Summer Camp Goes Virtual
Remember when summer meant running around the neighborhood, hanging out and getting your top lip stained by orange or grape soda? That may have been how we spent our summer, but Gen Y has its own ideas of how to spend summer vacation--and naturally, it involves technology.
Camp Fatal1ty was developed by pro-gamer Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel and is run by iD:Gaming Academy. The Fatal1ty camps are held at Emory University, Stanford University, UCLA and Villanova University and provides teens with "an immersive experience in the dynamic worlds of game development and professional gaming, our video game camp courses are geared for beginning to advanced teens aged 13-17."
Cybercamps Academy provides teens with the opportunity to learn more about web technologies, including Flash, graphic and video game design. The Cybercamp Academy sessions are held at over 50 universities including Duke, UCLA and Stanford.
They also have a virtual camp track where kids can learn how to do everything from game design to 3D modeling. According to research conducted by Cybercamps Academy, this type of camp "significantly increases higher-order thinking skills in kids."
This seems like a fun and active way for kids to get engaged in science and technology while providing them with the opportunity to develop both critical thinking and problem solving skills.
These tech camps provide an environment in which kids get to use technology in a context that allows them to learn how to work in a collaborative environment.It's too bad that these types of active learning experiences aren't more common during the regular school year.
Who knows, the next MySpace, Facebook or Flickr gazillionarie might be sitting in a VirtCamp right now.
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