Summer camp used to be about swimming, telling scary stories, making s'mores, and, if you were lucky, scoring your first kiss. And about suffering. If bug bites, soggy weather, and the foul latrine didn't make you appreciate coming home to Mom and Dad, you were at the wrong camp.
And the most insufferable part of those long, hot days? The junior arts and crafts. All the popsicle sticks, googley eyes, and pipe cleaners I could wish for never helped me build anything worthy even of the kitchen fridge. And God forbid that cute girl from bluebird cabin should catch me with marker on my hands, glue in my hair, and a detailed replica of a Metallica album cover made from toothpicks and wood.
As if summer camp wasn’t traumatic enough, Make magazine now offers you the chance to embarrass yourself in front of your social-media followers. Their Maker Camp is held exclusively on Google+, with instructional videos, design experts, and hangout discussions.
Make made its virtual camp available to anyone 13 or older (with a Google+ account), and removed the risk of Lyme disease, or worse, cooties.Starting this week, Maker Camp features a project per day for 30 days, free, with optional attendance. By putting the whole program online, Make made it available to anyone 13 or older (with a Google+ account), and removed the risk of Lyme disease, or worse: cooties.
Each day's pet project is described in a post with video and directions by one of *Make'*s favorite designers, or "counselors," as they're known at Maker Camp. Then, later in the day, the counselors hang out on Google+ to help campers — me — share and get feedback on their projects.
To experience Maker Camp firsthand, I logged in to my habitually ignored Google+ account and sat in on Tuesday’s session, in which Jared Ficklin of Frog Design taught campers how to build animated GIFs.
Ficklin's hangout, streamed live, brought him together with camp director Nick Raymond, and several wide-eyed, inquiring kids. It garnered hundreds of comments, from requests to join to questions for Ficklin to the debate over the hard versus soft "G" sound and which is more appropriate when referring to looping image files on the internet.
For my camp project, I used LunaPic to build a stop-motion GIF of Rollo, the creepy cycling clown, rocking a pair of earbuds. Better in concept than execution, perhaps, but I learned a few things.
I'll leave the how-tos to Ficklin and Maker Camp (it's not too late to "attend" previous sessions; they're all available at Make's Google+ page).
The idea was conceived this spring with help from Google, after *Make'*s annual festival, says Maker-in-Chief Sherry Huss. "When people leave Maker Faire, one of the questions is, What can I do with my children at home?" Huss says. Maker Camp was designed to attract 13- to 18-year-olds as well as families and the odd adult enthusiast (yep, me again). Though they haven’t got numbers yet, Huss says the attendance thus far has been encouraging.
"This is … new, it's the first time we've done it, the first time Google's done it. We're definitely pleased with initial results," she says.
Much as my inner misanthrope laments the digitization of tan-line and character-building summer camps, Maker Camp turned out to be pretty cool. It's got plenty of projects to keep kids (and families) busy, including Friday hangouts on location, with visits to The Smithsonian, National Geographic, and even NASA.
While texting can be contentious at some camps, Maker Camp embraces the wired age.
And the projects are actually worthwhile, teaching useful skills and, better yet, the basics of makerhood. Make and Google have put together an efficient (if not exactly camp-like) school for makers, pegged to lazy summer free time; and I took away a custom GIF: Win.
Rollo's New Earbuds isn't likely to go viral, but it's a lot more interesting and useful than my feathered dream-catchers and clothespin abominations from all those summers ago.
Rollo Gif: Nathan Hurst
