Hello, and welcome back to my blog. Today I’ll be sharing my last DI (Destination Imagination) experience with you, yay.
Through the past three months, my group has been working on our team solution for our Technical Challenge. The rules were clear, we had to create two devices to overcome three hazards, we also need to have a storyline, two team choice elements and a “feat of skill”. In my group we have 7 people, me, Jordan, Dries, Eliot, Nate, Erin, and Ryder. We had three month to prepare, and present a working solution at the provincials.
We started things off with a brainstorm. We first decided the theme of our solution, and then we came up with ideas for the devices and hazards. I suggested the idea of a game show, where two teams are competing against each other for a price. Everyone liked the idea, and I named the game show “Lobster Game”, as a reference to Squid Game. We then moved on to the other deliverables, and finalized our ideas for the three hazards and two devices. For device number one we decided to reuse the trebuchet I build last year in engineering class, and for device number two we decided to not use any electricity at all and build another medieval siege machine, a ballista. I was in charge of building and maintaining the two devices, meanwhile Nate, Erin and Eliot were working on the three hazards.
In our game show, both teams overcomes the same three hazards, but there are two copies of each. For the first hazard we have barriers, two pieces of painted cardboards that are designed to get shot down by our devices. Erin was in charge of making the barriers and painting them. For the second hazard we had uneven terrains, the two devices are designed to go over them with wheels. Eliot was working on the uneven terrain and they turned out really good, and the layer of paint really was a cherry on top. For the final hazard we had tunnels that both teams and devices have to go through. They were designed and built by Nate, and Nate did a great job at painting them evenly.
The story was a big part of our challenge, Ryder and Jordan were in charge of writing the screenplay for our team. They made the script funny, and entertaining to watch. Most importantly, they fitted all our challenge elements into our story smoothly. For the feat of skill in our story, the trebuchet broke and Ryder used his engineering skills to fix it. At the end of our story, Erin and I performed a short dance to celebrate our win in the Lobster Game, the dance was one of our team choice elements. Jordan made different sound effects for our intro, outro, and during the challenge. The sound effects were our second team choice elements.
After building and designing we finished our first draft, and added some props along the way. like a teleprompter, a spinning wheel, a microphone, safety goggles, and a team sign. By the time every deliverable were fully finished, it was the day before our real challenge. We did one rehearsal that day, but Erin wasn’t there so we didn’t have the barriers.
On the day of our DI challenge, I got a ride from Dries’ dad, and we arrived at St.George’s half an hour early. We were feeling a bit nervous, but mentally ready.
here is the video of our challenge:
It wasn’t our best take on it, but not too bad. My ballista arrow somehow didn’t knock down the barriers which was a bit embarrassing, and Jordan knocked down a few of our hazards by accidents.
here are the scores:
We came third in the senior level, we had the best devices out of all the other groups, but unfortunately we got a low scores on our hazards.
The main problem that I have noticed is we didn’t have enough rehearsals, we spent too much time building at school, and didn’t have enough time to practice. For our challenge, a lot of preparations would be easier to do at home, but not everyone has the same amount of resources to work with. For example, Eliot is in a homestay, so he doesn’t get a lot of support and materials at home. Some people have busy time schedules after school, like dancing, and hockey so they might not be able to work on school work after school. We had a big group, but we didn’t use this advantage to the best of our ability. I think managing such a big group would be a task on it’s own, and if we were ever asked to do DI again, I would set strict deadlines for every tasks, making sure that we get enough time to rehearse and make second drafts.
Thank you for listening along my journey of DI, it was a very fun and enjoyable. We got third place in the provincials, but there was definitely room for improvements. I’m happy that we had this opportunity to work in a group and collaborate with each others.
My First DI: