Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources ID tech camp - excellent camp for gifted kids

Just thought I'd post in case anyone has interest in this camp. My 8 yr old dd attended for her second summer. The camp is at different colleges in every state. We were incredibly impressed, and my daughter was so happy. She is obsessed with computers- and claims she wants to be a video game designer. The camp is quite expensive, but worth every penny. She took game design last summer and used multimedia fusion to create her own games. This year she took programming and learned Scratch. She's been making several video games and movies a day since camp ended. It's a great free program that can be downloaded, but the camp teachers are really motivating and highly experienced. She also gets to be with other very bright kids who share her interests. Wish she could go there all year in lieu of school . Learned more in a week than the entire year if second grade.


Jennifer

We are planning on taking DS to one next summer! Thanks for the recommendation!

Our 8 year old son is at ID Tech camp right now and loving it! He is learning game design on a Minecraft platform. While I'm thrilled that he's happy, I am also concerned. Like last year, ID Tech camp is the only place he's attended where he behaves and is honored by the teachers and community. This is because he's sitting in front of a computer all day, basically gaming! I'm concerned we are just celebrating his addiction. Parenting highly gifted kids is a huge challenge. We all know that. And I'm just not sure if encouraging computer gaming, even in the form of computer game design, is healthy. I would love to understand what the appeal is for our son? Maybe understanding this would allow us to make informed parenting decisions. Thoughts?

141312,

I understand. I've struggled with this as well. DS11, loves minecraft, the only video game he's really been interested in, and probably would spend hours on it if we allowed it. This summer, we signed him up for a online class on how to make video games through Northwestern University's Center for Talented Development. This class was quite expensive, but game design and computer language (he'd wanted to learn Python, but those classes were full) are things he's really passionate about.

Next year, I'll encourage a creative writing course or a science course (two other passions) but this year I've made peace with this choice. Even though it's entirely foreign to me, the whole minecraft thing, I do understand how real-life wisdom can be gained and how it's helped his confidence and skill on the computer and also his typing skills. Regarding the real life wisdom, he's learned it's wiser to team up with trusted individuals and share items rather than hording and fighting. He's learned that not everyone can be trusted and how to do deal with bullies. It's quite remarkable in some ways, the life lessons, these online community games offer.

So...I'm trying to be open-minded, while at the same time teach balance and priorities.

My thoughts... What is the function games? What is the function of play? What is fun?

Play is an abstraction of the real world. It is a containable subset with creative bounds. Rules create games and system thinking out of play's abstraction. Computer games offer variation, additional complexity, and deeper simulation. It is a primary mechanism for developing meta-cognitive thinking. Why is play fun? Because fun is a reward; the brain is wired to reward things that are good for it. Play is particularly fun for kids, because it is particularly important for kids.

There is another bounded type of play where there are fixed constraints inherent to the system, but not rules outside of those. Those are simulations, and they help build the metacognitive skills that are useful for design and creative problem solving. Minecraft falls into this area and has much support for system and thinking and cooperative problem solving.

Then there is a fuzzy line where play and games slip past being a means and become an end.

Yes. Exactly what I was attempting to articulate...Beautifully said.

Thank you. I'd also mention that the best developers I've had the pleasure of working with almost all started as kids dreaming of being game programmers.