It’s ba-ack. Destination Imagination. My never ending group project. You think your finished, but no. It keeps coming back. It wouldn’t be that much of an issue, but my biggest weakness is working in groups. Moving on.
Destination Imagination is a worldwide competition that inspires creativity in children and teens. There are six different challenges, that pull upon different interests and skills. Technical, scientific, fine arts, improv, engineering, and service. Each team competes in a regional tournament, and a provincial tournament. The top two teams from each category then move on to the global championship. Last year, our team could have gone to globals, along with several other PLP teams. None of the PLP teams went, though.
This year was different. We had only 4 teams, and had to compete against PLPs grade 10 students. Aaaaaagh.
I was- or am, not exactly sure- in the Fine Arts challenge, with Tamara, Melanie, Maggie, Lauren and Jessie. In our challenge, Change of Tune, we had to create a two act musical. We also had to have a spectacle, and a set change. A lot of criteria, I know.
We had three steps to the project, or Project Management Steps. This post will be outlining each one, and have a reflection of how I think we did.
Project Management Step 1
In this step we had to completely understand our criteria. It took a while, but eventually we had a complete understanding of our criteria, which I mentioned above.
We also had to create a Google Doc, so we could work together to outline all of our criteria. The Google Doc was also helpful in all of our other steps.
Project Management Step 2
This stage was the planning stage. We came up with ideas for our story, and each of the requirements. We also made a bunch of timelines, but wether we stuck with them or not is another story.
In this section we continued to add to the Google Doc. But this time, we were focused on what we were doing for each requirement, and who was doing it. It really helped keep us organized.
Project Management Step 3
For stage 3, we had to start building things. I was in charge of the puzzle board, one of our team choice elements, and the set.
The puzzle board wasn’t that hard to make, but the set was a mild disaster. It broke when I was transporting it to school, and we continued to work on it right up to the regional tournament.
On the day of the tournament, everything was hectic. We were the first PLP team to present, and third in our challenge. Everything kinda went south from there. You can see from the video.
We came in second though, and I’m very proud of how we worked through all the things that ended disastrously.
In reflection, I think I have come a long way from last year, but not project-wise. Our group worked really well together, and this got us very far. But because we were so afraid of getting into fights, that may have impacted our project. Anyways, this project was a huge turning point for my group work skills.
