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July 18th, 2011 by: Elise
Technology camp builds app-titude
By Regina Wang
Chapel Hill — In this summer camp, rock climbing isn’t half as cool as creating a video game about rock climbing.
In a dimmed room where rows of computers replace ropes courses, campers – mostly boys – speak in programming language and make rampant jokes about Macs and PCs. Forget about swimming or building campfires, they spend intensive hours learning how to create iPhone apps, designing video games, and enjoying the camaraderie of fellow gamers.
“It’s a fun way to prepare you going into the industry,” said Ed Rayburn, 16, of Winston-Salem. “You don’t have to be a nerd.”
Technology-driven summer camps are growing in interest and size; iD Camps, a California company that runs the program in Chapel Hill, says it has gained 2,000 new campers this summer, boosting its overall enrollment to 20,000 nationally. The company rents classrooms on college campuses, such as Harvard, MIT and UNC-Chapel Hill.
Click here to read the full article about our summer camps in North Carolina
July 18th, 2011 | Tags: academic summer camps, programming camps, teen summer camps, web design
Posted in: College of William & Mary, Emory University, iD In The News, UNC Chapel Hill, Vanderbilt University
July 11th, 2011 by: Elise
July 11, 2011
By Mary Shapiro
Nearly 30 local kids sat, mouses clicking furiously and heads bent toward screens, in front of computers on a recent Wednesday afternoon.
They weren’t playing video games.
They were learning how to create programs and design for those games and other projects.
They honed their knowledge of new technology at one of a series of week-long iD Tech Camps being held this summer on the campus of Washington University.
The camps are offered by the firm internalDrive, based in California, at Washington University and more than 60 other sites nationwide.
Students from 7 to 17 learn to see how computer programs are used to create the video games they play, said Tanna Orgeron, director of the Washington University camp.
The company leases rooms in various college campuses. In the case of Washington University, the company has offered courses there for more than five years.
The courses, from beginner to advanced cover topics that range from role playing game design to programming languages to robotics to arcade game creation. Courses cost $600 to $900 depending on the particular class taken and its length, with some extended day and overnight sessions offered.
We asked some of the students to describe to older, tech-challenged folks, in terms their grandmothers would understand, what they’re working on.
Rose Livingston, 16, a Webster Groves resident, who will be a junior at Cor Jesu Academy.
“I’m working to write the execution file, the coding program, for a money converter chart. With it, you can put in the amount you have in U.S. dollars and be able to see the amount you’d get in other currencies like pesos or euros or zlotys, which is Polish money. I’m having a little difficulty with it right now, because it’s not outputting exactly what I want. But I’ll crack it, though it might take a little time. This program helps people who don’t want to do math.”
Elias McClendon, 17, a Florissant resident, who will be a junior at Hazelwood West High School.
“I’m working on a first person shooter level, which is part of a shooting video game where you play as if the camera were in your head, like you’re that shooter character. Each character, which is created with some preset controls, has a gun, which you can make move and shoot by using arrow keys, a space bar and left clicking on the mouse. So far, I’ve been creating a vehicle death match on that level, in a large area with a bunch of mountains. And I also plan to build a giant highway with vehicles driving to and from it, with bridges leading to the center of where the fighting will be. You need to create each part section by section, using a paintbrush tool for terrain. With the computer tool, you click and hold it to raise the level of the land to make a mountain peak. The hardest part is to get everything in the game to run smoothly, which can take an hour for each part, so I constantly play test everything. It’s a long process, just to make one level of a game. Just imagine how much time it takes to create a whole game! It seems so easy when you’re just playing.”
Omar Jawaid, 13, a Chesterfield resident, who will be an eighth-grader at Parkway Central Middle School.
“I’m making mods, which are extra levels and added on stuff, for a level of a role playing game. In that, you build different characters and decide what weapons they’ll have. For instance, you can change the race or class of character, like making someone a priest or warrior, and decide what your character does and what weapons they have while they’re going on a quest. For instance, a warrior can use a long sword and a shield and a ranger or archer can use bows and arrows. Wizards and sorcerers can use spells and quarterstaves and wands. Most RPGs (role playing games) have one overall quest and other side quests, to make the characters stronger. And all these steps take different programming. Adding too many effects can cause the game you’re making to crash. For instance, part of what I’m doing is having people enter a plundered village I’m making with a lot of fire and bloodstains. If you add too many of those effects, it causes the computer to crash. Also, you need to do baking, which is making all these effects and changes playable on the computer. The village, for instance, takes a lot of time to bake. And the more you add, the longer the game level becomes. It can be hard to find the cut off point to end one level and continue on with the game’s story to other levels.”
