PLP is back with another wonderful event. This time its called Destination Imagination Experience or DIE, which promises to be truly a great event. That’s a joke, its just DI., Destination Imagination. When first hearing about this project I didn’t have a great feeling about it. I was nervous about how big the project seemed to be.  The rule list was massive and everything needed to be tracked perfectly; which is something I sometimes struggle with. I was also very nervous about performing our final project at a tournament, in front of an audience. Now that it’s all over, I still don’t feel good about DI. We have to do it all over again for the Provincial Tournament, but the stakes are higher and we have less time to prepare. 

It turns out that DI is this amazing educational, creative, critical thinking team competition. Our team choose to compete in the Fine Arts category, called In Motion, and we were tasked with creating a visual performance showcasing a recreation of a iconic piece of architecture, the Burj Khalifa. The Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world, located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. 

Our randomly assigned team had specific elements that had to be included to optimize marks the tournament.  We began by brainstorming for our Team Choice elements which included writing a story, designing and building our kinetic art, creating props, and choosing costumes. With the story, our team collaborated by each taking a turn adding and editing the draft.  I started first by writing the original draft and then passed it along so each team member could add their own creative personality to the script. During the building stage, our team constructed props such as a camera, a boom arm with mic, headphones, and a flashlight. The kinetic art we built was a pair of golden wings that were worn by one of our story characters, Zeus. We made the kinetic golden wings move by using string and pins. The actual building, the Burj Khalifa, was built using wood planks that could connect together and held firmly by screws. We painted the entire building structure black and added our team name sign to the top of it, On the Burj of Greatness.

During the building process most of the team was contributing equally and each putting in a fair amount of work.  Our struggles occurred while building the tower    because we couldn’t figure out how to make it stable and stand upright in the beginning. In the end we found a a somewhat janky solution, but it worked. This is what I would improve upon next time. I think because we built the tower at the last minute, we didn’t leave room for error, adjustments, or improvements. 

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https://plp.craft.me/2mpksFiCy2EBTg

 During our regional performance presentation I felt very nervous as there were a lot more people in the audience  than I had imagined would be there. However, once our performance began I relaxed a bit and started to enjoy it. Unfortunately, I forgot one of my lines during the performance. Luckily, one of my teammates picked up the missed line on the spot and the audience didn’t even notice. Still, the appraisers gave us lots of feedback and commented on the wonderful job we did.  This was not the same for the Instant Challenge we competed in.  As we did not practice ahead of time, our team wasn’t familiar with the process and we didn’t do so well on the Instant Challenge portion of the tournament.  This is something I would change for next time. Things we can do to improve for the Provincial tournament would include reading through the process of an Instant Challenge and practicing may increase our chances of completing the task successfully. 

My overall experience with DI was engaging and an incredible learning experience.  I learned a lot of useful skills such as communication, collaboration, problem solving, critical thinking, and organization. These skills will be very helpful in the future.  

I would like to send a shout out to my amazing  On the Burj of Greatness teammates; Gwenyth R., Dylan W., Sebastian H., Hazel G. , and Franki D.. Our team really pulled together and was an amazing group to work with.  As said by Patrick Lencioni, “Team work begins by building trust …”.