Destination Imagination-Provincials

One might notice the similarities between the title of this post and another one I wrote just a month ago. One would be correct. Destination Imagination (just DI for the purpose of saving our voices) is a large competition where challenges are presented to teams, and the students in those teams work on creating solutions by ourselves. Everyone competes on one day (more if your team advances) and is appraised by Appraisers. My group’s challenge was Drop Zone, an engineering challenge. We had to build a structure that could withstand weights being dropped on it, and then fit that testing procedure into a scripted performance with a good storyline. There are also instant challenges, short tasks that need to be solved quickly with limited materials. 

This is the explanation of our challenge from the organization.

After regionals, my team (Caleb, Kiera, Sam, and I) of four was reduced to two because Caleb and I weren’t able to be at the tournament day of. Since our challenge was a performance, it’s not like we could do much to be a part of it, so the hard part was to recognize what we could now fix. We re-wrote and re-imagined our script to fit two people, and the plot was following Sam and Kiera as they searched for treasure. What I found really saddening was the fact that the Appraisers at DI took the structure we had and had to destroy it to see if we had used nails or not. This left us at square one pretty much. While we reworked our project for a few weeks, Caleb and I took a big step back to let Kiera and Sam worked on it to make sure that they were in control for the tournament. 

Even though some parts were quite last-minute, Kiera and Sam did a really great job initiating the changes. On April 7th, their presentation went very well, with less hiccups this time around. The Event Depicter, which was a hug up sheet with images projected onto it. The structure held even more weight this time, which was amazing. The whole thing was a big “Work in Progress” but I felt that we learned together from the mistakes made last time, trying to contradict what went wrong. Evaluations we made were about our raw scores and how the performance went.

The question our teacher asked us afterwards in our assessment process was “Would you do it again voluntarily?”. My answer, which I’m assuming is similar to everyone else’s, is a no. That sounds quite ummm harsh, but the entire time I was very stressed and worried about it. I’m not a huge fan of performing either so that put me off from the beginning. What I did like about this experience though were the things I learned in teamwork. I now know how to more effectively get materials and keep organized. The instant challenges also helped with organization, effectiveness and creative problem solving. There’s a section on Destination Imagination’s website that has test results from a case study showing the benefits of participating in the competition. It shows that the students are more creative, better at problem solving and excel in teams. 

 

 

      PLP shares basically every virtue that DI has, like project-based learning and growing from revision. The kids in PLP use project based learning because we want to go very in depth while researching a topic. With DI, we worked in our challenges for months and months. By the second month I knew the Drop Zone challenge extremely well. I also noticed that my Star Wars project was better because I could research everything to do with it. Through many critiques or dress rehearsals, our projects become so much better when we take the advice and guidance of others who have a different perspective.

 

While this project has 100% been a challenge many times, looking back I realized the different ways I could apply these new teamwork skills into future projects. The first weeks of working on DI were interesting because I could generate creative ideas, while the end was more of a scramble to finish tasks. Completing this unit was a relief, however also a time for us to congratulate each other on our work. The very last step, of course was to complete this blog post.