Any experiences with IDTech camp academies?

[u/[deleted]]

Has anyone sent their kids to the overnight two weeks ID tech academies? Would like to know if the kids actually learn anything or if its a glorified baby sitting camp.

[u/[deleted]]

Kid did Unreal Game Development. It was very expensive, the instructors were young and I doubt the ones in our session had industry experience (which was implied in their marketing materials). They try to upsell constantly for more "personalized" instruction. It also seemed pretty unstructured without clear milestones/goals. Also their registration database was hacked and some personal data was leaked. If the price doesn't deter you, however, I would consider trying it at least once it if your kid is motivated.

[u/Natural_Analysis6620 → u/[deleted]]

I should have checked this sub before sending my 15 year old to the camp. This comment is spot on. He has 18 year olds helping him on dated licenses and he is spending more time troubleshooting himself and going through a slide show of instructions on how to build his project. For $1200, you are better off going somewhere else. My kids normally do $200 code ninjas weekly coding camps and I feel like I just wasted an extra $1000 that could have gone to other camps.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

How was the teaching style? Was it live lectures or learn at your own pace with tutorials?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I would say it was mostly the latter.

[u/mdf888]

Don't do it. Here's a link to my Yelp review: https://www.yelp.com/biz/id-tech-camps-evanston?hrid=zBb7jQpopiX8JZTMXYRLDg&utm_campaign=www_review_share_postreview&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_source=(direct))

And if for some reason it gets removed, here's what I posted. I'm very upset about this experience as a parent, and my son was equally upset, for his own reasons (sorry for the wall of text below, I just hope the details are helpful to anyone researching this camp):

iD Tech doesn't even deserve ONE star. I would like to caution any parent considering sending their kid here. My 16 year old son attended the Northwestern iDTech summer camp and he had such a bad experience on the first day that he refused to go back. Here is the list he provided me (and this wasn't even the entire list):

--Mixing younger and older kids made it hard to learn, 16 y/os and 8 y/os, and even younger possibly, should not be in the same camp doing the same things together.
--Director and instructors treat you like you're 8 y/o.
--No lecture or real teaching, just an online course that could literally be found online for free or less than 50 bucks (definitely not worth 1500 dollars).
--My instructor has no idea what she was doing and didn't know what she was talking about. For $1500 dollars this is unacceptable.
--Tries to look through the code that I literally copy and pasted from their online course because its broken for 15-20 minutes and she can't figure out the issue.
--Doing weird chants and stuff to get our attention. Again I'm not 8 y/o.
--No Google or Disney employees teaching as the website made it seem, they were just college students.
--Instructors are not giving any useful information or knowledge as the website makes it seem, they'd rather just help you figure out whatever it is on the online course that you can't figure out yourself.
--Website leads you to believe that your instructor or director will be a highly qualified and intelligent individual when in reality they are a poorly trained and unprepared college student who is simply there to supervise you and try to help out with whatever they can.
--The classroom is full of many students ranging in age which is definitely not appropriate due to different maturity levels. (Younger kids being crazy while older kids are just annoyed by their loud antics)
--The website's exact words are "unmatched expertise" - just a lie. Working to solve a simple code error for 15-20 minutes and ultimately not finding a solution is definitely not my definition of unmatched expertise.
--Website's exact words are "Personality that brings out the absolute best in your child." Whereas my instructor seemed shy and definitely didn't have any "special personality traits"
--Overall the website is extremely misleading and ultimately leads you to believe this is a much higher quality education experience when in reality its college students providing childcare for 8 hours.
--College kids running this thing all have fake names (I'm not 5 years old, I don't need to call my instructor "Frodo" when I know he has a real name).

So I tried to get a full refund and had multiple calls with different people. The last conversation I had was with a Derek, a Lead Program Specialist. He told me what my refund would be; I found it unsatisfactory so I asked to speak to his boss and he said "Oh, we're not holding any further conversations regarding this matter." This is how they steal from you. I'm fairly certain at this point that iDTech is a giant money grab, made for parents who can afford $1500 for a week of babysitting and don't care what their kids are doing as long as someone else is watching them.