Do you have children between the ages 9 to 17 who are keen to start getting creative with technology? Fire Tech Camp is returning to Bristol with its ethos of encouraging children to explore creativity, technology and critical thinking by making games, designing hardware and gadgets, and coding. The week long courses let kids play and develop with Minecraft, Arduino, Java and Python, while being overseen by experienced tutors.
“We are super excited about Bristol – it is one of the top digital cities in the UK and we love bringing our workshops to the local community”
As Fire Tech Camp is new to Bristol, the courses have been discounted to £400 for 5 days (from the usual £550), but by quoting ‘Bristol365′ you can reduce that by a further £40.
£40 discount: Use the code on this voucher to reduce the cost of a signing up to a course
We spoke to the Founder of Fire Tech Camp, Jill Hodges, to find out more about what the courses offer and the plans Fire Tech Camp for Bristol and the South West.
“My kids went to tech camp in the US one summer and they loved it so I decided to build something innovative and exciting for kids in the UK”
Jill explains that she started Fire Tech Camp because of her experiences of similar tech camps in America: “I have two kids of my own and there were two things I really struggled with. One was finding fun, enriching activities for my kids during the holidays. And the second was finding ways to expose my kids to programming and tech skills that they weren’t getting at all in their school. My kids went to tech camp in the US one summer and they loved it so I decided to build something innovative and exciting for kids in the UK.”
And it is clearly an idea that has caught the attention of a lot of people: “We’ve delivered about 2000 short creative tech courses now to kids all around the UK”, say Jane.” We have raised over £15,000 for scholarships, including sponsorship from Bristol Green Capital for a special Green Tech camp that we held in April. We’ve also built wearable tech exhibits for the BBC’s Big Bang fair, featuring outfits designed with the judges for The Voice in mind. But our biggest successes are the experiences on a single-kid level. We love seeing them so excited and hearing some of their feedback.”
Bristol tech summer camps
With the success of the previous Bristol camps, Jill is keen to grow the number of courses being offered in Bristol: “We are running Fire Tech Camp in Bristol in August, w/c 17 August. We are looking forward to adding more courses and more weeks during half terms and next summer, as the word gets out to more people in the local area. We are super excited about Bristol – it is one of the top digital cities in the UK and we love bringing our workshops to the local community.”
The Fire Tech Camp Bristol courses
The courses available are shown below:
17 -21 Aug – Cost £400 for 5-day course (but £40 discount available if you quote 365BRISTOL)
Learn to code by creating games in the Java programming language.
This courses uses gaming as a fun and creative way into key computing concepts and coding basics.
The course will cover:
- The fundamentals of game design: stories, characters, settings, attributions
- Key terms and concepts within the Java programming language
- Familiarity with the Greenfoot environment
- Confidence in creating and implementing code
- Testing and de-bugging
- Tools and resources to take coding further through independent learning
Minecraft Maker Fire Tech Camp course
17 -21 Aug – Cost £400 for 5-day course (but £40 discount available if you quote 365BRISTOL)
Become a part of the incredible Maker Movement.
Make your own world, blocks and structures, and even experiment with different materials to create physical game controllers.
The course will cover:
- Learn the basis of gameplay in Minecraft
- Create a 3D world using cross-platform tools
- Customise blocks using skins, attributes and behaviours
- Create electronics circuits with Redstone
- Build and importing complex structures with MCEdit
- Design and build a physical controller with a Makey Makey
Video Game Design Fire Tech Camp course
17 -21 Aug – Cost £400 for 5-day course (but £40 discount available if you quote 365BRISTOL)
Love video games? Learn to build them!
This course will provide you with the tools and skills to create your own video games to play on the web or your smartphone. This is a class for all abilities and ages.
Students learn the key elements of game design:
- Telling A Story: storyboarding and structuring your game
- Platform Basics: using the GameSalad environment
- Graphics: Graphic design basics for your character(s)
- Control: Applying behaviours and attributes to characters
- Testing: Testing, de-bugging, perfecting your program
- That’s a Wrap! Take your game home, access anywhere online
Teen Coding With Python Fire Tech Camp course
17 -21 Aug – Cost £400 for 5-day course (but £40 discount available if you quote 365BRISTOL)
Get familiar with Python, one of the most widely-used and widely-taught programming languages in senior schools, universities and businesses, and learn to code from the ground up.
This course is for teenagers aged 14+ looking to get a grasp on coding fundamentals while building the confidence and skills to go onto code independently.
The course will cover:
- Fundamentals of coding: Key concepts and structure of languages and projects
- Project design: Theory and practice for designing a simple game or app
- Coding: Participants will learn to code in Python, work on mini-projects, building graphical interfaces, games and problem-solving routines.
You can book for the courses and see more info at firetechcamp.com. To get your £40 discount quote 365BRISTOL when making your booking. You can also keep up with the latest updates on new Bristol courses on Twitter: @FireTechCamp
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