Hello! Welcome back to My Dog ate my Blog! This post will be about my experience at the DI regional tournament. I explained a bit about DI in my mPOL post, but not much. So, you probably have know idea what DI stands for, so I will tell you. It stands for Destination Imagination. Destination Imagination is a tournament in which you prepare for for months before with research, practices, construction, run throughs, planning, and scheduling. In, about, October we were introduced to the idea of it and put into our teams. I chose the Improvisational challenge, Treasure! “Treasure!” Was one of 5 different challenges we could choose from. Technical, scientific, engineering, fine arts, and of course, improvisational. I chose the Improvisational challenge, definitely not because I was super experienced or good at it, but because I found improv super fun and a bit of a challenge. Treasure’s objective is to return a cultural treasure to it’s rightful owner, acting as two different explorers. You get thrown a random setback and unusual place, you get two minutes to prepare and five minutes to perform in a group of 4. There is an official Destination Imagination treasure video below if you want to take a look at that:

In my group, I had Jackson, Taylor, and Aedan. Sadly, one of our members was unable to make it to the regional tournament due to other commitments so it kind of put a but of a bump in our plan, but we figured it out. We got to choose 8 explorers to research, as well as 8 cultures/cultural treasures. We chose the explorers from a given set, but we got to choose any random culture we wanted, but they had to have a significant treasure and be real.

Up until March third, the day of the regional tournament my group practiced extremely hard, researching up a storm, practicing over and over again, and planning what we were going to do for each combination of the central challenge elements (explorers, cultures/cultural treasures, setback, and unusual place). It was a lot of hard work, but when the day came, it payed off. When we got there, we did our parade through the gym with all of the other teams and then we waited, and waited, and waited until it was time for our performance. We signed in, blindly chose our elements out of a bowl, and then went into to our performance arena. Here is a video of our performance, look carefully, see what we did well and if there was anything we could have improved. You might need to turn up your volume to hear it well!

What do you think? It think there was a lot we could have improved! But I think quite a bit went well too. We got our elements, planned for two minutes, which I think went pretty well, but I think we could have focused on a beginning, middle, and end a bit more. Then it was time! We started with a bit of an introduction, we explained why the Cree nation story telling was so important, then we got into finding it and returning it with our two explorers, John James Audubon, and Valentina Nikolayeva Tereshkova. They had to find the treasure in a costume shop and return it to their rightful owners, the Cree nation, while performing a setback which was the moon went missing. As you could probably tell, we messed that part up a little bit since some of us misread the piece of paper. Below this, I’ll put a video, my friend Taylor is interviewing me about my experience at the tournament and…….. her dog might make a special appearance in it!

Click here to see Taylor’s Blog!!

I think it’s time we talk about our raw scores. To be honest, it’s not to fun to talk about. As you saw in the video of our actual performance we flunked it a bit. We ran out of time and we messed up the set back BIG time. I think over all, it definitely was not our best work. But it was only a F.A.I.L. Our First Attempt In Learning, we always have room for improvement, and lucky for us this time, it was only our first chance! We still get to go to provincials and try again. I know this time it will be better. One thing the appraisers (not judges because they don’t JUDGE you, they PRAISE you) said went well for us, was our prop in-motion, the white bed sheet we used in the performance as kind of a time divider and a cloak for Aedans costume. Something else they said went well was the humour in our skit, if you kept hearing the audience laugh in the video, it was because Jackson, one of our teammates, kept saying Valentina Nikolayeva Tereshkova faster and faster every time he said it. That made the audience laugh as well as the appraisers. Here is a picture of our raw scores as well as some notes from the appraisers:

The last thing I want to talk about is the Instant challenge. I can’t say much though, just a brief outline of what it is because it’s…… (shhhhhhhh) TOP SECRET!! We can’t tell anyone until after globals which is on May 26th, soooooo far away! Aghhhhhhhhhh! Anyway, an instant challenge is a mini challenge you do alongside your central challenge. It can either be performance based, tasked based, or a combination of both. You do it as a team and get scored very carefully on your team work skills as well a s your creativity in solving the problem. We did many fun instant challenges in class in preparation for the real one. We debriefed after every one and then talked about how we could do better. We even put our scores up against each other in class, first, second, third, fourth, and fifth.

Holy shamole (pronounced: SHA-MOLE-EE) pies!! This has been an adventure, and it’s not even over! The regional tournament was just the first step in our DI journey. I have already learned so much about teamwork, communication, and leadership, it’s crazy. We may have F.A.I.L.ed at regionals, but we are ready to get back up there and give it our all. We still have until provincials on April 7th to give it our best and come back even better than we did at regionals! “TEAM, ARE YOU READY!!” Says the Appraisers, “YES!” Says our team. Ready to use our imaginations, think outside of the box, and reach our learning destination!! Let’s get ready to DI!!

~Jordyn 😁