Throughout the summer months, the Department of Applied Engineering, Safety & Technology at Millersville University of Pennsylvania offers a variety of technology camps for children and teens from grades K-12. The camps offer participants the opportunity to receive exciting hands-on experience with fascinating technology, while stimulating creative minds-on learning.

Technology Camps are normally half-day, 15 hour per week sessions. At this time, no overnight accommodations are possible on the campus of Millersville University. However, Lancaster County can be a great place for the family to vacation at while their children attend our camps.

Parents can register their child for morning or afternoon camps depending on their family's summer schedule. Every camp is packed chock-full with learning, interaction, and hands-on activities. Activities can range from making model planes to flying real ones; making model bridges to building life size bridges. Every summer new and exciting camps are being added to our schedule.

A number of parents have inquired about us providing supervision over the lunch hour so that a student can take both a morning and afternoon camp. If enough of you are interested we can provide supervision for an additional fee but you'll have to let the camp director know by e-mail.  We would consider doing this the weeks of June 24^th, July 8^th, July 15^th or July 22^nd. All of these weeks have camps  in the morning and afternoon.

Millersville University, in conjunction with Johns Hopkins University is offering and intensive four week Engineering Innovation course that offers high school students in grades 11 and 12 the opportunity to think and problem solve like engineers! The course will be held July 1 through July 26, 2013 from 9:00am to 3:00pm on the Millersville Campus. For more details and registration information, please see the Johns Hopkins Web site at engineering-innovation.jhu.edu.

This summer we will celebrate our 20^th year of teaching about technology and engineering to students ranging from grades 3 – 12 through our summer camp series. The camp was founded by myself and a friend and MU Alum, John Brown, who will retire from a career as a technology teacher in Pennsylvania and more recently Delaware as of this June. Our first and most popular camp to this day remains LEGO Camp. Twenty years ago John was working for LEGO’s Educational Products Division and I was teaching about programmable control using industrial components. We thought we could run a LEGO camp using LEGO’s first-generation computer controlled products. At that time we didn’t have any equipment, but John got support from  LEGO and they loaned us products to teach the camp. We filled four sections that summer and we knew we had stumbled upon an interesting educational alternative to other types of summer camps for children and teens. In subsequent summers we began offering other topics and while some have come and gone we have continued to offer a vibrant program that has grown to more than 20 summer offerings for children and teens. Additionally we have partnered with many fine organizations throughout the years that have provided tuition assistance for disadvantaged youth to participate in our camps. Except for that heart-attack in the middle of kids camp in the summer of 2003 it has all gone so quickly! Enjoy our camps for summer 2013 and best wishes.  Len

A focus of engineering-related careers:

When the tech camp series starter it was intended to cater to high school students and provide them with an introductory college experience without the stress brought on by graded assignments and credit-bearing experiences. Originally our offerings were topics intended for high schoolers, but we have found a larger market with upper elementary and middle school students. This summer new offerings are on the schedule both as week-long camps and one-day exploratory experiences for students with interests in electronics, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, 3-D solid modeling, an electro-mechanical engineering. There is also a week-long camp dealing with cyber security and the return of the popular Hyper-Line Tracker Robot Building Kit experience.

Some unique applications for smart phones:

Geocaching has evolved into a fun use for GPS-enabled smart phone and other GPS devices. The "Adventures in Geocaching" is an exciting camp that can best be described as a high-tech scavenger hunt. THere are also several sections of the ever popular LEGO robotics camp using the NXT brick and NXTg coding. Another new addition this year is a camp that looks at photography from the standpoint of using smart phone cameras to capture good images, as well as other free phone apps.

Camp Founders: Len Litowitz
and John Brown