Summer Camps

Students explore a variety of classic platformers, like Super Mario Bros. and Donkey Kong, before learning how to create a platformer of their own. Instructors will teach several advanced game components, such as keeping score, adding timers, and leveling up. Students will also learn the basics of video game player movement by making their sprites run, jump, and interact with objects and other sprites. This class is the first step towards creating more advanced, multi-level games!

See these example projects built in past camps

If your programmer thinks coding is cool, they will love how they can write code to control physical objects like lights, Lego® motors, and motion sensors to create alarm systems, robots, music players and light shows. Frequently called Physical Computing, this is the intersection of technologies that drive smart cities, smart homes, our appliances, and so much more.

Using the Boolean Box Micro, a micro circuit board, campers will work alone and in teams.  They will learn to code and invent by making physical objects that are controlled by code they write.

Like all of our camps, campers will be inspired to design and create their own inventions. Campers will work with lego blocks and other common household items like cardboard, pipe cleaners, glue, and so on to build a variety of gadgets.  We will combine programming, crafts and circuitry to create, build and power mini houses, create wearable circuits, and many more exciting projects including things that move.

We know this camp will inspire your children to keep on creating at home!

Python is one of the most widely used programming languages in the world – it is used by many well-known tech companies including Wikipedia, …Google, Yahoo!, NASA, Facebook, Amazon, and Spotify. In this course, students will learn coding and computational thinking using Python syntax. Students will encounter important coding concepts like loops, variables, and lists while they use Python to build a drawing application that creates a work of art. In addition to coding, interested students will have a chance to express their creativity through visual design. If your learner is ready for Python, this class will give them foundational knowledge and skills while having fun.

See these example projects built in past camps

text adventure in Python. Part game, part story, a code your own adventure program is inspired by the famous Choose Your Own Adventure book series in which the reader makes decisions that affect the steps and outcome of the story.

In this Python version, students will review concepts from the previous course and learn how to implement new concepts like conditionals, functions, and user input.  Students will demonstrate and celebrate their problem solving skills and perseverance as they build a custom user-driven adventure in Python.

change blocks, freeze water, create complicated structures, and build a game inside the Minecraft universe. Working with a Raspberry Pi computer and a special version of Minecraft designed to run on the Pi, coders will use the Python concepts they are already familiar with like loops, conditionals, variables, and functions. They will then learn about 3D coordinate systems and more complex uses of the concepts they already know.

If students are unfamiliar with Python, we suggest they complete our first two Python courses before signing up for Minecraft Python. We will assume Minecraft students are entering the course with an intermediate understanding of Python.

In the process of building their projects, students will learn what AI is, play with real AI tools, identify the ways in which they are already interacting with AI, and explore the origins and history of artificial intelligence. By the end of this course, coders will be able to demonstrate and explain how computers mimic human intelligence by making “smart” decisions.

This course is taught in Scratch so the students can concentrate on AI principles, not learning a new coding language.  Please see class requirements before enrolling.

into an important and influential subset of AI called machine learning. Coders will learn how machines learn to recognize and use language through natural language processing, or NLP. They will use Scratch’s AI extensions to design and build a new chatbot that utilizes machine learning to converse with human users. Finally, coders will compare and contrast the two types of artificial intelligence they’ve built and express their own thoughts on the future of artificial intelligence.