Camp Overview

About This U & Maps

About Our Courses

Tours & Activities

Faculty & Instruction

Safety & Peace of Mind

Testimonials

FAQ

iD Gaming Academy at Lake Forest College

iD Gaming Academy, Ages 13-18

TWO-WEEKS | CO-ED | RESIDENTIAL ONLY | TEEN ONLY
INTENSIVE EXPERIENCE IN VIDEO GAME DEVELOPMENT

Calling all teens…Got game? iD Gaming Academy, the leading summer technology program for teens in the U.S., gives students an immersive, pre-college experience in the dynamic world of game development. The two-week sleep away programs are held at elite universities and taught by faculty with proven video game development credentials. Highlights of the iD Gaming Academy:

• Discover 3D modeling, game programming and level design with industry-grade software
• Learn from elite faculty in small, personalized classes of just 8 students or fewer, guaranteed
• Tour a major game design studio
• Have a blast with our LAN gaming tournaments (not to infringe on instructional time)
• Graduate with an online portfolio (and receive an Official Transcript with Continuing Education Units (optional))

Students can no longer wait until college to start gaining necessary skills in the competitive field of game development. Start building your portfolio here and now. Go to Step 2 for course availability and dates.

Additional Tech Programs at Lake Forest College

iD Tech Camps, Ages 7-17

WEEKLONG | CO-ED | DAY CAMPS | OVERNIGHT CAMPS
COURSE TOPICS: VIDEO GAME DESIGN, PROGRAMMING, APPS, WEB DESIGN, & MORE

We’re celebrating our 11th season as the premier summer computer camp in the Chicago area. Our popular weeklong day camps and overnight camps at Lake Forest College boast a maximum of 8 students per instructor (you won’t find Counselors-in-Training or online tutorials at iD) and customized curriculum for beginner to advanced learners. You can register for one or several weeks of our summer camps and experience life on the beautiful Lake Forest College campus! Live in the college dorms! Design a video game! Build a web site in Flash®, program a robot, make your own iPhone® Apps, edit your own video and more with the best brand name products from Adobe®, Apple®, Autodesk®, Microsoft® and beyond.

iD Programming Academy, Ages 13-18

TWO-WEEKS | CO-ED | OVERNIGHT ONLY | TEEN-ONLY | INTENSIVE PRE-COLLEGE EXPERIENCE IN COMPUTER PROGRAMMING & APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

The iD Programming Academy offers 2–week sessions of intensive study in computer science programming. Gain a deep understanding of application development–and a broader knowledge of how programming can be applied to the real world. The iD Programming Academy is perfect for students with previous programming experience who are looking to take their code to a whole different level.

About Lake Forest College

NOTE: Our specific location on campus at this Chicago summer camp, along with maps and driving directions, will be found in My Account after you register.

We have chosen Lake Forest College to host our summer teen camps in the Chicago area because of the school’s convenient metropolitan location and lovely campus. The pristine and quiet 107-acre campus sits just a few blocks from Lake Michigan and is a short walk from quaint downtown Lake Forest. With its range of architectural styles and spacious park-like landscaping, Lake Forest College has access to a variety of resources for recreation, entertainment, culture, and enrichment in the surrounding communities and nearby Chicago, making it the perfect location for our line-up of intensive summer teen camps in Illinois.

The iD Gaming Academy held at Lake Forest College is a one-of-a-kind offering for students seeking to get better at the art and science of game development. The program is intended for high-school-aged students ages 13-18.

General Location: O’Hare International Airport and Midway are both 45-60 minutes away from the Lake Forest campus. Amtrak trains enter Chicago at Union Station. To reach Lake Forest from Chicago you will need to get to the Ogilvie Transportation Center where the METRA commuter train boards. The Ogilvie Transportation Center is located three long blocks north of Union Station at 500 West Madison Street, at the intersection of Madison and Canal Streets. There are two commuter lines that run to Lake Forest so be sure to board the Metra Union Pacific North Line. The train runs to and from Chicago 30 times a day.

Campus Life & Meals

As part of the full university experience, students will eat in university dining halls and sleep in real dorms. All meals are included.

About Our Courses

Students use industry-standard applications including Autodesk® Maya®, Adobe® Photoshop®, XNA® for the Xbox 360®, Unreal® Engine 3, StarCraft® ll: Wings of Liberty™, and of course some of the latest, most popular commercial video games for instructional purposes and serious game play. This game design camp for teens is taught by top-tier instructors with demonstrated game development skills. Course Details.

