iD Tech Camp Review

My son attended a week long camp at Penn to learn how to code an app. The overall experience was very meh. He was not able to finish the app, even though the marketing lit said he would. And the instructors told me he was one of the best in the class, so I'm assuming no one finished (we verified this). The real issue is that I've sent THREE emails to their web address to see how I can get access to the tools he was using so that he can finish. **No response** It's really sad that you spend $1000 and don't get what you're promised...and not even an email response. Look elsewhere.

My son attended his first ID Tech camp this past summer on the UNC-CH campus. He enjoyed the camp immensely! Making friends from different parts of the country and the world as well as meeting people with diverse views was an added benefit to the already stellar education he received. The counselors were excellent! When I picked him up I could tell he had an amazing camp experience. Recently he said this was one of the best experiences of his life. He then told me he wants to go for two weeks this summer - one for game programming and one for C++. I highly recommend ID Tech camp!!

My experience with these camps has been great. All of the instructors my son has had are very knowledgeable and he always enjoyed the entire day. It certainly is more expensive than other camps but they also provide excellent equipment, knowledgeable instructors with a low student to instructor ratio and a lot of fun activities. For me it was important to give my son exposure to technology to see if it was something he might want to pursue and he isn't going to get that in the public school system.

We enrolled our child in IDTech's 'AI and ML with Python' camp @ West Valley college in June, and our experience has been poor at best.

On Day 1, while our child was excited by this learning opportunity, according to his feedback - the student attendees were made to spend an inordinate amount of time playing 'video games' and waiting for their instructor to complete installation of requisite software for several students - something that needed to have been done ahead of time. Furthermore, several students waited to get the instructor's attention for a long time, for help on a task assigned to them, since the instructor was occupied teaching basics of Python programming to an individual student. As a result, a large group of students couldn't proceed with their project and felt neglected by the instructor, leading to demotivation.

We shared the above feedback before Day-2 with IDTech and they verbally acknowledged receiving the same. Nevertheless, even until end of Day-3, the said instructor continued to start his sessions late, end them early, have the students waste an inordinate amount of time playing video games, and failed to either address their questions or do so with poor expression. Apparently there's also a language barrier big and deep enough to hinder learning by the students.

When we did hear back during Day 4, from Alysa, their location manager, the best she could do was offer a standard defensive response of I believe we are meeting the educational standard we have set, and are providing quality instruction to all campers. , without any details of explanation about the issues we had raised. In fact I met the instructor for this camp at the end of Day-5, during the parent showcase and although I applaud his initiative in qualifying to tech this camp, as a rising junior at SJSU, I was shocked by the fact he didn t have any clues as to specifics of the last project my child had worked on - that same morning (from a class of total 9 students). Also, there was no attempt by the instructor to explain the projects assigned to the students, to a point where they all stopped asking questions by the end of the camp. To his credit, the instructor was honest when he opened his remarks during the camp graduation ceremony , with all students had fun playing compute games and ...

All these experiences likely represent negligence and misrepresentation of facts in marketing by IDTech. More importantly it feels like an abuse of valuable time and energy committed by numerous student's and significant money invested by their parents. This is totally unacceptable!

For our part, we've done our best to positively orient our child and have urged him to focus on whatever he is able to learn from this negative experience, though we can't attribute this positive energy to IDTech.

I appreciate that the Organization gathered all the research-based pedagogy and put it into logical sequences to make the camper and instructor experience the best!

What a completely asinine company. Apparently, even if you are interested in the courses and know that they were written for teens or younger, they don't want your money.

My child was bored and said they mostly just sat around and surfed the web with little to no supervision. For us it was a complete waste of money.

My son attended the iD Tech Camp at UC Berkeley for one week, and it was fun, but the content was not special or very good. They get one star because my son did have fun, and the instructors/all college students did their best. I would say, please read the reviews in yelp before you make a decision, and research local options. I feel there are alternatives that are either much better for less money, or the same for FAR less money. Either way, a win for you.

I was expecting a lot for the money they charge, almost $1000/week with no boarding. But, it was the same as what you can find for far more reasonable cost in many city rec computer classes for kids. We have done many other summer camps and classes in similar topics. The sky high $$$$ cost is in the fact that they fly college students from out of state, to be instructors. (!!!) Also the rental of these well known college campuses is not cheap. So just a word of caution, your kid will have fun, but it is expensive because you are helping to pay for out of state instructors and rent.
On a side note, we were also surprised to find that the kids were crammed into a small meeting room, (looked like bottom spare room in an older dorm?) packed with folding tables, folding chairs, and laptops with different size mice. They often can not make sure the fit is good for each student, because it is such a temporary setup. My son (and a couple other kids) had a computer with a short mouse cable, so b/c of the way the table/power outlet was arranged, they couldn't give him any extra slack to pull the mouse forward. So he had to use the mouse in an awkward position for the week. When it is a full-day program, you really need to make sure the equipment can be properly setup. But it is seriously such a temporary setup, the poor (college kid) instructors are doing the best they can with the stuff they are given, but they can't customize it for kids. So don't expect a glamorous computer lab. (Of course, it is a matter of perspective. By third world standards it is a great setup. But by US suburban standards, it was disappointing). Unless the university gives iD Tech access to campus computer labs, the facility your child uses will be a very temporary, quicksetup type deal.
I wrongly expected from the high price, and the UC Berkeley setting, that my child would be in a nice computer lab. It was very disappointing. I have seen similar content in many local city rec classes and independently run learning centers. The instructors were all very young college students, very nice, good kids, very enthusiastic. That is why your child will have fun - the instructors are doing their very best, with limited hardware/space resources. They also spend a lot of time playing video games and games outside, which is great, but not what I am expecting or paying for, from what iD Tech claims in their marketing material.
Definitely not worth the money, unless you are working parents with resources that don't care that you are over paying, and just need a full day program and to be able to say your child is at summer camp at Stanford.

