Would your child love to learn the art of game design? It goes without saying, the tech industry has never been bigger and is likely only to grow in the future. If you have a child interested in game design, this could be a potentially exciting career path for them to pursue once they grow up.
We’ve been tinkering with a new addition to our laser tag course. The new system is pretty advanced but we wanted campers to go home with a simpler way of controlling it that doesn’t need a WiFi connection. We’ve recreated a version of our previous hand-held controller box that can be used to start and stop games, and even act as team bases for capture the flag.
Here at Tech Camp we are often asked which programming language to learn first - it can be a very confusing subject with so many options and opinions out there! Choosing the right starting point is very important especially when it comes to children - choosing something too easy for a certain age can result in boredom, and then a lack of motivation and interest to continue.
Planning what to with the youngsters this summer? If you’re looking for something a bit meatier than day trips to attractions, then you might like to look at some new summer schools teaching theatre skills, broadcasting, and much more …
Just finished our Easter Test Pilot again and had a terrific time. We had an Easter event last year but this time around we wanted to run a really small event just to try out our new courses for 2016. We figured this would both give us an incentive to develop the courses in a more detailed manner longer before the summer and also to be able to use the feedback of the campers to improve things for when we’re inundated with hundreds of campers in a few months’ time.
Only men being techies is a stereotype up to a certain point, but with the male population providing the lion’s share in the digital industry, questions are being asked why women are in the minority of employees in this field. It could be argued that boys are given remote control cars, planes, trains, robots and drones as presents and therefore are introduced to technology from an early age – or at least that was the case maybe a decade or so ago.
"I started at Tech Camp firstly as a camper in 2008. As a child at the time I loved creating small robots and coding, but my parents had struggled to find anywhere I could work on advanced projects like this outside the home until they discovered Tech Camp."
Tech Camp has a long list of successful former students, many of whom return to teach the next generation of inventors. We pride ourselves in keeping our family ties close and the truth is, many of our tutors want to continue their relationship with Tech Camp despite success in their own careers. Let’s look at a few of our stellar students and how they’ve progressed...
We're at the Abu Dhabi Science Festival running a workshop called "Light Fantastic" and we're having a fantastic time running it! The children are making some amazing light painting images - have a look below to see the images from the gallery. Please note that the gallery has multiple pages - use the 'last' button to go to the most recent ones. We'll be updating these daily.
Tech Camp are heading up to the Newcastle Maker Faire again, and this time we’re bringing our very own time machine! It’s top secret at the moment but we can speed-up, slow-down, freeze, and even reverse the flow of water using the three ‘time controls’! We’ll be making up a few of these machines for the public to try out as it’s hard to stop playing with them once you start!
Just finished the first of our Tech Weekends. We had a great time (and hope the children did as well!) Most of them opted to build a laser tag game gun but Barney chose other kits and it was interesting to see what he was able to do with connecting some off-the-shelf kits. His first one was a siren with adjustable pitch and sound effect.
On Wednesday Townley Grammar School celebrated their STEAM day, one of their three annual off-curriculum days. We were glad to take part in this celebration. It was great for us to work exclusively with girls as sometimes our technology workshops are seen more as boy’s activities, which is not the case.
In October and November we enjoyed running a couple of different workshops on light. The first one was “Light, Lasers & Illusions”. During the presentation the children discovered how our eyes can be tricked, how we can burst balloons with different coloured lasers, and how a drop of water can be turned into a simple but impressive microscope.
We've just finished running a rocketry activity at a corporate workshop for a BP team. This is a great activity as it can be done at multiple levels with all ages and abilities. With the more able (and adult) group that we had today we can cover a lot of ground in a few hours, exploring some theory as well as building and flying a couple of rockets.
We recently received an email from one of our campers way back in our second year (2009) when we ran a biotech course. One of the projects was to make your own biosphere, a sealed self-sustaining ecosystem. We would have been impressed with one year, but this one is still going strong after four! If anyone else still has a biosphere, please do send us a picture!