Ger­ard Best

Ex­ams are over, school is out, and par­ents en­ter the peren­ni­al strug­gle to bal­ance kids' down­time with ac­tu­al ed­u­ca­tion­al ac­tiv­i­ty over the Ju­ly-Au­gust va­ca­tion.

What if, in­stead of just veg­ging out on YouTube clips, your kids learned to cre­ate their own artis­tic and ed­u­ca­tion­al short films? Rather than graz­ing Hol­ly­wood block­busters blankly, what if your kids col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly craft­ed their own cus­tomised movie the­atre, com­plete with sil­ver screen and pop­corn ma­chine?

It's not so far-fetched, says Bevil Wood­ing, one of the mas­ter­minds be­hind Bright­Path Foun­da­tion's Tech­Camp. In fact, it's al­ready here.

"In this Tech­Camp, if you want to watch a movie, you have to make your own movie the­atre. You have to set up your pro­jec­tor, you have to cre­ate your cus­tomised light­ing and set up your an­ti-re­flec­tive screen, then you have to put your high-de­f­i­n­i­tion sur­round sound sys­tem in place," said Wood­ing, Bright­Path's Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor.

Since its in­cep­tion in 2013, the lo­cal edi­tion of Tech­Camp has earned a rep­u­ta­tion for di­rect­ing young peo­ple's en­er­gies to­wards build­ing so­lu­tions that are lo­cal­ly rel­e­vant but glob­al­ly ap­plic­a­ble.

The first two edi­tions of Tech­Camp fo­cused on dig­i­tal con­tent cre­ation. This year or­gan­is­ers went one step fur­ther to cre­ate a camp that could on­ly be com­plet­ed by the campers them­selves.

"If you want to fly drones, you first have to know how drones are made. This is Tech­Camp," Wood­ing ex­plained.

The idea is sim­ple. Rather than sit around face-plant­ed on dig­i­tal de­vices all day, Tech Campers are taught to open up and take apart fa­mil­iar gad­gets, iden­ti­fy their in­ter­nal parts, un­der­stand how those com­po­nents work to­geth­er, and then put them to­geth­er again.

"It's not suf­fi­cient to mere­ly be the con­sumers of some­one else's tech­nol­o­gy. But if we are to make the shift from net tech­nol­o­gy con­sumers to net pro­duc­ers, we must deal with deep­en­ing knowl­edge of core prin­ci­ples. At the same time, we al­so have to de­vel­op the mind­set and dis­ci­pline nec­es­sary to con­vert nat­ur­al cre­ativ­i­ty in­to sus­tain­able in­no­va­tion. This is the essence of Tech­Camp," Wood­ing said.

Over two weeks, campers are ex­posed tothe fun­da­men­tals be­hind the tech that sur­rounds them in every­day life. Then they get to put those fun­da­men­tals in­to prac­tice in high­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive group ex­er­cis­es. And of course they have a lot of fun in the process.

"At Tech­Camp, we cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment where nat­ur­al cre­ativ­i­ty in­ter­sects with en­gi­neer­ing, sci­ence and art prin­ci­ples. We told them that for the Camp they are not chil­dren, they are Mak­ers, and Mak­ers make cool stuff," Wood­ing said.

A day at Tech­Camp is pret­ty packed.

The smart class at the Cipri­ani Col­lege Of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies was trans­formed in­to the Tech­Camp Fun­da­men­tals Lab. Hands-on in­ter­ac­tive ses­sions were held there cov­er­ing some of the lat­est tech­nolo­gies, from three-di­men­sion­al print­ing and mo­bile soft­ware de­vel­op­ment to mi­cro com­put­ing, drones and ro­bot­ics. The kids al­so took part in ex­pert-led pre­sen­ta­tions on the fun­da­men­tals of da­ta an­a­lyt­ics, me­chan­i­cal and elec­tri­cal en­gi­neer­ing, an­i­ma­tion, pho­tog­ra­phy and videog­ra­phy.

