn’t show up until Christmas are on the Web site by the end of the week. Trail guides use Nextel walkie-talkies, and the emergency cell phone ringers are never on silent.
It also means that the cool stoner dude who was a counselor at your summer camp back in the ’70s probably wouldn’t be able to get the same gig today. That is, at an accredited camp.
“Parents often assume that all summer camps are licensed to run their business and are monitored for safety in some way,” says David Hughes, who, with his brother Jeremy, started Camp Doodles in Mill Valley six years ago after they became frustrated as counselors dealing with the safety shortcomings at another public camp operation. “I know from personal experience if there is no system, if no one is watching, then the attitude is ‘Who cares?’ ”
The owners of Camp Doodles swear they care.
To prove it, they (along with Roughing It and all the other camps mentioned in this story) are among only 25 percent of American summer camps that voluntarily applied for and passed the camp association’s rigid accreditation process.
In order to be licensed by the association, each camp must meet as many as 300 health and safety standards that go “way above and beyond most state regulations,” MacMunn says.
“That means we have to make sure fingerprints of all employees are verified for background checks, food is stored at proper temperatures, bathroom facilities are inspected,” says Hughes, whose field-trip safety checklist for Camp Doodles is long enough to rival “War and Peace.” “You name it, we’ll have thought of it. And we have a license to prove it.”
Although the accreditation percentage is still relatively low, the level of professionalism in camps is on the rise, according to Don Whipple, who runs Camp Unique out of Portola Valley.
“It used to be, if you were a kid and wanted to have fun, you ran home from school, dropped your books, and went out and played,” says Whipple, who also runs rustic overnight camps in the Lake Tahoe area as well as day play in the South Bay. “But now there’s more of a fear factor. Who else will be there? Is the park safe? Can I reach my child?”
Camps are increasingly aware that in order to stay in business and build a good reputation, they have to answer those questions for parents quickly. To comply, most accredited camps hire counselors who have backgrounds in children’s education or psychology and who really want to be there for the right reasons.
Getting to watch a child’s confidence grow is the reason Camp Doodles counselor Veronica Cowen does what she does.
“One year we had this little girl about 6 years old who was extremely shy,” Cowen says. “She had been seeing a speech therapist and was really self-conscious about it. After a little bit of playing, a little bit of art and a little time, she was up on a stage doing skits and singing songs. Her enunciation was 100 times better by the end of the summer, and her speech therapist said they had never seen so much growth in such a short period of time.”
Similar results were found over at Quest Camp in Danville, where Robert Field hosts a day camp specifically for children with low self-esteem and problems with social skills.
“We work with kids who are especially anxious and have little confidence. We help the kid who quits playing a game because they hate losing, for example,” says Field, who will be celebrating Quest Camp’s 17th summer this year. “We had three middle-school-age kids with Asperger’s whose parents say they just don’t relate socially and never had any friends at school. After a few summers together at camp, they all three got together and started to hang out on their own. What’d they do? They worked together on building a nuclear submarine, of course. Sounds unusual, but they found a way to relate and do something they enjoy.”
Tech Camp
“First of all, it’s not a geek camp,” says Karen Thurm, vice president of iD Tech Camps — the Silicon Valley computer and technology summer camp going on its ninth year. “People make the mistake of thinking their child wouldn’t be interested in this type of camp. But the fact is we make it fun. And all kids love to have fun.”
With several locations, including Stanford University and UC Santa Cruz, iD Tech Camps offer kids courses in everything from Web site building to 3-D animation to plain old playing Frisbee and soccer in the sun.
“All the kids come away from our camp with a new technological skill,” says Thurm, who emphasized that the campers get to use the most advanced and updated software and hardware programs from nearby companies like Apple and Google. “It’s not like they come in and play video games. But they might come in and make their own video games. These kids end up going back to regular schools mentoring other children and sometimes even teachers on technology. That can’t help but blossom a child’s self-esteem.”
While specialty camps like iD Tech Camp can go all out with computers and technology, traditional camps like Prime Time Kids’ Camp in Burlingame are trying to find a balance.
