Digital Media Academy

One of the best camps my kids have ever attended. It is an academic camp so your kids will learn (if they pay attention) what you sent them to learn. It is NOT a fluffy face-​painting camp it’s an actual course and your child can continue learning afterwards. The best advice I can give is to mentally prepare your child that this will be a learning environment so they are not disappointed. My son is still coding a year later and can not seem to get enough of learning that subject now. I highly recommend this camp. Cheer!

my 9 yo son attended the Minecraft mods camp at U of Washington in Seattle the summer of 2014. He loved EVERYTHING! he learned plenty, dug the lunch pass and ‘eating where College kids eat’ it’s a spendy program, but he’s continued his interest in Minecraft and started programming using Arduino as well as many other cool tech things. Great camp, young, responsible professionals did a fantastic job with set up, registration and keeping the kids interested with breaks and games as well.

My daughter Taylor Maxwell attended the 2 week Filmmaking Academy at Stanford this past Summer and absolutely loved it. Not only did she learn everything one would learn in a semester of advanced filmmaking in college she realized her true passion and what she sees herself doing with her life. She was able to conceive film concepts, plan shots, plan dialogue, figure out props, film using various state of the art equipment as well as act and edit to produce two completely different films which were showcased at the end of each week to fellow students, teacher’s assistants and parents in a film festival. And did I mention she received 8 continuing education credits from Stanford University with the grade of an A and was encouraged to be a teaching assistant herself next year. I could not recommend DMA more for kids and young adults that want to learn and grow as a person all while doing what they are passionate about and in an age where most kids are sitting at home in the Summer on a couch just playing video games or playing on their phones. Bravo DMA for helping teach the next generation of kids to be productive members of society all while having fun!!!

My daughter took a programming course in July. The program is run on Stanford campus, which is great. The room in Old Union used for the class was way too small for number of kids and computers. The instructor changed course on day 3 and left the class in the dust — most kids played video games with little understanding of course material that was not age appropriate. Turned into a waste of time — and critically, lowered my daughter’s interest in the subject.

Extremely disappointed. save your money and find someone else
camp description was not really descriptive of what we were going to get, have we understood better the proper pre-​requisites we would have chosen a different offering.
The first of the week they packed 17 students in a room that could barely hold 6, I am certain that was a fire hazard and I am surprised Stanford allows this in their facilities.
Adding insult to injury my son forgets his lunch card one day and after the original payment of $ 2,200 I am pestered at work with urgency to go online and pay $ 13.00 for the cost of his lunch that day…
Do yourself a favor and go somewhere else

I’ve never written a Unilocal review, but I guess some experiences are so bad they motivate people like me to do so. My son, a huge fan of Minecraft but novice in programming and game design was so excited to attend this week of camp. He ended up being the youngest in his camp, and he was grouped with kids that were older, surprisingly mean and excluded him from the project. He would come home and complain, but I encouraged him to work things out wondering how much of this was his fault and how much of it was the camp. After he’d made it through the week and I attended the presentation to the parents. At the end of the presentation, the camp counselor thanked the oldest child in his group for «keeping the project together» in front of me and my son, and then told my son he didn’t have what it would take to be a game designer. My son is 12.
My son has never called me crying — ever — from any place or any activity — but he did from this camp. Awful experience. Awful. Awful. Awful.

Terrible waste of a LOT of money. This program might work for a highly motivated teen; however, if you think that you are paying $ 200 per day for staff that can notice, engage and inspire your kid, think again. My daughter found the teachers confusing and dull and the curriculum uninteresting, and the staff did absolutely nothing to inquire about this, work with her, engage her, encourage her to put her phone away (or tell me she was using it) or anything other than to blame her for not being interested. There was nothing special about the projects or equipment and the kids spent a lot of time walking around in the 80 degree heat (with no water available). There are no refunds for any reason, so if your kid hates it, too bad.

