iD Tech

Absolutely awful rip off For a week long camp Adobe Aftereffects week of June 26 for nearly $1,500 my daughter learned absolutely nothing . They had some strange nervous boy ( most likely a year out of high school) who looked and acted less mature than... Read More the 13 year old students as a “teacher” - who had no experience teaching, had zero experience with subject he was supposed to be giving instructions in. Basically this amounted to a week long babysitting to several kids of duped parents .None of the questions my daughter had were answered, and she did not want to return after first day as it was boring and she was learning nothing. The instructor was busy providing silly games as entertainment instead of teaching the subject which he obviously didn’t know. My daughter could have learned more watching 30 minutes of instruction on youtube. Their week long project was a complete joke - something she knew how to do years ago. On top of it on the First day everyone was late to Bentley University in Waltham Massachusetts as the signs for drop off were all messed up. Then the cameras were not working entire first day of "instruction" Then I find out They spent nearly third of each day playing video games I think positive reviews you read on other web sites are absolutely bogus and they are coming from idtech. I know another child who took a different ID tech class in MIT at the same time and her experience was not any better, she left after a day. Her parents were beyond angry. As far as food - I purchased lunch "buffet" which was a euphemism for greasy constipation causing garbage like fries and pizza and grilled cheese ! The choices were non existent and salads were visibly unwashed and no one took them as they lay there withering ! How can you serve this junk ? I would be livid if I paid to have my child stay over night ! Most parents and especially the students looked abysmally uninterested at the “graduation ceremony” . It’s clear ID tech hires nobody’s for minimal wage with zero experience in subject matter , the kids are left playing video games and are kept minimally engaged so they don’t complain about this costly disaster

This is a review of the "Intro to Coding for Machine Learning" camp offered at Falls Church, VA in July, 2019, which turned to be more of a day care than an academically rigorous summer school.

I base my conclusion on my 17 year old daughter's report from... Read More the first day of the 5 day camp and my own first-hand observation of the afternoon of the second day.

I chose this camp in consultation with an ID tech associate, where I explained that my 17 year old daughter wanted to learn more about coding to see if she wanted to study it in college. The age range for this course was 13 – 17 years old. Our first disappointment came when we realized that all of the iD Tech camps shared the same classroom at the Falls Church campus, so my college prep daughter was seated literally next to 10 year olds enrolled in “Video Production: Start Your Own YouTube Channel.”

The camp counselor (I purposefully do not use the title “instructor”) made no initial attempt to survey the entering knowledge level of students.

When I visited the camp on the afternoon of day 2, I explained that it didn’t feel like a good fit for a college prep student. The site director (Vickie) was super polite but made no offer nor effort to modify their program to better suit my daughter’s goals. They seem to very purposefully be providing a particular service, which is not college prep. That service, best I could tell, is “themed daycare.”

If the “Intro to coding…” camp had a syllabus or learning objectives, the site director didn’t offer to share them.

Unlike a summer term academic term, where the content is compressed to fit into a shorter period of time, here the sparse content seemed to be spread thinly throughout the day to expand enough to fill an entire work day.

Contact hours discussing coding with the camp counselor were no greater than 50% of each day and multiple, extended blocks of unsupervised time were quickly filled by the younger campers with Fortnite gaming. I personally observed 8 of the 10 campers engaged in extended gaming sessions.

I withdrew my daughter from the camp before the end of the 2nd day and forfeited our tuition.