What is DI? DI is a worldwide school-age competition in which teams present a solution to a challenge. There are six categories you can compete in. My school competed in 5 of the categories, they were Engineering, Scientific, Fine Arts, Technical and Improv. I was a member of the engineering group. Our challenge had us build a bridge out of cards and duct tape to cross a gap and barrier. We also had to make a story which Makes our presentation more interesting. Lastly, we had to make a set piece to help explain where we are in the story. Here is a video which explains the basics of our challenge. 

Now that you know the basics, ill tell you a little about the preparations we did for this challenge.

When we first were told what the challenge was I immediately wanted to do it. I liked the idea of finding the strongest shapes and using them to create something that can carry more than its own weight. Anyway into the team we had a team of four members (thats smaller than most) they were: Kate, Jakub, and Randy. We all have different strengths (obviously) so we tried to make them work together as best as possible. The “main” challenge was, of course, the engineering aspect, therefore it is worth the most points in scoring. When we started we tried to generate as many ideas as possible using little squares of paper we called “idea squares” (original name I know). We were given time in class to work out a sorting system and look through all of the ideas to find out what was useful and what wasn’t. For the next few days we completed idea generation forms and such (but thats not all that interesting). We also researched a bunch of architecturally things like the strongest shapes or strong bridges to make sure we were on the right track!

Now, I will be talking about the actual event. DI was a very intimidating thing at first (at least to me) so I was happy that I got to do my main challenge early on in the day. The hallways were packed with kids from the age of around 8 to maybe even 16. The challenges were split into age groups but we surprisingly weren’t in the high school level because grade 8 is still classified as a middle school age. When our presentation started, we didn’t really know what to expect, but, we managed and got through most of it easily. The only part that came with bad luck was assembling the bridge. Some of the pieces didn’t fit together so we were just sitting there awkwardly trying to fit our bridge together while our 8 minutes ran out (which they inevitably did).

That was ours! We got third!

I think that we could definitely do better preparing for the bridge building sequence for the provincials (which we are) and just overall being more comfortable with acting. I do think that we had some strong point in our presentation too and we will be working together to strengthen those already strong points and make them stand out even more!

Competency time (there’s only one)

Research and Understand: this competency is meant to show how you managed to effectively research and understand that research when looking into the challenge/problem/process. I think that I have shown my understanding of the rules because of the product that I created when I presented (we had no deductions YAY). I also think that this is an essential part of completing a challenge successfully in DI.

I hope you enjoyed reading this reflective post on DI regionals!

Until next time!

-Keenan