Our Courses:

iD Game Studios 101
3D Modeling & Animation with Autodesk® Maya®
Level Design – Unreal® Development Kit
Programming for the Xbox 360®
Game Development for iPhone® & Android™ with Unity

Continuing Education Credits

Continuing Education Credits at the iD Gaming Academy are available from Stanford Continuing Studies (SCS).  The credits will go on file at Stanford upon successful completion of a course at the iD Gaming Academy, and a transcript will be mailed out to the participant.  Continuing Studies offers a credit awarding transcript generation service to academic programs.

What are the benefits/objectives of awarding Continuing Education Credits?

• Encourage students to utilize educational resources to meet their personal and educational goals.
• Assist with pre-college advanced placement through proof of related work.
• Demonstrate that the student has completed course content with college-level difficulty.
• Enable individuals to have an accurate source of their current CEU activity with tracked proof of completion (Certified Certificate of Completion) by an accredited University program.

Note: CEUs are not transferable as college credit.

Tours & Activities

Note: We tour a real gaming studio, but studio venues may change without notice.

Tour: To Be Determined

The iD Gaming Academy at Lake Forest College will be taking an off-site excursion to a real game development studio. Check back soon for details.

Activities

Academy activities are as diverse as the teens who attend our programs. After each day's instruction, you'll take time out to socialize, relax, watch movies, play sports, catch up with friends on Facebook, or game in one of our nightly NVIDIA®-hosted gaming tournaments (with hot new titles like Team Fortress® 2). Some highlights from last summer include team-building activities, group game design challenges, human Tower Defense, kickball tournaments, trivia nights, bowling, Settlers of Catan, and more!

Stay the weekend within the session and you will also have the opportunity to tour local points of interest off campus!

Note: Students may be allowed to travel in groups within local boundaries, depending on the restrictions imposed by the university. Our supervising staff will remain in the vicinity to check in with students periodically. Academy students enjoy extra privileges appropriate for their environment and maturity levels. While we maintain standard supervision ratios, teens will feel a sense of freedom.

Gaming Tournaments at the iD Gaming Academy

What better way to learn how commercial games are created than to fire up the most cutting edge titles and play! LAN parties are a big part of what makes the iD Gaming Academy so immersive. With industry leading names like NVIDIA®, Team Fortress® 2, Portal™ 2, Unreal Tournament® 3, Counter-Strike®, Half-Life® 2, Left 4 Dead™ 2, and more, you know you are in for many incredible nights of ducking, dodging and fragging.

Our Computer Gaming Tournaments use some of the hottest and most recognized game titles on the market, and all students will have opportunities for gameplay with local tournaments. We use Valve® Steam® technology and NVIDIA GeForce® gaming cards for peak PC gaming performance. When we need to get out of our chairs for some console action, we’ll break out the Nintendo® Wii or Xbox 360®.

Gaming Tournaments are an exciting element of our teen activities, but do not replace or infringe on instructional time. NOTE: Games in our Gaming Tournaments are rated “T” for Teen and “M” for Mature and are selected at the sole discretion of iD Tech Camps staff.

Faculty & Instruction

The iD Gaming Academy fosters real game development skills, in addition to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) development. Students “learn by doing” through intensive, hands-on instruction. Our classes are small, ensuring personalized instruction and allowing students to move at their own pace.

Our instructors vary from year to year, but here are a few veteran faculty from our Chicago teen camps:

• Latonia: Latonia, originally from Chicago, holds a B.A. in Art History from Wellesley College and a master’s degree in Architecture from Harvard University. As an instructor for the American Academy of Art (in Chicago, IL), Latonia principally teaches in the 3D Modeling and Animation department. In addition to teaching, she also runs a 3D visualization company that supports architects and developers – recreating their designs using computer models, which allows them to view their projects before construction actually begins. Latonia has always felt very strongly that the computer should be used as a design tool and not just one for production efforts, especially for those projects where seeing spatial relationships is crucial to their understanding.
• Miles: Miles is a professional video game developer turned teacher. He has experience programming video games and serious training applications in languages such as C++, C# and Actionscript 3.0. After graduating from DeVry University, he pursued a job in the game industry making children’s educational games. He now runs an independent studio called inScope Games, the developer of Jojamian (a game soon to be released online for the PC). In his spare time he makes prototypes of video games and also blogs about game development. He is an avid reader who enjoys learning about philosophy, technology, science, psychology and foreign languages.
• Erik: Erik is a Freelance Software Developer/Independent Game Developer and is a graduate of the DePaul University Computer Game Development Program. He has created numerous games and other applications in nearly a dozen programming languages. Favorite games of his include Everquest, Baldur’s Gate, Freespace 2 and Homeworld. Erik is passionate about sharing his game programming experience with students and seeing what sort of awesome games and apps they create.

