DI: the adventures of an Astro-NOT!
Each year, PLP participates in an exciting competition known as Destination Imagination (DI). This event is awesome because you get to be creative and it’s really fun to get to know your team’s members. Each year, teams are presented with five unique problems to solve, encompassing a wide range of topics and challenges. So far, my team (Emilia, Ailie, Adam, Logan, Sunny, and I) has presented our solution at the regional tournament that Seycove hosted. There were a ton of volunteers who helped made this happen, from kids who offered their weekends to help us set up, to the DI volunteers who put this on, and all the teachers who helped us compete: thank you!
Goal of Learning
Through my participation in this project, I aimed to enhance our understanding of key concepts related to problem-solving, teamwork, and creative expression. My goal was to not only, meet the requirements of the challenge, but to try to grow as individual. Here is a little bit about the challenge:
“Space, the final frontier…join us for this season’s Scientific Challenge as you explore the cosmos. Your team will tell a story about a character who figures out they are not alone on a planet. Show off your science fiction skills with some out-of-this-world technobabble. What will happen when you go beyond the stars? Create and present a story in which a character who is located on a planet other than Earth thinks they are alone but discovers that they are not.
- Include technobabble in the story.
- Design and build a device and/or effect that demonstrates what the technobabble describes.
- Include a scientific demonstration that shows the science behind why a specific phenomenon of the planet happens and/or exists.
- Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.”
Learn more here!
Evidence of Learning
In order to demonstrate our learning journey, we documented our progress through various forms of evidence. This included taking detailed notes throughout our planning and execution phases, capturing photos that illustrated our process, and creating props that exemplified our ideas and solutions. These materials served to showcase our growth and the collaborative efforts of our team.
- Photos: Throughout our project, I took lots of images that show what we have done. Unfortunately, I can’t post those or the video of our actual performance here, as DI isn’t over and I would hate for anyone to see what our solution looks like before provincials!
- What I can tell you, however, is that my group and I put a lot of effort into our script, props, and storytelling. In my opinion, this really paid off. Our story had a clear beginning, middle, and end, it had a plot line, and our characters had development.
- We also spent a lot of time on our props. I don’t just mean that we painted them really well, (although I think we did) I mean that we put a lot of of detail into each and every one of the props, from the geyser that was our scientific display, to our translator, which helped us communicate with the aliens, and all the plants that were designed off of real life plants that live in similar conditions to what it could be like on Trappist 1G, the fascinating exoplanet that our story takes place in. You can read more about Trappist 1g here!
What I Learned
As we worked through our project, I not only learned knowledge about different planets and star systems, but also lots of skills that I learned in order to complete the challenge it self. Some of the learning included:
- Teamwork: My group did a great job of problem-solving with the power of… collaboration! Collaborative efforts were at the core of our project. Each team member played a role in contributing to our end goal of having a successful solution!
- Sewing: I decided that I wanted to try my hand at sewing a few costumes for the aliens in our performance! It was by no means perfect; I think I did a pretty good job, and I’ll make it even better before the provincial tournament!
I think that I have learned a lot more at DI this year than last year. I believe this for three main reasons: first of all, I’ve put a lot more time and effort into thinking about how I can benefit from this, rather than just trying to win. Second, I feel like the challenge I got this year is much more to my interest and skill set, and so I think that has helped me learn more from the experience. Last but not least, I’ve put a much greater focus on collaboration and teamwork than I did last year. This is helped me develop more skills regarding working with other people.
This is only the first of two competitions: I know we will all work together to make the next one even better! Thanks for reading!