Tech-Camp

    No.6 Devon Road, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong a technology day camp for students 12-17  

About Tech-Camp       

Tech-Camp is a day camp with a focus on computers and electronics technology. We offer 2-week summer programmes for students of 12 to 17 years of age. We have a computer lab with the latest and fastest equipment, an electronics lab, and a video production studio. Our staff are special, too. They are experts in computers and electronics, of course, but they are also people who care about children and enjoy working with them.

The benefits of Tech-Camp        

    In all of our programmes, we show students how to work in teams and how to solve problems by themselves. We encourage them to think creatively.       

What students will do at Tech-Camp       

    Each day Tech-camp is filled with useful, interesting and challenging activities. For example, in the Computer Programme, students learn the basic computer programming, and how to use the Internet. In the Tech-Camp Programme, they make radio-controlled model cars and produce their own short videos.       

Programme Session 1 Session 2 Session 3

Computer Programme 15 June-26 June 15 June-26 June 15 June-26 June

High-tech Programme 29 June-10 July 27 July-7 August 15 June-26 June

Fee: HK $2,000 per student       

(10% discount available for groups of 10 or more students.)       

For more information about Tech-Camp, please contact Director of Summer Programmes, Ms     Julia Brown, by phone, fax or e-mail.       

Telephone: 26548898           

Fax: 26948850       

E-mail: juliab@techcamp.com.hk       

    Children have their own rules in playing games. They seldom need a referee(裁判) and rarely trouble to keep scores. They don't care much about who wins or loses, and it doesn't seem to worry them if the game is not finished. Yet, they like games that depend a lot on luck, so that their personal abilities cannot be directly compared. They also enjoy games that move in stages, in which each stage, the choosing of leaders, the picking-up of sides, or the determining of which side shall start, is almost a game in itself.

    Grown-ups can hardly find children's games exciting, and they often feel puzzled（迷惑的）at why their kids play such simple games again and again. However, it is found that a child plays games for very important reasons. He can be a good player without having to think whether he is a popular person, and he can find himself being a useful partner to someone of whom he is ordinarily afraid. He becomes a leader when it comes to his turn. He can be confident, too, in particular games, that it is his place to give orders, to pretend to be dead, to throw a ball actually at someone, or to kiss someone he has caught.

    It appears to us that when children play a game they imagine a situation under their control. Everyone knows the rules, and more importantly, everyone plays according to the rules. Those rules may be childish, but they make sure that every child has a chance to win.

    You are the collector in the gallery of your life. You collect. You might not mean to but you do. One out of three people collects tangible（有形的）things such as cats, photos and noisy toys.

    There are among some 40 collections that are being shown at “The Museum Of”—the first of several new museums which, over the next two years, will exhibit the objects accumulated by unknown collectors. In doing so, they will promote a popular culture of museums, not what museums normally represent.

    Some of the collections are fairly common—records, model houses. Others are strangely beautiful—branches that have fallen from tree, for example. But they all reveal （显露）a lot of things: ask someone what they collect and their answers will tell you who they are.

    Other on the way include “The museum of Collectors” and “The Museum of Me.”These new ones, it is hoped, will build on the success of “The Museum Of.” The thinkers behind the project want to explore why people collect, and what it means to do so. They hope that visitors who may not have considered themselves collectors will begin to see they, too, collect.

Some collectors say they started or stopped making collections at important point: the beginning or end of adolescence—“it's a growing-up thing; you stop when you grow up,”says one. Other painful times are mentioned, such as the end of a relationship. For time and life can seem so uncontrollable that a steady serial（顺序排列的）arrangement is comforting.

    Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago in 1954 to a Mexican American family. As the only girl in a family of seven children, she often felt like she had "seven fathers ", because her six brothers, as well as her father, tried to control her. Feeling shy and unimportant, she hid herself into books. Despite her love of reading, she did not do well in elementary school because she was too shy to participate.