Safety & Peace of Mind

Risk Management

Adult staff and instructors supervise all activities. iD has a policy of never using Counselors-in-Training (CITs).

American Camp Association^® Accreditation

iD Tech Camps is accredited by the ACA at multiple locations, meaning we have met over 300 health and safety requirements. All camps follow ACA guidelines.

Background Checks

We conduct criminal background checks, sexual offender background checks, multiple reference checks and identification checks on all summer staff.

CPR & First Aid

All camps have Directors and Staff that are CPR and First Aid Certified.

Testimonials From Lake Forest College iD Gaming Academy

What Parents Are Saying

“I was so impressed with the camp as a whole. It is so nice to have a place where students’ “special talents” can be recognized. My son will use this experience as a highlight on his college applications. Karla D., parent, Lake Forest iD Gaming Academy

“I was very impressed with the knowledgeable and helpful staff at the iD Gaming Academy. My son really enjoyed his time at the camp and learned a lot of information that will be beneficial for his future game software experiences. Tara B., parent, Lake Forest iD Gaming Academy

“Our son entered this camp with very little programming experience and in the span of two weeks, was able to build a finished game. There are lessons he learned that he will take with him as he pursues a career in the gaming industry. Thank you for all that you did for him. Rosy S., parent, Lake Forest iD Gaming Academy

“My son received a good introduction to video game design during his time at the iD Gaming Academy. The instructors were very friendly and shared great tips on how to get into the video game design field. Amanda W., parent, Lake Forest iD Gaming Academy

“Justin attended iD Tech Camps last year and enjoyed it so much that he returned this year for the iD Gaming Academy. He is looking forward to coming back next year! Sandy O., parent, Lake Forest iD Gaming Academy

What Academy Students Are Saying

“My experience at the iD Gaming Academy was quite enjoyable. I learned a lot, ate good food and made some interesting friends. Chris S., student, Lake Forest iD Gaming Academy

“Completing my final project was so fun, and all the instructors were very knowledgeable. Ketki L., student, Lake Forest iD Gaming Academy

“The instructors were very helpful and informative! It was fun to also see their silly side! Sora S., student, Lake Forest iD Gaming Academy

“The iD Gaming Academy was fun and educational, and I made a lot of new friends. Ryan W., student, Lake Forest iD Gaming Academy

“This was definitely a good learning experience. My instructor was the best ever. Kyle B., student, Lake Forest iD Gaming Academy

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does this teen camp cost?
The cost for the two-week residential teen camp is US $3,499. Check our site for special promotions. Continuing Education Units are available from Stanford Continuing Studies, for an additional fee.  Age restrictions apply.  Weekend Stays are optional, but recommended, and cost $349 per weekend.  Most students choose to stay the weekend with us.

What are the dates of camp?
Our teen camps run throughout the summer.  Check Step 2 to see date availability for specific courses. You can also see what iD Tech Camps courses and dates are available at this location.

What courses are offered at this location?
Go to Step 2 to see Course Availability, Tuition & Dates.

How do I find out if the course I want is open for enrollment?
View real-time availability all courses by going to Step 2.

How do I register?
Go to Step 2 and choose your course, then continue along the steps.

What if the curriculum is too easy or too hard once my program starts?
Don’t worry – students learn at their own pace, and the curriculum is customized to fit each student’s skill and experience level.  Our instructors work closely with each student and adjust project specifications to be challenging yet fun.

Do I need to bring a computer to camp?
No, students do not need to bring personal computers to their session.  iD provides a computer for each student to use over the course of their program, along with all materials necessary for the course.

Do you offer any non-overnight programs?
Yes, other iD programs include weeklong iD Tech Camps with both day camp and overnight camp options.  iD Tech Camps courses are held at 60 universities nationwide, with topics ranging from iPhone® app development to video game design, website design and more.  The courses are divided up by age range, so you can still choose to have a teen-only experience if you wish.

What if I get sick or have summer school?
Balance payments, less the non-refundable deposit, are refundable up until 3 weeks prior to the start of a confirmed camp week/session. No refunds will be issued for cancellations or withdrawals within 3 weeks of the start of a confirmed camp week/session. All cancellations must be submitted in writing to the internalDrive Inc. office or online in My Account no later than 3 weeks prior to the start of camp. For more details, please see our Terms & Conditions.

Who should I contact with questions or concerns?
Contact our Client Services department at 1-888-709-TECH (8324) or 1-408-871-2227. You can also email us at info@internalDrive.com. And, if you’d like a brochure sent to you, please click the brochure link.

Course Tuition (Program options are found on the next step)