Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! This post will be an introduction to what Destination Imagination is and everything we are doing in it this year.
first of all, what in the heck is destination imagination? Destination imagination is a yearly event that includes multiple different groups, all with different topics, where students have to create something (that something depends on the group they are in). That thing is then presented to a group of judges and the end goal is to beat the other schools.
the group I am in is called “up close”, and is based on microscopy. The something that my group had to create and present was a play acted out by us. It had to be set in a micro-world, and there had to be a mysterious object of some sort that appeared at any moment during the play. We also had a budget of 150 dollars to spend on props, costumes and other what nots.
unfortunately, I am not aloud to tell anything in this blog post about our ideas or script, due to the rule of DI that states “if an idea is shown to a different team/group, that idea is now unusable”.
The next part of DI is instant challenges. Instant challenges are challenges where you have limited time to build/create something in a certain amount of time with specific resources. I can’t find any photos of instant challenges, so see you next time!
This post will be a summary of everything that I have learned this semester. I will be starting with the maker subject.
to start, I have to say that maker has been one of my favourite subjects this year. I had so much fun learning about photos, drawings, and becoming a PLP learner at the start of the year. I learned different techniques to use with my apple pencil when drawing, different angles in which I can take a photo to express emotion, and how to use keynote to the best of it’s ability.
You can learn about the different art pieces I created in this blog post
it showcases almost all of what I learned about art and drawings in that post, so I highly recommend looking at it. There will be a summary of what I learned in that post, but it won’t be as detailed as the other one.
The first thing that we explored was using pressure with our apple pencils. We learned how to create bubble letters and express ourselves through that. We learned about how we can use different textures and add pressure to give depth and emotion to our drawings. An example of my leaning here is my word bubble art.
In this example I showed how I can use shapes, words, and lines to express what I am thinking and how I am feeling. I used different pressure settings to colour and shade the letters.
In this project, we also learned how we could jot down our feelings through doodling and art. We learned about how different fonts can send different messages, and how to keep a story engaging while also being able to learn from it.
that was a few examples of my learning in this area, now let’s move on to the second part of this project: photos, A.K.A, Herzog. Here is the blog post for that topic.
in this area we were taught how to express emotion through angles and editing. We learned how to make an interesting and expressive photo, and how to add to it to make it more expressive.
some of the examples of my learning in Herzog are these photos that I took:
These are some angle photos I took with my partner in this project.
Next I’ll talk about scimatics. This semester in scimatics we learned all about lasers and tectonic plates. We learned about this through creative ways, like a laser display or a board game. For the math component, we focused on fractions and the Pythagorean theorem. Here are some things I created for scimatics this year.
This is a picture I took of my laser display for our laser project. Our theme was ghostbusters.
These are the game rules for my board game. The purpose of this was to learn about tectonic plates.
next I’m going to be talking about my humanities subject. Along with Maker, Humanities was probably my second favourite subject that I had this semester. We learned and built knowledge about acting, poems, and advertising. Throughout all these projects I think I learned a lot.
In our acting (Tableau) project was really fun and very interesting. This project was where I first learned about world view and how interesting it was. We read and watched The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton to try and get a grasp on the subject, and it worked. We saw through their eyes and how the characters saw stuff. When we finished reading the book and after we watched the movie, we planned out an event that was to be held at the winter exhibition. We were going to present a series of tableau’s, each one showcasing a different scene from the outsiders.
This is a panorama of us setting up our tableau
This is us presenting it.
next up, and my most favourite project thus far, has to be the poetry project. I really didn’t think writing and learning about poetry would be very fun, but I genuinely enjoyed it quite a bit. We learned about many different poetry terms, here is my list off terms:
We used all of these to help build our knowledge. At the end of the project we held a coffee house to show off our poetic skills!
the last project I will be talking about today is the first one we did in humanities the whole year: our advertising project.
this project was really fun, and now that I’ve done it I am able to recognize all the different methods of advertising when I watch YouTube or a TV show.
for this project, we were supposed to create an ad poster for a real business in the cove. Here is my individual ad poster:
This was my final draft. It was a lot more simplified than the others that I created, you can find them on this blog post.
And that’s it! A rough explanation of everything I was able to learn this year. It was very exciting and interesting and I cannot wait to see what PLP has in store for me next.
At my first PLP winter exhibition, I was nervous for how it might go, but in the end I think my group did very well on our Outsiders-themed tableau. Here is my overview and explanation of what happened.
First off, what is a Tableau? A tableau is kind of like a freeze frame. To start off a Tableau, the actors will get on stage and perform a short and usually silent skit to give context for the Tableau. Professionals sometimes don’t even use a beginning skit.
The tableau’s that the PLP team performed were based off of different scenes from a very famous book called ‘The Outsiders.’ Our Tableau’s scene was the drive in scene, the characters included were Marcia (Caden), Cherry (Frankie), Johnny (me), Pony (Ronan), Two-bit (Kadin), and Bob (Tom).
We set up our environmentusing black sheets to cover up bookshelves and various props.
Here are some photos of us doing that
(Our concession stand prop being set up)
(The cineplex sign)
(A panorama of us setting up)
Some things that could have been done better/more efficiently could have been how long our introductory skit was. It was much longer than most of the other skits that other groups did. Another thing that we can learn from and improve upon for next time was our ability to convey specific emotions. Though it was good at the beginning, I believe it drastically improved the further we got into the exhibition. One thing I wish we had done better was our set design. Though I did quite enjoy the way it turned out, I still wish we had had more fun with the set design