    In high school, with the encouragement of one particular teacher, Cisneros improved her grades and worked for the school literary magazine. Her father encouraged her to go to college because he thought it would be a good way for her to find a husband. Cisneros did attend college, but instead of searching for a husband, she found a teacher who helped her join the famous graduate writing program at the University of Iowa. At the University's Writers' Workshop, however, she felt lonely—a Mexican American from a poor neighborhood among students from wealthy families. The feeling of being so different helped Cisneros find her "creative voice".

    "It was not until this moment when I considered myself truly different that my writing acquired a voice. I knew I was a Mexican woman, but I didn't think it had anything to do with why I felt so much imbalanced in my life, but it had everything to do with it! That's when I decided I would write about something my classmates couldn't write about."

    Cisneros published her first work, The House on Mango Street , when she was twenty-nine. The book tells about a young Mexican American girl growing up in a Spanish-speaking area in Chicago, much like the neighborhoods in which Cisneros lived as a child. The book won an award in 1985 and has been used in classes from high school through graduate school level. Since then, Cisneros has published several books of poetry, a children's book, and a shortstory collection.

    It is commonly believed that in medieval France, New Year was celebrated on 1 April. Then in 1562, Pope Gregory introduced a new calendar for the Christian world, changing New Year to 1 January. With no modern communications, news travelled slowly and new ideas were often questioned. Many people did not hear of the change, some merely forgot, and others chose to ignore it. These people were called fools. Invitations to non-existent "New Year" parties were sent and other practical jokes were played. Over time playing tricks on 1 April became a tradition. The custom eventually spread to England and Scotland, and it was later transported across the Atlantic to the American colonies (殖民地) of the English and the French. April Fools' Day has now developed into an international festival of fun, with different nationalities celebrating the day in special ways.

    France and Italy

    In France and Italy, if someone plays a trick on you, you are the "fish of April". By the month of April fish have only just hatched and are therefore easy to catch. Children stick paper fish to their Friends' backs and chocolate fish are found in the shops.

    America and Britain

    Today, Americans and the British play small tricks on friends and strangers alike on 1 April. A common trick is to point to a friend's shoe and say "Your shoelace (鞋带) is untied." When they look down, they are laughed at. Schoolchildren might tell a friend that school has been cancelled. Sometimes the media get involved. Once, a British short film was shown on April Fools' Day about spaghetti farmers and how they harvest their crop from spaghetti trees!

    Scotland

    In Scotland, April Fools' Day lasts for two days! The second day is called "Taily Day" and tricks on this day involve the bottom (or the "tail", in informal speech). Often a sign saying ‘kick me' is stuck onto someone's back without them knowing.

    Did you ever have to say "no" to somebody? Such as a classmate who asks to go to lunch with you? New research suggests that, at least socially, a rejection (拒绝) should not include an apology. In other words, saying you are sorry does not make the person being rejected feel any better. In fact, it might make the rejected person feel worse. That is surprising. Many people consider it to be good manners to say they are sorry when they turn down a request.

    Gili Freedman is doing some related research at Dartmouth College. For her research, she asked over 1,000 people to respond to different examples of social rejection. In one example, the researchers asked people for their reaction (反应）after a person named Taylor asked to join a co-worker who went out to lunch every Friday. And Taylor was told "no". But in some cases, the person rejecting Taylor offered an apology. In other cases, the people doing the rejection did not say they were sorry. People were asked how they would feel if they were being turned down, just as Taylor was. Most said they would be more hurt by a rejection with an apology than a rejection without an apology.

    Freedman said the reason is that apologies make people feel like they need to say that the rejection was okay— even when they felt like it was not okay. Rejection without an apology lets them express their feelings of disappointment, hurt or anger more easily. Freedman also said that an apology often makes the person doing the rejection feel better—even as it makes the person being rejected feel worse.

    Her research deals only with social communication. A business situation might be very different. "If a manager rejects a job interviewee or a boss must tell an employee that he or she is being fired from a job," Freedman said, "reactions to apologies may be different."