By Arash Afshar

Imagine exploring cutting edge media technologies such as robotics, 3D modeling, animation, video production, game design, graphics and more from top rated instructors in beautiful San Diego. The Digital Media Academy Summer Camp at UCSD offers students this in a unique, one of a kind learning experience!

Through the UCSD Summer Camp, your child will not only have an educational summer, but also get to explore the outdoors in very non-traditional ways.

Skateboarding and Filmmaking is a weeklong summer camp at UCSD which combines an interest in film making along with the excitement of skateboarding!  Teens enrolled in this camp will have the opportunity to receive skateboarding instruction from experts, and film all the action.  Students will also learn editing and special effects skills when they take their skateboarding video into a state of the art classroom studio for post production.

For teens and kids who would rather spend time on the beautiful San Diego beaches, the Digital Media Academy offers a Surfing and Filmmaking summer camp at UCSD.  In partnership with La Jolla Surf Camp, parent company of Surf Divas, students will have the opportunity to improve their surfing skills while filming and editing their own video!

These are only two of the many fun opportunities students have at the UCSD summer camp.  For more information on these programs and more visit: summer camp information.

There are many reasons why year after year, students return to the Digital Media Academy summer camps. Fun classes, experienced professors, and the chance to make life-long friends are just a few of them!  Register for summer camp today and see for yourself!

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The teachers were great – kids learned about group participation, leadership, acting, script writing all in one class.  The kids had to make a 10 minute movie and an ad, had to come up with their own script, act, and edit their films. For my kids it was a real eye opener and got them to realize the effort behind movie making. I doubt if they will view movies the same way again. Who knows, maybe they might even pick it as a career.

Definitely worth the time and money invested!

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Have you ever wished that you could attend a summer camp just like your children? Well now you can. This summer, Digital Media Academy’s adult, teen, and kids summer programs will allow both you and your children to learn the latest in creative technology. And while youre busy producing digital movies, creating web sites, or designing games, you’ll also get to share in your child’s learning experience-first hand. Imagine what dinner conversations will be like instead of the typical, So what did you do today?”

Digital Media Academy: Creative Technology Immersion

The Digital Media Academy provides adult learners, including teens and kids, college students, K-20 educators, and industry professionals with a weeklong learning experience in a summer retreat or camp environment. In addition, participants can earn 4 quarter units of Stanford Continuing Studies credit. Courses include 3D Animation, Web Design, Strategies of Game Design, and Digital Video. Digital Media Academy attracts award-winning instructors such as Ben Waggoner (“world’s greatest compressionist”), New York School of Visual Arts’ Steve Adler, and veteran ABC producer and best-selling Final Cut Pro author, Tom Wolsky among others.

Summer Courses for Adults

Computer Camp for Teens

Computer Camp for Kids

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Digital Media Academy offers summer computer camp experiences for kids and teens at locations across the United States and in Canada. DMA offers six great locations to choose from in California alone. DMA has a lot of history in California. DMA was originally founded at Stanford University in Palo Alto as an adult only technology training program. Technology courses for adults and teens are accredited by Stanford Continuing Studies. The high standard and excellence in training has continued through to DMA’s summer programs for kids and teens. 

Digital Media Academy offers day tech camps and overnight tech camps for kids and teens on the West Coast at any of the following university locations:

• Stanford University in Palo Alto in the Bay Area – Northern California
• University of California, Berkeley or UC Berkeley 
• University of California, Los Angeles or UCLA 
• University of California, San Diego or UCSD
• University of California, Irvine or UC Irvine

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I am right in the middle of another great Digital Media Adventures course for kids at Stanford: Web Design and Flash. We are taking an in depth look at the Adobe Creative Suite applications: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, and Adobe Flash. We are on the third day of the five-day course at Stanford University. My class just got back into the classroom from playing a crazy game of Slaughter Ball. It sounds scary, but it’s a lot of fun. Sort of like Dodge Ball. The kids in my class are a little out of breath from playing ball, but that’s to be expected at a summer camp. They came running in and jumped (literally) in their seats excited about their Flash movies they created just before the break.

While the kids are experiencing all the fun of a summer camp, they are also getting an unbelievable learning experience. That’s what makes this the full summer computer camp experience. They are learning the same pro applications we are teaching across the Stanford campus in our adult web design courses. The professional Adobe applications like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, and Flash are the real deal! The kids pick up the technology so fast. That makes it really fun to teach. It’s interesting how much better kids interact with technology they have grown up with their whole life.

Earlier in the week, the kids in my class had already designed and created their own logo and company business card design. Their custom business card had their picture from a photograph taken in the class. The graphics and effects they created turned out amazing. They had learned the ins and outs of the Adobe software and were creating a matching website to go with their cards and logo. They were now adding an animated movie they created in Flash to spice up their website design.

In the next three classrooms I can faintly hear the other Adventures classes. The kids in 3d video Game Design course are screaming about some new level they created trying to destroy their enemy. From the Robotics and Programming class I can hear cheers of two robots racing. I see the Film, Digital Movie Making and Effects class go by with all their cameras, mics, lights, and scripts to go act, film, and direct their next scene. I wish I’d been exposed to this when I was this age! This computer camp is the real deal.

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Now that I am working for a company focusing on providing creative, computer-based experiences for kids and teens, I am grateful to see that my experience as an engineering college student is no longer the norm.  Increasingly, girls are exploring new areas of interest.  Last summer, we had over 300 girls take classes here at the Digital Media Academy, in areas like filmmaking, web design, video game creation, robotics and animation.

The most popular courses taken by girls, both in our Teen program and in our Adventures program, were filmmaking courses.  In fact, across all of our locations, Hands-on Filmmaking for Teens averaged 42% girls and 58% boys at both beginning and advanced levels.  In some weeks, the number of girls actually exceeded the number of boys!  At a younger age, our Adventures in Movie Making and Special Effects course, for kids ages 9-13, averaged 32% girls and 68% boys.  The most popular class for girls in our Adventures program was Adventures in Web Design and Flash, which averaged 47% girls and 53% boys.

Taking a closer look at what courses girls are choosing, there are some common themes.   Both filmmaking and web design, while deeply technical, are also very relational and creative areas of exploration.  Our filmmaking courses are designed to have students work in groups, from creating a storyboard to post-production editing.  The experience is very relational, and the end product is a film that communicates and expresses the group’s creativity.  Our web design courses also serve a similar purpose.  While the work itself is less group based, the end product is an individual web site that distinctively communicates each student’s creative expression to the world.

Perhaps these common themes can help make some of our other classes more popular to girls.  Historically in our summer camp program, the ratio of boys to girls in classes like video game creation and robotics is 10 to 1.  What can be done to make these classes more attractive to girls?Are the topics, inherently less a vehicle for communication, less attractive to girls by nature?  Or, in video game creation, are there different types of games that may be more appealing to girls?  Or, like my engineering classes in college, are these classes less attractive simply because of the historically lower representation of girls?

Whatever the answers to these questions, we will continue exploring and will certainly do our best to make all of our DMA experiences meaningful to boys and girls alike!

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