In The News
July 21, 2003
TECHNOLOGY FUN COMES TO SUMMER CAMP
Author: Scott Kirsner
Camp Wing in Duxbury is just like the summer camp of your
childhood. Blue-sky days, splash fights in the pool, fishing
on the lake, ghost stories in the bunk, learning how to use
PhotoShop software, crafting a website, mastering computer
animation, maintaining a weblog. Oh, and lanyards, too.
In a log cabin outfitted with 16 desktop computers, an LCD
projector, and enough software to run a small Web design
agency, groups of campers tromp in throughout the course
of the day. The tech program at Camp Wing is run by a Waltham
nonprofit called WiredWoods. The goal is to get campers interested
in using computers creatively - rather than just surfing
the Web and dashing off instant messages.
"We're making technology just another component of
summer camp," says Dana White, executive director of
WiredWoods and a former marketing executive at Avid Technology. "We're
careful to make sure it doesn't feel like school."
One morning last week, the room was packed with campers
between the ages of 11 and 13. Signs on the wall offered
important advice: "A: Select All. C: Copy. V: Paste." The
campers had already figured out how to use WiredWoods' digital
cameras to take photos of one another. (They'd also taken
pictures of the assistant camp director and used PhotoShop
to warp them, giving him elf ears, a beard, and a long mop
of stringy black hair.)
There aren't any lectures in the WiredWoods cabin - only
projects to work on, and four adult "project specialists" to
help out when campers have questions.
Antonio Jones, an 11-year-old from Roxbury, is building
an online shrine to Ducati motorcycles and customized cars.
His Web page also tells visitors that he is an intermediate
snowboarder, and while at Camp Wing, he dearly misses his
PlayStation 2. Danielle Souza, a 12-year-old from New Hampshire,
has taken a self-portrait and appended rainbow-colored butterfly
wings to her back using PhotoShop.
Keandra Davis, a 12-year-old from Mattapan, stands up in
front of her fellow campers to give a short talk, using the
LCD projector, about the website that her team is designing.
"The site is about the differences between the boys
and girls at camp," she says. "What they talk about,
their habits and hobbies, what they think about the food." Another
group is planning a digital archive of the numerous gory
ghost stories set at Camp Wing.
Now, it's time for a team-building activity: Campers are
to use strips of masking tape and stacks of old newspapers
to build the highest tower possible.
"Everyone, hands off your mice and keyboards," says
Julie DiPasquale, a Somerville middle school teacher who
runs the WiredWoods program at Camp Wing.
She has trouble luring Sean Warren, 12, away from the HTML
book he has been reading, seeking a solution to a programming
problem.
WiredWoods was founded by Paul Deninger, chief executive
of Broadview International, a Waltham-based investment bank.
(Deninger also sits on the board of Globe Newspaper Co.)
"When we started this in 2001, we were responding to
a particular problem," Deninger says. "There were
computers everywhere, but we couldn't get kids to want to
do anything other than sit there and surf the Web. And surfing
the Web is a lot like watching TV - it's passive. So we try
to catalyze their interest in creating, rather than just
consuming."
This is the third summer for the WiredWoods program, and
it is now in place at seven locations around Eastern Massachusetts.
All of the locations, like Camp Wing, serve what's known
as "at-risk" youth, mostly from urban areas. Camp
Wing focuses especially on improving literacy skills, so
DiPasquale is wont to gently correct spelling and grammar
on a camper's website.
More than 300 campers will go through the WiredWoods program
this summer. The curriculum that WiredWoods has developed
is also expanding beyond summer camps, into after-school
programs and community centers.
"First we need to scale up [Wired Woods] inside Massachusetts,
but I definitely have national ambitions for it," Deninger
says. "Camp is where you stretch, where kids go to do
things they never would've thought they could do. They learn
to sail or canoe, and they sleep away from home. [Technology]
is just another thing to add to the list."
After finishing the tape-and-newspaper towers, it was time
for the campers to write a daily entry in their weblogs.
Then, it was off to the dining hall for lunch.
It was the same lunch you remember from your childhood:
hot dogs, cheese curls, and salad. (Salad being the least
popular of the three menu items, of course.
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