iD Tech Camps

They charged my credit card for $ 229 without any discussion or authorization from me, 1 year after we attended the camp.

My son LOVED this program. We initially had signed him up for 1 week during the summer, but he ended up continuing on for 2 more sessions. He would have kept right on going if summer hadnt ended.
I cant speak for how great of an «education» he received there, nor do I think it was particularly challenging, but it is, afterall, camp. He was a complete novice when he started. I get the impression that a lot of the other kids had more experience than he did, but he received a lot of support from both the friendly teachers, and other, more experienced kids. Overall, it seemed like a very positive environment. Im not sure how much he actually learned (its all greek to me), but he left camp very inspired and motivated to continue learning how to code. Now, if only we could find something similar for him to do during the school year.

I’m giving the Tech Camps 4 stars despite the following and writing this to let other parents know what our daughter’s experience was here. She attended the Adventures in Game Design –Minecraft camp.
#1. The camp was great for the first 2 days. Our 8 y.o. daughter loves playing Minecraft and wanted to learn more about coding. She has a pretty deep interest in computer games and we were glad to have her in the camp. She even told me, after the first and second day that she couldn’t wait to come back.
#2. The drop off and pick up are perfection. The staff is super-​nice and they obviously love what they do. There is a password and I never was worried about my daughter’s safety or well being.
#3. If you have a daughter also, there are girls in the tech camps and iD Tech encourages it. She did have another girl in her class, but it was obvious on the last day that the classes are mostly boys, because the girls wore blue shirts and the boys wore black and it was mostly black shirts.
So why the missing star? I think that there could be some improvements. Also there was an unfortunate experience that I think is worth mentioning.
As a parent, I would have liked to see where my daughter was taking her class. On the first day and every day over a week, I dropped her off and didn’t see exactly where she was going until the last day. If they could just ask first-​time or those (interested) parents to go to the classroom the first day, give a short speech and then let them go, it would be all the more better. But that’s my opinion. Also, the parents don’t get to meet each other until the last day of class, and we don’t meet the instructor until the last day of class –it seems like they’re all out front when the child is dropped off, but I was never introduced nor told who he was prior to meeting him on the last day.
The last day the students receive a transcript of what they learned and a «diploma» of sorts with comments from their instructor. My daughter’s certificate had some wonderful comments on it and I was happy to see that she demonstrated a lot of skill and was a joy to have in class.
This is what she learned:
Applying knowledge of area and volume
Building basic geometric shapes
Managing mods
Understanding user interface
Using math to build to scale
Creating a custom weapon design
Creating houses with the clone tool
Showing combat proficiency
Using problem solving to make a maze
Building an adventure
Changing the world’s color scheme
Sketching a simple storyboard
Using color theory
Using MCEdit’s fill tool to build
Creating graphics in Photoshop
Designing new armor
Understanding redstone engineering
So as you can see, it’s not your average «girly camp», right?
The class goes for a week and is $ 1000 with lunches –we added the lunch option and our daughter liked it. It’s pricey but it was worth it to us. It’s 4 days of 8 – 5 and then pick up is between 5 and 6. The last day, Friday, ended at 2:45 and then at 3, there was a student showcase, where the student shows the parent a PowerPoint slideshow that they created and then a Minecraft world that she made.
So, that said, I’m going to go into what happened:
My daughter is scared of needles and shots –no one loves these, right? One of her fellow students had an EpiPen on him and thought it rather amusing to tell her and the other girl in the class that he was going to stick them with it. This might be because they’re girls in a Minecraft camp and he thought it would be funny to scare them? I really don’t know. Anyhow, my daughter was completely terrified by this. She seemed upset about going there on days 3 – 5 and I had NO IDEA WHY –she wouldn’t say anything and still went without complaint to anyone. I asked her if something was wrong and she knows she can talk to me about anything, but she wouldn’t say a peep, so I can’t say for sure what he told her. However, it was effective enough that she couldn’t even tell her own parents or her instructor that it bothered her.
I still have no clue as to who this child was, or what he said exactly, but he scared the hell out of my kid and she felt that she couldn’t say anything to anyone. According to my daughter, he also said it to the other girl, but the other girl wasn’t as scared as she was and it didn’t seem to affect her. Trust me, I’m not saying that this is the fault of iD by any means –it was my daughter’s reaction to what this boy did that encouraged him to continue this behavior. But I do think that they should state in class on DAY 1 that bullying of any kind will not be tolerated because bullying is all too real these days and obviously if there are more boys than girls, then maybe the girls could be targeted and maybe watched a bit closer. Anyhow, my daughter told us –on the LAST DAY of class! This was in the car, on the way home!!!
So iD Tech is a good place and we might come back next year, but I want to make sure that other parents know of my daughter’s experience.

Yes, this camp is very pricey and so I spent a lot of time deliberating before registering my son. This camp is roughly 2.5x the price of another really great science camp. The high price meant I had high expectations, and for my son the camp delivered. He is 7 yrs old and took part in ‘Adventures in Game Design’. He enjoyed learning the tool they used (Fusion Developer) and the time and freedom he was given to work on projects. He liked his own instructor and the others too. This is a camp where all the instructors know all of the kids’ names. Each child gets individual attention. He liked the mix of people and getting to see bits of what the older kids/​other camps were working on. It inspired him in his projects at home, his appreciation of the complexity of games he plays, and his bigger picture thinking of what can be created and how critical logic is in game design. Another benefit was that my son really connected socially. He LOVED that he had a group that shared his same passions with which he could talk and share. And he loved being on a college campus and getting a feel for what it might be like to be a college student. This type of inspiration is ultimately what I am looking for in summer camp/​learning experiences and why I feel iD Tech Camps delivered. I am hopeful that my family can fit this experience in the budget for next year. Admittedly, I will look again for any new camp options that might offer a better value. But iD Tech Camps has set a tough benchmark for comparison!

I have taken my son to this camp twice and was not impressed. It is not a 5 day camp, but 4.5 at best. The last day of camp is spent as an «open house» for the kids to show off what they have done and to hand out «diplomas.»
Price: It’s overpriced, and I was unhappy to hear that video games were played while they were supposed to be learning computer programming. The kids do not spend the week programming. There a couple hours of programming each day and a lot of free time as far as I could tell. My son mentioned this to me as something he did not like.
Space/​Camp facilities: We went to the Santa CLara campus both summers. This summer the room was shared with two other groups — preteen and elementary school age. I have a teenage son, and when they had open house, I could barely hear about what he programmed due to the noise of the kids in the other «camp» doing a computer bott game and slideshow. Awards were handed out in the same room as the «show off» room. This is an expensive camp and I was unhappy to hear that so many other campers shared the same room.
Instructors” My son took C+ programming last year. He did learn something, but he was not fond of the instructor. He said the JAVA programming instructor was much better — stayed focused, and had better control of the kids. THis year, we unfortunately got the same instructor as last year even though it was a different programming camp.
I think it depends on who you get, which is not always guaranteed to be a good fit. They will learn, but it will be dependent on the instructor and the classroom situation. I do think they want to improve and will over time. THey have tried to make it up to us, and that means a lot. We should have spoken up sooner, and work with them to go a different week due to our experience last year.
This camp is not for everyone, but it can be a good camp.