Camps for Computers

By Kenneth M. Pierce

Snakes and frogs are discarded for BASIC and PASCAL

The summer camp in the woodsy countryside near Moodus, Conn., has the usual hiking trails, volleyball courts and swimming area. But the youthful campers are reluctant to test the great outdoors. Says Director Michael Zabinski: "We encourage the kids to go swimming, but we don't require it. After all, it's air-conditioned inside and it's hot and muggy outside."

Coming from most camp directors that statement would be heresy. But it is a typical attitude among staffers and their charges at the nation's newest form of summer retreat: computer camps. There, instead of naming wild flowers and singing One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall, boys and girls ages ten to 18 devise electronic games and learn computer languages like BASIC and PASCAL. At Computer Camp East in East Haddam, Conn., Vit Henisz, 12, articulates the campers' current philosophy: "Time for recreation is forced on us. Computer time is not."

A full enrollment of 80 youngsters is expected this summer for each of four fortnightly sessions at California's Computer Camp Inc., the nation's largest, located in Los Padres National Forest outside Santa Barbara. Now in its second year, the camp was created by Denison Bollay, 28, who became addicted to computers at age 13. About one-fourth of the Los Padres campers are familiar with computers before they arrive (some bring their own home computers with them); for most, though, the two-week immersion is their first close encounter with the machines. "We've got a computer at my school," explains red-haired Karl Kuellmer, 14, of Mountain Ranch, Calif, "but no one knows how to use it." Founder Bollay sees his camp as a response to what he terms the "agonizingly slow pace" of school instruction in the subject. "In the future," he says, "those who are not computer-literate will be at a terrible disadvantage. Training kids to work with computers is like training them to read--it's that critical."

Each morning at breakfast in the oak dining room of Bollay's camp, youngsters sign up for at least two sessions of such traditional camp activities as hiking, boating, swimming or horseback riding. "We've got to get them into the sunshine some of the time," concedes Director Garry White. But the chief focus of the camp is on computers. In three daily 90-minute sessions, beginners study BASIC and introductory programming; more advanced students take courses in robotics, graphics and computer-generated speech. During free time--once used to watch snakes eat frogs or to flirt with the waterfront counselors --campers play games on any of the 42 Atari, Apple, Texas Instruments and Commodore home computers.

After several days of intensive instruction (including homework), the campers choose their own computer project. Last week, for example, Peter Elliman, 12, was trying to design a program to analyze taxes for his mother, a Houston real estate agent. Halley Hupp, 13, of Newport Beach, Calif, said, "I want to make a C.S.I. [Computer System Instruction] program for teaching kids like us how to use some graphics and key words." Counselors give the youthful programmers high marks. Says Instructor Mitch Williams, 22, a computer-science graduate from the University of California at Santa Barbara: "I'm glad the kids are not too mathematically advanced or I'd have trouble keeping up with them."

Though there are only a few computer camps at present, operators are planning a series of new ones for 1982. Arthur Michals, who opened Connecticut's Computer Camp East this summer, received 2,000 inquiries after announcing the camp in newspaper ads. He plans to open a Houston branch next year. This week California's Bollay is launching the first of five one-week sessions at St. John's Beaumont School near Old Windsor, England; capacity enrollment is expected. In the U.S., the cost of the camps ranges between $300 and $400 per week. Though these campers may be more computer-wise than their peers, they have not entirely abandoned tradition. Epidemics of short-sheeting coexist with robotics and PASCAL. And, like campers everywhere, eleven-year-old Evan Katzman of Homestead, Fla., is quick to give a visitor the classic rating of camp food. Says he: "It's the pits."

--By Kenneth M. Pierce.

Reported by Cheryl Crooks/Santa Barbara

With reporting by Cheryl Crooks/Santa Barbara

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