To go by re­spons­es from the young par­tic­i­pants, rang­ing from ages 10 to 15, the im­pact of the two-week ex­pe­ri­ence was pro­found.

If eleven-year-old Amaris John has her way, she's go­ing to use what she's learned at Tech Camp to trans­form her liv­ing room in­to a ful­ly In­ter­net-con­nect­ed work­space where she can dream up oth­er de­signs and work on bring­ing them in­to re­al­i­ty.

"I've al­ready start­ed work­ing on it," she said.

Old-school val­ues

Tech­Camp has made its name by giv­ing kids a unique blend of tech­nol­o­gy ed­u­ca­tion and life skills need­ed to take con­cepts in their heads and trans­form them in­to re­al­i­ty.

"The chil­dren just love it," said Nyasha Pierre, ex­ec­u­tive as­sis­tant at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies, whose 10-year-old daugh­ter took part in the camp. "The chil­dren find it mind-blow­ing, as they get to build things they nev­er thought they could build."

But what re­al­ly sets Tech­Camp apart is its strong em­pha­sis on im­part­ing core val­ues such as team­work, dis­ci­pline and re­spect for oth­ers.

Darielle John, 11, was part of a group that de­signed the floor­plan for the Tech­Camp recre­ation room. At first, work­ing in groups was "com­pli­cat­ed," she said.

"Every­one want­ed to do what they want­ed. No­body want­ed to co­op­er­ate."

Af­ter a while, one of the Tech­Camp­fa­cil­i­ta­tors en­cour­aged the group to lis­ten to all the ideas and doc­u­ment them, and then work on blend­ing them to­geth­er.

"That's how we start­ed work­ing to­geth­er."

She said their change in strat­e­gy pro­duced a shift in at­ti­tude from "self­ish­ness" to "oth­er-mind­ed­ness," which made a huge dif­fer­ence. As she de­scribed her per­son­al process, Darielle's friends Re­gan Wil­son, 12, and Z�ah La­m­ont-Harp­er, 10, looked at each oth­er and smiled know­ing­ly.

"I re­alised that I didn't al­ways have the best ideas, and oth­er peo­ple had bet­ter ideas than I did, so we used oth­er ideas in­stead of mine," she said.

A num­ber of par­tic­i­pants are al­so chil­dren of Bright­Path grow­ing list of lo­cal spon­sors, in­clud­ing Teleios Sys­tems, Flow Trinidad, KR Con­sult­ing, K.Jame­son and As­so­ciates, Her­itage Won­ders, Dou­ble X Work­shop and the venue host, Cipri­ani Col­lege.Head of Stake­hold­er Re­la­tions at the Col­lege, Va­lene Mc Dougall, said, "We are our­selves in­ti­mate­ly con­nect­ed with the ex­pe­ri­ence of dis­cov­er­ing sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and the val­ue of team­work."

The fo­cus on char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment is­sues is de­lib­er­ate, Wood­ing said.

"We strong­ly be­lieve that there has to be a val­ues-based com­po­nent to all learn­ing."

He ex­plained that Bright­Path Foun­da­tion is part of Con­gress WBN, a faith-based in­ter­na­tion­al non-prof­it with op­er­a­tions in 100 na­tions.

"Tech­Camp is de­signed to ed­u­cate young­sters while ex­pos­ing them to the things that they are in­ter­est­ed in. Ul­ti­mate­ly, how­ev­er, the re­al ed­u­ca­tion is to in­still the val­ues that can ser­vice them for life. We don't want them to just be aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly qual­i­fied or sim­ply tech savvy. We want to en­sure we are rais­ing a gen­er­a­tion of con­fi­dent, cre­ative and moral­ly-cen­tered cit­i­zens ca­pa­ble of be­ing pos­i­tive con­trib­u­tors to so­ci­ety."