It’s summer again, and kids are writing letters at “Camp Grenadas” all over the country. But as campers whip out their pens and paper the old-school way, moms and dads are switching on their PCs.

That’s because snail-mail is out and computers are in. Now e-mail is the fastest way for parents to communicate with their kids at camp, says Jeff Solomon, spokesman for the National Camp Assn. More than 90 percent of camps use computers for activities, administration or communication.

But isn’t the whole point of camp for kids to experience the outdoors? Fortunately, there are companies that can help keep parents updated each day while kids are outside getting muddy and catching frogs.

ECamp (www.ecamp.net) offers tools for building Web sites with photo galleries and video clips of the day’s activities that can be continually updated. “Parents log on religiously,” co-founder Seth Hirschel says. “The average parent logs on 10 times a day.”

There’s also one-way e-mailing, in which eCamp combines and alphabetizes parents’ addresses into one document so camps only have to hit the print button once. For kids who want to write back, there are “faxbacks” – stationery with the parents’ e-mail address embedded in a barcode. After kids write a note, the camp will fax the stationery to eCamp. ECamp’s computer will scan the barcode and e-mail the note to the parents.

Bunk1 (www.bunk1.com) offers similar services to eCamp in addition to CD-ROM yearbooks – a photo slide show of the summer, with music in the background.

Scott Fiedler, director of Brookwood Camps in Glen Spey, N.Y., uses Bunk1’s services, and says he’s getting fewer calls from nervous parents since starting a Web site with a photo gallery because parents “see their children playing sports and smiling, and they figure they’re OK.”