“We in the camp industry call this new generation the Millennials,” says Prime Time’s director Guillermo Macalpin, who just returned from a national camp association conference in Texas that focused on the issue. “We understand that these are some very computer and technologically savvy kids. They have that need to be text messaging and building their MySpace pages. Keeping up with them can be a challenge.”
By adding cool science experiments, videotaping drama classes or having a former San Francisco Giant come by for tips in the batting cage, summer camps like Prime Time are learning to keep up with the Millennials.
“It doesn’t matter what century it is, the bottom line is that kids just want to have fun.”
E-mail Delfin Vigil at dvigil@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page PK – 18 of the San Francisco Chronicle
April 29th, 2007
Posted in: iD In The News, St. Mary's College of California, UC Berkeley
April 1st, 2007 by: Ryan
Digital kids use hands-on learning at local universities
By Natalie Calderon
Goodbye pencil and paper. Hello digital movies, 3D modeling, and website design.
Sure, maybe the pencil and paper approach has been gone for years now; but it’s not just your typical word processing program that kids are using to unleash their creativity both inside and outside of the classroom.
These days, thanks to an innovative hands-on learning approach known as project-based learning, sixth-grader Sean Fox is busy producing movies for his schools projects. Eleven-year-old Julian Finnegan is applying his logical reasoning and creative skills to designing video games, which he sells to peers. And 11th-grader Jimmy McChristy spends his free time experimenting with the 3D animation software program known as Maya® to design complex 3D cars and people.
Project-based learning shifts away from traditional classroom lectures. Instead, it actively engages students by promoting understanding, empowering kids, and motivating them with energetic, lifelong investigative learning. For Sean, Julian, Jimmy and thousands of other Digital Kids nationwide, what was once a passive hobby has been transformed into a passion where they’re learning while having fun.
According to the George Lucas Educational Foundation, with project-based learning in the classroom, there is a decline in absenteeism, an increase in cooperative learning skills, and improvement in student achievement. These benefits are heightened even further when technology is integrated into projects.
With this hands-on approach, learning becomes more relevant to kids and helps them to establish connections to the “real world.” When students are more attentive, they retain more knowledge. This knowledge can then be applied to students’ current and future schoolwork, hobbies, and eventually a career.
Every summer since 2004, Jimmy has been studying, improving, and applying this project-based learning at iD Tech Camps, a family-owned Silicon Valley-based company now its ninth season. iD Tech Camps produces and runs weeklong day and overnight summer technology programs for Digital Kids ages seven to 17 at 50 prestigious universities in 22 states (www.internaldrive.com). Locations in the Bay Area include UC Berkeley, St. Mary’s College of CA, Stanford University, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, and Santa Clara University.
This past summer, Jimmy, 16, attended an intensive 3-week game development program called iD Gaming Academy at UC Berkeley. During this program, teens like Jimmy used powerful industry-standard applications like Maya to learn the basics of 3D graphics production and to create a project of his own by the end of his session.
“I really liked having an outline of the project then the freedom to take off from there,” Jimmy said. “There was no lesson like school, where we are told what to do and can’t use our creativity.”
Each student has a different style of learning. What once was difficult to articulate in a written report can now be demonstrated powerfully through digital movies and other multimedia vehicles. Learning through hands-on projects allows students to delve into the content in a more direct and meaningful way.
“We learn more this way,” Jimmy said, “because we are into it and we enjoy it.”
At the core of the iD Tech Camps philosophy is project-based learning. “Our teaching philosophy is ‘experience-based’ which means from the moment the students enter our lab, the experience is hands-on,” said Karen Thurm Safran, VP of Marketing. “We challenge and guide our students, encouraging each to experiment. Students work at their own pace and prepare for the grand debut of their projects at the end of the week using industry-standard products like Adobe® Photoshop®, Apple® Final Cut Pro®, Wacom® Pen Tablets, Microsoft® Visual Studio® Express and VEX® Robotics.”
