A Tech Camp Biosphere - 4 years on!

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!

What an amazing two weeks! Robotics, Laser Tag, Web Design, Rocketry, Game Design and Raspberry Pi courses we enjoyed by almost 150 (our biggest year yet!), with all ages from 9-17. Our new venue, Sparsholt College, was excellent with great accommodation and ample computer facilities for our new programming courses. Evening courses this year were designed to give an introduction to new skills, and we had a bit of everything including juggling, Javascript, chocolate making, reverse engineering and even making…

Myself and Tom have spent the week down at Forres Sandle Manor school in the New Forest, running a 'Rockets and Robotics' programme for 14 children. At the end of each year, the school have a 'project week' where all the children choose from a wide range of activities to do for the week, such as cycling, needlecraft, sports and even trips abroad. We think this is an excellent idea as not only is it a fun way to end…

We returned to Cheltenham Science Festival again this year for the family fun weekend, and had an excellent two days with perfect weather! We also took part in the schools workshop programme earlier in the week, debuting our new electricity show and musical Tesla Coil. The festival was extremely busy at the weekend due to the excellent weather, and our tent was packed with people trying out some laser tag, robot wars, Raspberry Pis, line following robots and our brand…

On a cold Wednesday morning, myself, Tom and Pedro went down to Brighton to deliver a day of workshops for the Hijack Family Festival, part of a week long programme organised for children from 2-12 involving art, film, comedy, and science and technology. It was a non-stop day running robot wars, air rockets, our UV light workshop and crazy contraptions. See if you can spot our workshops in their video of the whole week!

A few of you may remember our RC planes from Aerospace Camp last year – one of the campers, Matthew Prett, has been making a few alterations since then and not only is it still flying, but he has managed to get some excellent footage from it using a GoPro Hero 3 camera. For anyone who has never heard of GoPro, their cameras are widely considered to be the best on the market and produce amazing full HD video in…

On Friday night we began the long road trip North to Newcastle for the Maker Faire, with Tech Camp regular Felix and our new employee Pedro, who will be joining us in June. We eventually got to the Centre for Life in Newcastle, an amazing science museum/exhibition space/research facility that was the venue for this year’s UK Maker Faire. We dropped off our equipment and had a quick sneak preview of some of the stands, including copious amounts of 3D…

After a slightly stressful journey (our train was delayed, the children were very well behaved!) we made it back from Edinburgh on Friday at the end of Tech Train 2013. We had a really fun, interesting (and hopefully educational) week of workshops, shows and sightseeing. Monday was spent at the Science Festival itself in the City Arts Centre, and the kids went to workshops on robot building, CSI and forensics, Lego Mindstorms programming and soldering their own electronic gadgets at…

Thanks to the purchase of a large vinyl cutter we have been able to transform the truck with a custom vinyl wrap and missiles on the roof! Hopefully the two (almost) full scale models of Sidewinder Heat Seeking Missiles will make it more noticeable than just any car with advertising when going down the motorway. For any budding rocket scientists out there, the rockets are made from standard PVC drain pipe with foam nose cones and laser cut fins rivited…

We've just opened up bookings for the 2013 season, and have some great news. We now have a wide range of courses from the technology of chocolate, to robotics, rocketry, game design, and even the Raspberry Pi. Our main events are now open to a much wider age range (9-17), with separate course choices for the younger and older campers. We also have a great new venue with all twin-share accomodation, and with the option for campers to come for…