Digital Media Academy is a

digital art Digital art refers to any artistic work or practice that uses digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process, or more specifically computational art that uses and engages with digital media. Since the 1960s, various names ...

and technology education company, located in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

, CA, and

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

, BC, primarily offering

STEM Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...

summer camp A summer camp or sleepaway camp is a supervised program for children conducted during the summer months in some countries. Children and adolescents who attend summer camp are known as ''campers''. Summer school is usually a part of the academ ...

and arts programs for students, age 9-18, at several universities in the US and Canada, including

Stanford Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considere ...

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

UCSD The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

NYU New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-United States Secretary of the Treasu ...

UBC The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks among the top three ...

, UoT, and more
Digital Media Academy Certified Schools
offers curriculum and teaching resources to K-12 schools globally to empower every educator to integrate technology into their classroom in a way that works for them. Digital Media Academy began as the Academy for New Media at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in the late 1990s as a program of Stanford's Academic Department and was officially incorporated in 2002. The Academy for New Media was created at Stanford b
Phil Gibson
in 1999 for K-12 educators and high-school students interested in learning the latest digital media software tools from award-winning creative professionals. Digital Media Academy was born in the Fall of 2001 after the Academy for New Media became closed due to budget cuts. Stanford University's Continuing Studies department offered CEU credits through Digital Media Academy from 2002-2014. In the Fall of 2017, the Company changed ownership, wit
Gibson
exiting completely in 2018. Students may attend Digital Media Academy summer camps with the

day camp Day camps also known as summer camps in some areas, are geared for those who are of school ages 3-7. They offer activities in a social setting, usually in the community and the children return home in the evenings. Day camps can be booked by the ...

or residential camp option or enroll in online courses.

Controversy

In the wake of the COVID-19 epidemic, Digital Media Academy was not providing refunds for cancelled camps according to its terms and conditions, which it updated in June 2020, well into the pandemic. The original terms and conditions had stated they would not provide a refund. Many angry parents were contesting the terms and conditions as can be seen on Yelp or other online review sites. The company had a class action that was dismissed against the individual but not the class. Health authorities policies were followed by the Universities partners (Stanford, Harvard, NYU, and all the others), cancelling all in person Tech Camps in 2020 and, according to DAM, also in 2021. Despite its June 2020 updated terms and conditions of non-refund in case of ''force majeure'', the company offered transferable full credit to all clients to be used during the Virtual Tech Camps 2021 season. The company emailed its credit holders in May 2021 that all credits would be canceled if unused by August 31, 2021 and they could only be used for remote options. The email also stated that DMA was aware that credit holders would not be happy with this outcome. The vast majority of the clients that have used their credits for Virtual Tech Camps were very happy. The satisfaction surveys shows a 96.2% satisfaction rate.

Partnerships

Digital Media Academy by a grant from The Nudelman Family Trust offers a 1,000 full scholarship program to make its courses accessible to underprivileged children and has partnered with various non-profit and community-focused organizations including the

New Media Consortium The New Media Consortium (NMC) was an international 501(c)3 not-for-profit consortium of learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. History The New Media Consortium (NMC) was founded in ...

New Media Consortium Website - Sponsor Profile
/ref> and the CUE.

References

External links

*{{Official website Digital art Digital audio Digital media education Summer camps in the United States Summer camps in Canada