My active, 7 year old niece is very underwhelmed by the jr engineer Lego camp. We’re trying to talk positively about it, but she is very quiet about «what did you do at camp today?» The last straw broke when we got out of car and she said «thank goodness, only 2 more days of this!» Oyi– could have spent the money on many other things.
Couple of areas where I feel they could improve:
–the drop off time of 8:40am works only if you have a great deal of flexibility with your job.
–the pick up time for regular days is 4:45-again, tough for working parents.
–traffic getting in and out of the camp can be very challenging due to the volume of camps
–there was no «typical schedule» of the day posted on the site, this could help you determine if your camper would respond well to the camp. It’s more like school, less like camp
–in advance of attending there was no «list of things to know or bring» easily seen on the website. It would have been helpful to know what kids who are coming from out of town… ie, «Tuesday is animal day, dress like an animal… Wednesday is wacky dressing day». Had I not stuck around for «morning announcements» I would have no idea these days are happening.
–we registered more than 3 months in advance and at check in, our name was not on list
–we received emails not intended for our week
–the classroom where many campers are working are not air conditioned, it’s a stuffy computer lab
She’s not jumping into the car enthusiastically blurting out details about her day, friends, counselors like she is with the park & recreation camp.
So, while the fun content maybe lost, the upside-​the people are friendly.

Terrible — not worth the money. Go to ID Tech. Our 9 yo son did the Scratch/​Adventures in Science camp. The age range catered to (about 6 yo max) vs what was described (8 – 12) did not match. Snap Circuits for 3^rd-​6^th graders growing up in the Silicon Valley? Catapults as an advanced physics concept? I see. Perhaps they should peruse a few textbooks before creating a curriculum. Also, Scratch programming was parking your kid in front of a computer and never checking in, demonstrating commands, or helping troubleshoot. The best part was the lead instructor who said she was an Olympic qualifier (the visual did not support that). Right. And I’m a monkey’s uncle. I think after that statement, they should have checked her resume more closely and hired a competent and engaging instructor instead. Complete waste of $ 1k. Yes, that is how much this useless camp cost.

I have sent my kids to a variety of carefully selected summer camps over the last 12 years for fun and personal enrichment. This year I decided to try a technical camp and after researching, chose DMA over the competition. My older high schoolers wanted to test out their areas of interest before deciding on a direction for college.
We tried Intro to Java, 3D Modeling & Animation, and Music Production. All three kids were challenged and engaged every single day with the class. They each LOVED IT (Pretty tired at night!) There were no negatives and they especially enjoyed being on Stanford campus. My 16 y-​o daughter especially enjoyed getting to know international students and made some great friendships with girls from other countries. This is one of the nicest group of students my kids have been with.
Having interacted with a variety of camp counselors over the years, I was impressed with the caliber of the teachers and aids at DMA. They were sharp, communicative, really good teachers, and always willing to help individual kids with questions. We live in the area so we were commuters, but my youngest is eager to enroll in an academy and live in next year. One last kudo for the wonderful people in the office and administration at DMA. Really a high caliber group!

This camp is incredibly well run and organized! I was especially impressed by the personal attention to detail and helpfulness of the entire staff. The first day of camp, the class my son signed up for was not exactly what he envisioned. The Assistant Technical Director truly went to Herculean efforts to make sure he was happy, even took him out of camp the following morning to show him his other options and was even willing to let him come a different week if there was a class offered another time in the summer that had space. And above and beyond that, he called me, texted me, even late Monday evening to help find a solution, repeatedly insisting he just wanted my son to be happy and inspired by computer camp as he was when he was a kid. My son ended up staying in the camp he had registered for, as it became more and more engaging and exciting, and now wants badly to participate in the two of the other classes he was offered. On another day, I needed to pick my son up early and wasn’t sure how to contact the instructors to let them know I’d need to send a former family friend who was not on the pick up list. I sent an urgent email to their generic email address through the website (
) and within an hour, received a confirmation email AND a phone call from Rima Matthews with Guest Services, who assured me she had spoken with the Assistant Director and he would make sure to check the ID of the family friend and that we were all set. He emailed me as well. The Program Director at Harvard also answered my email late Sunday afternoon and night as questions arose which I greatly appreciated too! Exceptional service!
My son is not normally a kid who has a long attention span. I was concerned that a week of a 9 to 5 camp would be too tiring and that he’d get bored and unfocused, possibly behavioral. Instead, he came home happy, LOVED his instructors and his class, was eager to get to camp, and at ten years old, now wants to learn Maya! What a gift to give our children the foundation at this early age to start the ball rolling to actually earn a living doing something they love. My son would not have had this sort of exposure to animation, animation software, or any of this technology had it not been for this camp. My other son will be enrolling next year too! And hopefully my daughter when she’s older.

My son went for 2 week overnight camp summer 2012. Absolutely the worst. After arranging for them to oversee his meds and checking in throughout the camp, we pick him up and find he hadn’t had one dose. He went into withdrawal, did nothing in class and we were never informed.

Staff were incredibly helpful — great customer service! Extremely knowledgeable in course selection and very helpful in offering the information we needed to make the right decision on what to take.