Brandon Brouk, 14, an incoming freshman at Westminster Christian Academy, who lives in the Ballwin area.
“I’m creating a character in a role playing game and also working on terrain for the game. I’m using a program called Neverwinter Nights 2 that lets you use buttons to select how you can edit and shape terrain, to raise and lower it and add texture and color to it. There are a lot of bugs to work out. For instance, sometimes the ground you’re working on just disappears and turns blue. I’m trying to fit as much in this game level as I can without the program slowing down. The great thing here at camp is, whenever you get stuck on something, you can ask a person next to you about what they think can help.”
Matteo Gerardo, 14, an incoming freshman at Parkway Central High School, who lives in Chesterfield.
“I’m making a map for a game called Unreal. There is a field with two bases with vehicles and weapons. There are many jump pads, where you’re able to jump to other platforms. I’m using a program called UDK, which is an Unreal Development Kit, a development framework with computer tools to create the game. You use a lot of mostly geometry, like developing cones and cubes into making these platforms where characters stand in the game. For instance, to make a tunnel, you make a big cube and shape it into the tunnel.”
Click here to read the article in the Suburban Journals.
July 11th, 2011
Posted in: iD In The News, Lake Forest College, Vanderbilt University, Washington University
July 2nd, 2009 by: Elise
Tech camp brings real-life teamwork to video games
By Jamie Sarrio
Jordan Cammon always brings the conversation back to video games.
Like other passionate gamers, the 10-year-old wants to talk about the characters, the levels, the sequences and the challenges that make his favorite games so exciting. And this summer he’s in good company – working with other students to create his own computer games during iD Tech Camp at Vanderbilt University.
“I love to talk about video games,” he said, fidgeting in his chair. “Since I love video games so much, I wanted to make games.”
The weeklong camp is held every year at universities all over the country for students age 7 to 17 who want to learn how to create 2D and 3D video games. Sessions in Nashville will run through July 17, and the camp starts at $700 and goes up to $1,200 a week, if campers elect to stay overnight.
Counselors, who are given gamer nicknames like “Sonic,” work with students to teach them how to use new programs and make their own video games. There’s also camaraderie among students, many of whom have a rare passion for video games.
“A lot of these kids have no identity at their regular schools,” said Tracey Price, camp director. “Tech camp is a great place for them to come and do what they love instead of doing it at home alone.”
Younger students start simple by picking characters, scenic backgrounds and objectives – older students build 3-D role-playing games or enhance existing games to make them their own. There’s one instructor for every eight campers, so the instruction is very personalized, Price said.
No applications are required, and students are separated based on ability and age. That’s partly to prevent younger students from being exposed to video games that are too violent or mature, she said.
Kids get taste of college
Campers also get exposed to life on a college campus and future careers in computer programming, though many are too young to know what they want to do just yet. They also take frequent breaks from the screen to play outside and share jokes.
Ethan Sloan, an 11-year-old from Franklin, says the food – dining hall style – is also a perk. “I think I am learning life-long skills I can use later,” he said. “It’s really helpful.”
Mostly boys attend the camp, but a few girls, like Kyra Tyler, sign up, as well. Tyler, a 12-year-old David Lipscomb Middle School student, wanted to come to the camp because she loves to play alternative reality games, like The Sims. At this camp, she’s working on building her own. “Most of my friends go to cheer camp or the mall, and I’ll do that stuff,” she said. “But I’d rather do this.”
Copyright © 2009 The Tennessean. All rights reserved
July 2nd, 2009 | Tags: create video game, summer tech camp, technology camp, video game camp
Posted in: iD In The News, Vanderbilt University
July 21st, 2008 by: Ryan
Gone Campin’
July 21st, 2008
Posted in: iD In The News, Vanderbilt University
May 16th, 2007 by: Elise
Tech-savvy teens network at camps
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.”
May 16th, 2007
Posted in: American University, College of William & Mary, University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University
