Destination Imagination-Regionals

Oh, DI. That group project that lasts for months on end. That difficult challenge we had to solve. If you are wondering what DI is (and wondering why it sounds like die), in a sentence it is; a big organization that holds tournaments for kids where different challenges are presented and students must solve them with their teams then present on a certain day. The organization has its own website, which probably explains it more than I can.

The largest aspect is the challenges kids solve, but along with that there are instant challenges. These only happen on the day of the tournament. What happens is that your team goes into a room with instructors (called Appraisers) and are presented with a short task, performance or even both to do in just a few minutes. The instant challenges are far easier than the main challenge though. Pages and pages of instructions were to be read for everybody in my class.

 

Speaking of the class, it’s quite important to note that our class of twenty was split into five groups of four. In my group was Caleb, Kiera, and Sam. We called ourselves “The Constructures”. Our challenge was one called Drop Zone, and it was based around engineering. The two biggest things to make were a structure that we could drop weights and a story that could be acted out while fitting in with the dropping of the weights. Every team also had to include two Team Choice Elements (something unique group members can do) in their performances.

 

As I mentioned in the beginning, Destination Imagination lasts for months, and ends being quite a process. In the beginning, there were lots of sheets and reading to do so we could all know our challenge. That only lasted a couple months.

As we got closer to DI day, March 3rd, we finally started to build things. I had worked on the structure materials, wood and glue, but I forgot about a crucial detail. The structure was only allowed to be under 175 grams, and the wood we had planned to use was certainly not under that. This meant that we had to find very light wood and make something very sturdy out of it. In the end, the structure was four 7.5 inch tall pieces of wood joined together on each side by two diagonal pieces of wood, sealed by glue.

While working on the structure, Kiera write our rhyming script, and everyone was trying to memorize their lines. Our story line was a about a king and a queen hosting a ball that was wrecked by a giant wanting to kill them, wrecking things (this is where we dropped the weights) along the way. The resolution was the queen making amends with the giant.

 

We also had costumes, and put together an Event Depicter to help with the performance. The Event Depicter had to involve something scientific or technical, so the group wanted to use projection techniques for a background. This whole thing is very stressful, and at times it was hard to work as a team, but in the end everything pretty much was completed.

March 3rd, the day was here. And I was sick. I felt horrible that I couldn’t be there, but the rest of my team was able to perform our script.

Somethings didn’t work out, but I was really happy to hear that the structure had held the force of 650lbs! Every team gets raw scores, so we know where we scored the most points, whether it be in creativity or the story or the weight held.

After the regional tournament, which was this past one, teams can advance to provincials, which is bigger. Right now we are working on that, but all that work the class did for regionals showed me that team work is important and creative ways are always the best ways.