Jimmy wasn’t alone last summer. Sean, Julian and 14,500 other Digital Kids across the nation attended one of iD Tech Camps university locations where they used this hands-on approach to learn how to turn their hobbies into future-impacting skills.
During the last ten years, the Secretary of Labor selected a commission to determine necessary 21st-Century Digital Age skills for competing in the working world. What may have worked in the past – simply focusing on the “3Rs” of reading, writing and arithmetic – doesn’t hold up for today’s kids. Instead, the following Digital Age skills have been identified: teamwork, planning, problem solving, critical thinking, researching, and information synthesizing using technology and communicating.
A number of those Digital Age skills are developed through project-based learning, including knowing how to work well with others, making careful decisions, being proactive, and solving difficult problems. Thanks to hands-on learning, students are paving the way to future careers filled with independence, critical thinking, and lifelong learning.
For Sean, Julian, Jimmy and other Digital Kids, who knows what the future holds. But one thing is certain, the expression of knowledge is no longer limited to a pencil and paper. With project-based learning, kids can now have fun in the classroom, apply their knowledge creatively, and create some pretty impressive projects along the way.
April 1st, 2007
Posted in: iD In The News, St. Mary's College of California, UC Berkeley
March 1st, 2007 by: Ryan
Technology camps geared to ‘Digital Kids’
Young people today are inundated with technology. From Xboxes and TiVo to cell phones and iPods, Generation Z is connected.
After watching his twelve year- old son surf the net and text message friends, business owner Peter Hanson had an idea. Why not harness his twelve-year-old’s thirst for technology and redirect it towards a skill that would help him compete in the 21st century?
Although Hanson’s company was doing well, he felt its website didn’t adequately portray his firm. If son Kyle learned how to build websites, Hanson could then hire him to redesign his. Hanson and his wife sent their son to iD Tech Camp, where Kyle learned how to make websites pivot, jump and bounce with Flash Animation.
iD Tech Camps provide weeklong, hands-on summer technology courses, beginner to advanced, for youth ages 7-17 at universities in 19 states. These 40 locations include St. Mary’s College in Moraga, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, UC Santa Cruz, and UC Davis. Students take courses in web design, digital video production, 2D and 3D video game creation, and programming & robotics. Class sizes average six students per instructor.
Students use industry products like Adobe, Macromedia, Apple, Canon, RadioShack, Wacom and AutoDesk. Digital Kids leave camp with a completed project using products which professionals use.
“I was really proud that I Technology camps geared to ‘Digital Kids’ created a really cool website within one week that made my instructor’s jaw drop when he watched my Flash Animation morph from different shapes into a logo,” said Kyle.
With the Flash Animation Shape Tween tool, Kyle used different colored shapes that finally morphed into his “Kyle Henson Productions” logo.
“At first it was hard, but my instructor showed me how to morph objects. I think making animations for my site was not only super fun, but really rewarding knowing that I was using the same software that professional web designers use.”
Camp instructors are college students or recent grads. “Our philosophy is to be mentors for these Digital Kids. They are like sponges, and love to soak up this knowledge,” said Jennifer Liss, Camp Director at the iD Tech Camps Kyle attended. “These kids can’t get enough so it’s incredibly inspiring for us to teach them what we’ve learned in college and our professions.”
While Kyle is using his new skills to help his dad, ten-year-old Julian is transforming his passion for video games into a profitable business.
After creating his video game at a camp at Stanford University, using the easy-to-use Multimedia Fusion, Julian didn’t stop there. When he returned home, he added more and more details to his game. He then began selling it to peers. The demand was so large that he expanded his sales team by hiring his eight-year-old sister and her friend. It worked. Now Julian is working on his third sequel.
And what does Julian want to do in the future?
“Own several video game companies,” said this confident fourth grader. “If I’m rich, I’ll own three. If not, I’ll own one.”
For more information about iD Tech Camps visit www.internalDrive.com or call 1-888- 709-TECH (8324).
March 1st, 2007
Posted in: iD In The News, St. Mary's College of California, UC Berkeley
