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Not Your Average Summer Camp
Kids get techy at Geek Squad Summer Academy

By Allison Jean Eaton
Bulletin Staff Writer

COMPTON – There are no mosquitoes, campfires or sing-alongs at this summer camp.

If they weren’t too technology-savvy before, middle school students who participated in a hi-tech summer camp at Enterprise Middle School sure left as young computer wizards.

For four days last week, more than 80 local youth converged on the campus where they attended a range of classes at the Geek Squad Summer Academy, a program launched last year aimed at sparking in youth an interest in information technology (IT) fields as a career path.

The classes are all hands-on and taught by volunteer Geek Squad “Agents” – some from as far away as San Francisco, but most from the greater Compton area. Attendees, or “Junior Agents,” learned how to use digital cameras and edit photos, take apart and rebuild a personal computer, compose and record a song using Apple’s GarageBand software and build their own Website.

The academy was launched last year in Chicago as a means of interesting girls in technological career fields.

Its creator and director, a female Geek Squad “Double Agent” (an agent who provides in-home and in-office hi-tech help), said she saw a serious lack of diversity when it came to customers and fellow employees.

“I didn’t work with a lot of women and I was annoyed by that,” said Moira Hardeck, who now works at Geek Squad’s corporate headquarters in Minnesota and was on location in Compton last week.

So she hopped online and did some research.

“When you look into it, fewer and fewer women are going into information technology,” Hardeck said.

The academy was so successful in its 2007 pilot year last year that it has branched out to include both boys and girls and this summer is being held in 12 cities across the United States.

“There’s a lack of diversity in IT, and it’s not just gender-specific,” Hardeck said.

The main message of the camp: Technology is fun.

There wasn’t any trouble convincing the kids, who all appeared to be having a blast.

In between 1.5-hour classes, students rushed from activity room to activity room, enjoying Wii carnival games, Rock Band and a digital photo scavenger hunt.

The academy was held Aug. 4 through 7 from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., but according to Quinn Bobbitt, a store services manager at Compton’s Best Buy, the young campers were so excited to start each day’s activities that they consistently showed up early.

“By about 7:45, 8 o’clock, all the kids are here,” she said last Wednesday.

Thirteen-year-old Donald Hammond said his favorite part of the academy was the digital music course.

“You get to make your own song – you put it on a flash drive and you record your own voice,” said the Walton Middle School eighth grader with enthusiasm. “It’s yours!”

Jalen Clark, 12, and Jeffrey Aaron, 13, were both eager to show off their work-in-progress Websites to The Bulletin. Campers were able to choose a theme and upload photos and other applications while creating their sites.

Geek Squad is a subsidiary of Best Buy. Other partners in the program include Compton Unified School District, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Magic Johnson Enterprises.

Bobbit, a Compton native, served as a logistics coordinator for the camp. It was her first year, and she said she was impressed with the entities that came to the table to help make the camp a reality here in the Hub City.