We had a much better experience (in the Bay Area) at Bellarmine Prep (in San Jose) and The Athenian (in Danville), where summer classes cost about half what iD Tech charges and were taught by real MS and HS teachers with experience, and in real classrooms.

I am a kid that goes to this camp. I've been going to it for years, and I have loved everything. I'm also very good at minecraft hypixel. My username is Dqury. Friend me.

This is my daughter'a favorite camp. She loves the enthusiastic instructors and the curriculum. Lots of one-on-one attention and personalized feedback. This year she is also taking the all-girl version (Alexa Cafe) which is cool idea and much needed!

My son attended the Java Script coding online summer camp in June 2020 and was very disappointed. He found the camp leader was not enthusiastic or engaging. He wrote things down and said to copy it, without really explaining what the commands did. As a result my son found the course 'boring' and learnt very little. This was very disappointing for a a nearly $400 course (2hr day/1week).

Went last year, had an absouletly amazing expierence

iD Tech recently made significant changes to the schedule of their Squads product AFTER enrolling kids into the program, which made it difficult for my son to attend - primarily because as a divorced parent, I am on a fairly fixed schedule, and have to coordinate activities with a former spouse. Not always the easiest thing to do.

While the company claims to have been responding to parent feedback which drove the change, it is never a great business proposition to roll out a product and then alter the offering after people have already enrolled - and told their now excited kids.

So while that process will hopefully be a learning point for iD Tech in customer expectation management, they did contact me and worked with me to change my son's registration to private lessons. My hope is that this works out and fills a bit of a social gap for my son, by facilitating an activity that he genuinely enjoys in these difficult virtual learning times. I have therefore changed my initial review to reflect the effort.

He did participate in their virtual summer camps, and enjoyed the experience. Will see how the private Minecraft game development lessons go.

Not worth the money.
Unorganized and poorly trained staff.
There are probably numerous options available
at better price points and content quality.
It s definitely worth looking into.

Very disappointing... We paid almost $1K for a class and lost the money without any credit because I was told it had been "too long" and "the money is gone" I was not told there was a deadline for using this "credit." When we tried to register the following year, my son got wait-listed and couldn't utilize the credit. During this pandemic, it's kind of sad to see a company not be more flexible to allow participation when it's not that much more effort on their part to do so. I could have brought many students along with my kids to participate virtually this summer, but now I will not recommend them anymore due to their rigidity and unwillingness to be flexible. Whether it's 2 years or 6 years later, a business who wants to build a good reputation would be more accommodating when they want to build community who supports them.

While many rave about ID Tech Camp in general, we were very disappointed. Our son and a friend had a poor experience (3D Game Design -- Role Playing Games @ Santa Clara University from 6/21-6/26, 2009):

1) The computers/software they were using kept crashing so in the week long camp they took, they were not able to get much accomplished and basically gave up during the first day of the 5 day camp.
2) The instructor for the course was not helpful and did not answer questions.
3) Their group of kids ended up just searching the internet on their own to find random other games to play during the week to keep themselves entertained -- they could have done this for free at home instead of paying about $800 to do this.
4) They really did not learn anything useful for the week since the instructor did not answer questions or engage with the kids and the software they were supposed to use did not work well and no one seemed able to fix it.

So I recommend checking up on them early and often to confirm that you are really getting what you expect. Our experience could have been just a bad instructor, but the net result was a dud course.

Son loved the Minecraft and Intro to Java overnight camps. Has been using the skills sets learned regularly since. He is already asking to attend more iD Tech Camps at SMU next year. Faculty were great!

Not worth time or money. Teachers just follow a script without giving background context. Kids are told to just follow the script too. No room for asking questions or being creative. A lot of time waiting for instructor to debug each project one by one. The actual learning in a 2-hour session would probably have taken 15 minutes, when taught by the right instructor and in the right context. The only thing that made it less of a waste of time with the camp being online is that my daughter could do something else while waiting. But she didn't get anywhere close to learning what she needed to create the project she had in mind. Stay away from these camps.

Horrible. Money-eating camp. All they want is your money.

It is a poorly designed camp. My kid attended the Robotics camp. It was very disappointing. My kid went to the camp expecting to be given time for innovative work. The camp asked them to assemble a robotics kit they probably use year after year. This is how they invest the least of amount money for earning the most amount of profit year after year. My kid said he hardly learnt anything and it was not fun. He was not given much time for innovative work. This is what this kind of high-tech camp is supposed to be.

Horrible Horrible place.

If I can give a negative rating, I will.