Disclaimer

This blog post will consisted of reflections on both the regional tournament and the provincial tournament. However the sections on my provincial tournament will come later on, since it hasn’t happened yet. Now back to the post!

Intro/explanation

Destination Imagination (D.I) is a creative challenge where teams develop solutions to present at a tournament. Challenges inspire students to explore passions, develop talents, and gain new skills. The categories include Technical, Scientific, Fine Arts, Improvisational, Engineering, Service Learning, and Early Learning. While each challenge has a specific educational focus, they are all designed to be diverse, incorporating elements from other fields, for example, the Fine Arts Challenge includes a technical aspect, and the Engineering Challenge features an artistic or storytelling component. Over the course of around 1-2 months we prepare for the tournament inside and (mostly) outside of school. It’s a unique and exiting experience that we are given! Now that that’s out of the way, lets talk about MY challenge. 

My Category/Challenge 

I have the scientific challenge “worlds beyond” which was great since it was in my top 2 favourites! 

Rules/criteria 

The description of this category is as follows:

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?

Criteria:

  • 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.”

 

Evidence of learning and how I hope to improve

For the next tournament I hope to come more prepared. I can do this by collaborating and working further with my teammates, and making sure everyone is on the same track. I have some free time on spring break which I can utilize. Something that happened last year is no one (including me) worked on D.I over spring break. This made the week before provincials more stressful than it needed to be and I don’t want that to happen again!

 Now my evidence of learning section will be pretty vague since D.I isn’t over, but it is there!

Creating collaborative note and draft documents for D.I was a huge part of the process and something I found helpful. This included roles for people, things that needed to get done, the script, or general ideas for anything to do with D.I. 

Another thing my group and I worked really hard on is props. This is a tricky part to talk about since some of the props I’m really proud of, and some need some work. I think spring break is a good time to work on some props, as it can be done individually.

New skills I’ve built compared to grade 8 D.I

I feel I’ve grown a lot compared to last years D.I. Now that I’ve had more experience with it I know what to expect. I’ve become much more confident that everything is going to turn out okay, and not stressing out every 5 seconds, which has made my day to day life stress much better. Additionally, I’ve given a large effort to make sure everyone stays on task. Lastly, I’ve become better at problem solving. Before when something didn’t go as planned I didn’t have a plan b, and just freaked out. This year I’ve learned to problem solve and adapt to situations that aren’t always in our favour.

How we created the story

Getting a idea for the story was the easy part, but putting it all together was the harder part. Everyone in my group obviously has different schedules, so to get a time to collaborate and work at the same time was challenging. However, even though the circumstances were not in our favour we decided to be a (bit) more creative by FaceTiming late in the afternoon,therefore  problem solving and making it work even under the unfortunate circumstances.

Conclusion (for now)

This first D.I tournament was such an experience and I can’t wait to see what happens for provincials! Thanks for listening so far, stay tuned for the provincial post add-on!

 

Day of D.I

Okay, I’m back! A lot happened the day of D.I… thank god our presentation time was at 3:00pm, which gave my team the time to practice.

The first 2ish hours were spent fixing up props and looking over the script individually. Unfortunately, we had lost a second team member in our group so we were forced to change up the roles. One of our members had to learn a whole new set of lines because they took the place of the person who was unavailable. There wasn’t a crazy amount of things that needed to be done say of, but I think in the morning we were all a bit jittery.

Schedule

Once we started to practice for the life of me I couldn’t get my lines right, which sucked because my group members were counting on me. Thankfully, after lots of practice and a few snack breaks.. I got them down! We learned to adapt to lots of changes throughout D.I, wether it was not having 2 of our members, or our technobabble breaking. We all worked together to get it done, and that’s what happened. Communication was something we made sure to succeed in leading up to D.I. A huge part of working in a group is understanding what needs to be done, who will do it, and when. 

Changes we made

Some small props were enhanced or tweaked, and unlike last time, we had a technobabble to present which I’m very happy about! Additionally, the astronauts costumes were changed up (for the better.) Lastly, the script was changed slightly to incorporate the technobabble throughout our performance instead of just in once scene. 

I’ve grown so much since D.I grade 8, AND since regionals. The biggest thing I feel I’ve improved at is managing my stress. usually I would either overreact to things that came up. I’ve learned to pivot my way of executing the finals product while staying calm and collected. This might not sound like much, but for me it’s a huge step! 

 

 

The final Presentation!

I am proud to say my group was ready to present once the time came and we did great! Everyone remembered their lines and we got lots of laughs from the audience. 

My group members

 

Maggie: https://www.blog44.ca/maggiet/

Ella: https://www.blog44.ca/ellah/

Sebastian: https://www.blog44.ca/sebastianha/

Finn: https://www.blog44.ca/finnh/

Niko: https://www.blog44.ca/nekoh/

 

Conclusion

Final Thoughts (for real this time!)

Destination Imagination has pushed me to grow creatively, collaboratively, and personally. From learning how to manage stress better to adapting when things didn’t go as planned, this journey has been filled with lessons that go beyond just preparing for a tournament. I’m so proud of how far my team and I have come, especially after all the challenges we faced along the way. Whether it was late-night FaceTimes, fixing props last minute, or rewriting lines on the fly, we pulled through together. Until next time 🫶