Read below to learn more about Genevieve and how she’s doing something BIG after having attended our iD Tech Camps.

iD: How many seasons have you attended iD Tech Camps?

Genevieve: This year was my first year!

iD: Where are you from?

G: Roanoke, Virginia

iD: Which iD location did you attend?

G: University of Virginia

iD: What course(s) have you enrolled in?

G: Web Design & Flash Animation

iD: What do you do for fun when you aren’t at our computer camp?

G: Besides high school, I play steel drums, travel abroad and manage my online vintage clothing business with my sisters.

iD: Does coming to iD help you improve in other aspects of your life besides technology?

G: Yes! I learned to be a better leader and to be more independent.

iD: Is iD a good place to make friends? Why?

G: Yes, everyone is very friendly and nice.

iD: What are your future goals? Will you be attending college?

G: I am applying to the University of Virginia, Emerson College, Boston College, Suffolk University in Boston, Columbia College and Roosevelt University in Chicago.

iD: How has iD impacted these goals?

G: I am considering majoring in Web Design.

iD: What’s your favorite tech gadget?

G: My cell phone — I am a teenager!

iD: What’s the #1 way you communicate with your friends?

G: Texting

iD: Why would you keep coming back to iD?

G: Because it’s a fun way to learn and get great website and graphic design advice!

iD: Any advice for future iD Tech campers?

G: Be sure you come prepared to meet new people and have lots of fun while learning some new stuff!

iD: Anything else you’d like to add?

G: Coming to iD Tech Camps helped me so much with the look and function of my online vintage clothing business! Before I came to camp, my website was pretty good. But the counselors really helped me add some great interactive features. I learned how to link pages and added Flash animation to my website. Thanks for everything!

Learn more about other iD Alumni who have gone on to Do Something Big! You can also learn more about our courses and locations.

By Alan Dessof

By Heather Donahoe

BRENTWOOD — Fourteen-year-old Eli Holmes cut his teeth on Tonka and Lego video games when he was just a toddler, tapping away on his parents’ computer.

But the Woodland Middle School eighth-grader and debate team member has come a long way from his days of Windows 95-fueled gaming.

Last summer, Eli wrote a video game of his own — Commando Combat — while at an iD Tech computer camp held at Georgetown University. In a couple of weeks, he’ll attend another weeklong camp at Vanderbilt University, where he’ll learn how to modify a video game — namely popular mainstream game Battlefield 2.

“I’m a geek pretty much,” Eli said with a laugh. “But I’m proud of it.”

Eli’s self-avowed “geekiness” couldn’t have been more popular last summer, amid dozens of his technologically inclined peers.

“It was amazing,” he said. “I found people who understand. I know it sounds cliché, but I could just start talking about something and they would get it, for the most part.”

Summer computer camps are conducted by iD Tech at top-tier universities across the country — schools like Emory, Columbia, Brown, Stanford and UCLA. The camps are a place for 7- to 14-year-olds to learn the fundamentals of video game, digital movie, robot and Web page creation.

Surprisingly, Eli’s love of video games isn’t hidden behind any pretense of his hobby becoming a future career. He’s too realistic for that.

“Yeah, it would be a lot of fun to be a game tester or designer someday, but every other young male in America wants to do that, and there aren’t that many positions,” Eli said.

Computers are hobby

Instead, the articulate teen hopes to be a book editor — an aspiration that syncs with his equal passion for reading. Eli pores over anything he can find, from science fiction to military nonfiction.

“He walks home from school reading a book, and he walks the hallways at school reading a book,” Eli’s mother, Barbara Holmes, said. “He had basically read the entire Crockett Elementary library by the time he finished there. As a result, he has a wonderful vocabulary.”

But it isn’t just Eli’s vocabulary that makes him an exceptional young mind.

While in sixth grade, he sat for the SAT and scored higher than his mother did when she was in high school.

“He’s been interested in books and computers since he was old enough to let us put him in front of one,” Holmes said. “He spends too much time on anything electronic, as far as his dad and I are concerned. I’d like to see him expand his horizons a little bit.”

Eli’s computer hobby is limited to a predetermined amount of time each day, the length of which changes frequently at his parents’ discretion. Mom and Dad keep a close eye on Eli’s computer activity, and he isn’t allowed to get online unless they’re home.

Eli’s time at computer camp isn’t awash in a monitor’s blue glow, either.

“We didn’t just sit around on computers all day,” he said. “We went swimming and played laser tag and did some other things that didn’t involve computers.”

By Sharon Schiff

As computer screens radiate, so do the minds of the savvy children enrolled in computer camps at the College of William & Mary. They not only learn technology, they create it as well.

Enthralled by his own video game creation, 9-year-old Adam Bloack could barely take his eyes off his monitor as he explained his game.

“See, you have to get this guy John Minor out of these jewel caves, and collecting jewels gives you extra points and they are hidden under rocks,” Bloack said, hardly stopping to blink. “I’m doing very well in my game……Look, look at this – charge! Ahh, he vaporized me.”

Bloack, who went to the camp with his 10-year-old cousin from New Jersey, is among 32 kids aged 7-17 immersed into techie world. “I’m really glad I am going here.” Bloack said. “I have really learned a lot.”  The campers explore the world of technology through robotics, programming, digital videography, video game design and web design.

Caitlin Kelley, 13,  sat before  a 3-D video game she created. She used characters from her favorite show, “Charmed,” as the basics for her animation. She finds working in 3-D especially challenging because one has to create an allusion for things to look real.

One group of campers that was participating in a digital video session made a five minute movie. They wrote a script, acted, filmed, and produced an intentionally inaccurate comedy using software Final Cut Pro. In the film Thomas Jefferson attempts to write the Constitution but is prevented from doing so by Benjamin Franklin’s rude intrusions. “Benjamin wipes his face on the Constitution, blows out a candle and distracts Thomas Jefferson by playing his guitar,” explained Allie Nyguen, 13, who has a passion for film. “It was fun, I really liked getting to film from all different angles.”

Instructor Rob Yip has been working closely with his campers to teach them programming & robotics. Using Java script, the kids have created electronic “Mad Libs,” built a calculator and are working on creating a function for a robot they put together.

Camp director Kevin Kvalvik is stepped in educational technology. For him, the “inquiry-based” instruction works very well. Already he has been impressed with “the cream of the crop” children he’s had the opportunity to work with. “We have groups of kids that are not timid about what they are learning.” Kvalvik said. The children enjoy the experience, ask lots of questions and produce top-notch projects. “When you have them for a week, you can create a culture and take giant steps,” Kvalvik said. “Kids here instantly vamp up to college-level work. “They just get it.”

The instructors are mostly college students, graduate students or those experienced in the field of technology. The camp was founded by a family-owned company, where the idea originated while Alexa Ingram Cauchi was working on a business project at the University of Washington. She started up the camp with the help of her parents and brother and it has taken off.

Want to go? A company called Internal Drive runs the camps. Sessions are available at 40 colleges across the country. Tech camps are in their eighth season, but this year is the first time at W&M. Sessions began June 18 and run through July 28^th. The price is $699 for day camp and $1,099 overnight. Space is still available. Log on to internalDrive.com or call 888-709-8324.