Good morning, afternoon or evening all! Today I’m going to be talking about a competition of sorts, that my classmates and I recently performed in. This is of course Destination Imagination 2022, or D.I. If you look back through my posts, or remember this post I did last year, about D.I. This was a pretty big thing. Last year was a bit different because it was all digital, there was no in person presentation, our performance was in a video form. This year, we had a semi normal performance. This was really fun, because we got to present at another school and interact with new people, which was really exiting.
The Challenge
This is a really cool project because we get to work with a big group, and solve a really interesting problem together. My amazing team was called the Despicable Devices. My teammates blogs are here: Alfie, Sepause, Dana, Makenna, Ben and Sylas
We had a really fun time trying to solve this challenge, while making an interesting story. We started out with trying to figure out everyone’s skills and strengths. We did some activities to find peoples goals, interests and things they can contribute to our D.I. Project. We also signed a Team Contract to ensure that everyone would participate. After this quick step, we moved on the the more dense part of brainstorming, coming up with ideas, and actually solving our problem. We took lots of time in Loon Lake as a team, just looking at the details of our challenge and coming up with ways to create a solution. By the end of the trip, we had a pretty good idea of what we where going to do for our solution. We where significantly behind some of the other groups, who where already working on scripts, but I don’t think this handicapped us much.
I was participating in the Technical Challenge, “Daring Escape” where a main character/s makes a daring escape from a dangerous situation. Including 3 hazards, 2 devices and 2 team choice elements where also necessary parts of the solution.
The Process
We started out with some time to get to learn our challenge and than write a test on it. I didn’t do all that well on the test, but I quickly learned the specifics of the challenge. We than looked at the details of our challenge and assign roles accordingly:
Our next step was to start developing a story around our “kind of solution”. We did most of that during our -Loon Lake Learning Advance-. After our trip, we had most of our story done, and split up right away to be as effective as possible. Some of us worked on the script and some of us worked to make our physical things, like our devices and hazards.
After a couple weeks of working on our technical things and scripting we had a solid solution, things where looking pretty good. Until this point, we where pretty unsure that we even had a feasible performance, devices or even solution. Next, we practiced doing run-throughs to memorize lines, timings ect. The next week, we did a rehearsal for our teachers, just to make sure they know what’s going on, how things work and just to make sure we where on track. The next little while was just adjusting, building and replacing things as well as tweaking the script for a more “real” performance.
Instant Challenges
Part of Destination Imagination is an Instant Challenge. We got some “testers” in class, to practice our instant challenge abilities, teamwork and the creative process. We did about 4 or 5 practice runs over a few weeks which was super helpful for the big day. An instant challenge is basically an impromptu problem solving opportunity. It’s worth big chunk of our total score and its a super fun team activity. They walk you into a room, explain the concept, rules ect. There’s three main kinds of challenges: story, built and both. They give you a certain amount of time to discuss your “game plan” and than another chunk of time to do whatever the challenge calls for. I can’t disclose anything else about our instant challenge, but it was super fun!
Why Though?
We do this to have a good learning excperience. I happened to learned a lot in this project. It was a more rich experience if you will, with competing live and having to perform over making a film. As a team, we learned how to function as a team by communicating better. Deciding roles, responsibilities and assignments. Individually, I learned about communicating properly with the team, performing to a live audience, being thorough with the rules for the challenge and being responsible for my chunk of the workload. The first few I’m pretty confident in but can always do better on. The last couple I have to work especially hard on, knowing the rules very well and being responsible for my work. I improved on these, by utilizing a to do list and talking to team members about the challenges rules.
The Big Night
Wow, this is it. Over three months of work, right here. This was a super cool, yet nerve wracking experience. During the ride there, it was a fairly long drive as far as local competitions go, and I had nothing to do. I just sat there and wondered how it could all go wrong. Biting nails, squirming in seat and brain churning. I don’t usually get that nervous for things, and I have no problem presenting in front of people, but something about this made it different, I still don’t know what.
Long story short, we crushed it. We did really well and had a lot of fun. At the end of the day, you just got to go out there, and do your thing!
My teammate Ben posted a video on his YouTube Chanel of our solution. It’s not great quality, but check it out if you want.
Feedback
We got some brief, initial feedback from the Apraisers before all the final judging, which we don’t have yet:
This rendition of D.I. Was super fun, and really different from last year in a cool way. I’m super exited for next year, and am hoping to get a different category like Fine Arts, because I think it would be very interesting and this is my second year in the Technical category.
Thanks for reading, until next time