My career as a DI competitor has come to an end. It all started in December of 2015 or Grade 8 so this is the third year I’ve participated. Each year I’ve gained great experience and learned new skills and this year was no exception. I was part of a team that was put to the challenge of solving a major problem called Maze Craze. The idea behind Maze Craze was to design something that could recover two objects inside a maze and create a story to go along with it.

So if you are new to my blog or have just never heard of DI or Destination Imagination before then the last sentences won’t make sense. I will do a quick explanation of what DI is exactly.

Destination Imagination is like an education sports tournament basically. The idea is to put a team together of 2 to 7 people and then pick a set challenges out of several options. Your team has to think of an idea to solve this problem/challenge. After figuring out how to solve this problem your team integrates this solution into a skit and performs in front of judges. The judges evaluate your performance and your solution to the problem and give you an overall score. This score is put against other team scores and the team with the highest score wins the tournament. Oh wait there is one more part. There is a second part called an instant challenge which is where your team is given a problem/challenge on the spot and you have to solve the problem to the best of your ability.  There is a regional competition and then a provincial competition day.

So, my group this year consisted of 6 people, Calum, Sam, Isobel, Izzy, Kate and myself. Our challenge was Maze Craze. This challenge was to make something that would navigate a maze while making it to two different event squares and completing a task. For more info on my challenge, click on the Maze Craze blue word. So our team got to thinking about how we could solve the challenge and integrate it into a story. We thought that we would create an RC or remote control car from scratch and code it so that it would go through the maze by its self. This was a very ambitious idea.

The next thing that we had to think about was the story that we would present with the car we called the rover. We thought that the rover would be a bomb defusing robot that would defuse two bombs at the two different event squares. So then we came up the story that I would be at my 50th family reunion and that I would be telling a story of the first time I was on the NYPD bomb squad. We built a large storybook out of sheets of plywood hinged together and painted so we could turn the plywood like a page to go with different scenes of the skit.

Between the regional and provincial competitions our team did some upgrades / redesigning of some of are props / maze traveler. First off Sam and Calum redesigned the rover entirely by rebuilding it and making it stronger. They started by making the frame for the rover out of two 8 in long 2×4’s and putting them together. Than they put two servos ( motors) on the bottom of the rover. These servos would make the rover move backwards and forwards. To make the rover turn sharper they added one 360 degree wheel that makes sharp turns. We did some research on what an actual police bomb squad rover had that we could duplicate so we put lights on it. Lastly they souldered a homemade remote control to make the entire thing move and it was ready to go.

Izzy and I had the task of making an interesting prop that would make some sort of transformation. We brainstormed many ideas and came up with one that sounded good to the both of us. We ordered some cheap lights that came with a remote control. Then we took apart the lights and stuffed them inside an average sized balloon. Than we stuck that balloon into a even bigger balloon and blew them both up. During the performance, when Calum went to fix the rover he popped the balloon/bomb and dies.

Overall we did very well. We picked up the W in our challenge and instant challenge. I believe that we performed well in both of those tasks and made the appraisers believe that. Overall I was very satisfied with two wins as a way to go out as my final DI performance.

Please watch the video of our regional performance and the unexpected breakdown that we had to work around in this blue link below. Please disregard the videographer who was having too much fun. ( Simon )

I would like to thank Ms Willemse and Mr Hughes for putting me into Destination Imagination and Joanne the British Columbia Destination Imagination Rep for helping us get to where we are today.

Overall of these three years of doing Destination Imagination I have gained and learned a lot. DI has tought me to be a more creative person for example when it comes to finding the solution to the problem that the challenge asks you to solve as well as coming up with a story that suits your solution to the problem. I have learned to perform under pressure when it comes time to do and instant challenge and I have had more practice speaking in public. Dr.Mark A. Runco did a study on kids that participated in DI Vs kids that didn’t and here were his findings.