INTRO
The first time we competed in the Destination Imagination tournaments, we did not do great. We have made so much progress this year since we began working on Destination Imagination, and I know we will continue to do so.
CHALLENGE
This year we were challenged to ‘Design and build a pinball system through which a pinball moves and interacts with 3 machine modules. During the Presentation, we needed to move the pinball through the pinball system for as long as possible.’ We also had to ‘Create and present an action/adventure story about a hero who goes on an extraordinary mission. We also had to create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.’ We decided to go with an ‘Alice in Wonderland’ theme, but changed the plot to a version where Alice was the antagonist, and the Madd Hatter was the protagonist, trying to free Wonderland from Alice’s evil grasp.
BEFORE
We went into our first Destination Imagination tournament with pretty much just a pile of recycling. We had a ramp with a (not working) slingshot, a table with a (not working) spiral ramp to roll down into our sound element, a shell chime. Theoretically, the ball would roll out of the chimes onto our (not working) flippers which would (not) roll it back up the ramp to do it again. Obviously, this didn’t work. Our pinball machine was also very ugly, we attempted to spray paint it with some ‘Alice in Wonderland’ themed colours, but without a base coat, it was just more ugly than before.
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CHANGES
Over the course of the three days we were all around during spring break, me and my team completely re-designed our pinball machine. My group and I spent many hours in Ella’s garage building a new and improved pinball machine. We built a strong wooden table with many parts. It has flippers, ramps, bumpers, and even a slingshot launcher. We spray painted it white and decorated it in the theme of Alice in Wonderland.
FAIL
One thing that I think is important to mention is how the F.A.I.L. acronym affected my mindset during my whole D.I. experience. Fail stands for ‘first attempt in learning’. Our original version of our pinball machine was definitely a fail- or so I thought! When I began to think about Destination Imagination as a F.A.I.L., I was able to take the next step in making our pinball machine better than ever.
AWARDS
Using the F.A.I.L. mindset, we were able to nab the third place technical challenge trophy, and the first place instant challenge trophy. It felt great to win something, especially after we compared how we did this time to how we did in the last tournament. In the last tournament, we also got third in our technical challenge, but against a lot less people, and we got a high score in the technical challenge as well.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, our Destination Imagination journey has been rocky to say the least, but we have improved. I am thrilled about how much progress we have made, and I know my next journey in the DI program will be even better.