Destination Imagination (DIying Inside)

Have you ever heard of Destination Imagination? Well if not, it’s a pretty fun program/activity that is focused around project based learning. Destination Imagination  is a series of challenges that involve receiving a challenge and completing it in the form of a play. Our challenge, Engineering, “In the Cards” was a pretty difficult one. It involved building a bridge out of cards and duct tape!

Apparently, the PLP teachers haven’t seen a challenge with this many rules and specifications. There are rules about:

  • Weight
  • Size
  • Materials 
  • Span of Bridge 
  • The Weights

This was a very challenging challenge.  I’m not gonna go into this to much yet, but we had a small disaster at the start. Our check in time where they weigh all the materials was 8:30. We thought we had to be somewhere else during this time, and we missed it by 15 minutes. Me and Keenan, one of the other group members, had to rush to get all our materials. I think I almost had a heart attack!

Let’s just start from the start. 

The first important milestone of this project was getting to know your challenge. What I mean by this is identifying each individual “mini challenge” within the big one. For this project, instead of handing things in Via showbie, we built our whole project around the steps we were taking. We made it in another of our well-used apps called Basecamp.

Along with this Milestone, we had to choose a name for our team. Let’s start with the team members. I’ve already mentioned Keenan, but there is also Jakub and Randy. This team was driving me crazy!!! “Focused” is not a word you would think of when looking at us. Another small problem was that NOBODY SEEMS TO BE AWARE OF TIME MANAGEMENT! I’m a bit irritated with this. I spent a lot of time in class trying not to break with anger, anxiety and all around irritation. I just have to say that Keenan was pretty focused. The “unfocused energy” was mostly from Jakub and Randy. But this was all at the start of the project. With the paper work. During this project I realized I have to learn to relax. I just need to let what’s going on happen. They always came back. They always ended up doing work. They always got it done. Anyways, back to the name. The one we came up with was: Low Budget Bridges Co. We’re pretty proud of it, considering our challenge is about bridges.

The next important Milestone was understanding the deliverables, and making a plan. This was a pretty fun step. I like knowing how things are laid out, and each step we have to do to achieve our goals. Along this milestone, we filled out a chart detailing all the parts of the deliverable. Here is our post in basecamp:

Now onto the building process! First though, defining who is in charge of what! This means that everybody had to be in charge of something. I find taking on roles a pretty difficult thing. I feel like I need to do everything. I also don’t like letting other people take the responsibility for things. I managed to resist doing this, and me and Keenan split the work in a really good way! I’m not trying to not include Jakub and Randy, it’s just that they weren’t really “there.” We kind of decided that Keenan would do the bridge, and I would do everything else. I worked on the backdrop and the story. Here is what our post looks like:

This is what we agreed on, but it didn’t really happen this way.

Now this isn’t really a milestone, but here’s where it gets exciting. We start really getting into building! Like I said earlier, I was working on the backdrop. Another job I had was to write the script. I kind of tried to procrastinate on this. There was part of it I didn’t understand, and I got really frustrated. It was that the story had to revolve around an unexpected connection and it’s outcome. What the heck?! It got so bad that I had to ask a different teacher, Ms. Maxwell, to explain it to me in a way I understood. It was slightly embarrassing, as the story had to be written, like, the next day. Anyways, she was so helpful! I am eternally grateful, because I’m pretty sure I was close to a meltdown by that point. 

Now the day we have all been waiting for! DI regionals! Yay! We had put a lot of work into all this, with many failed rehearsals. We were pretty nervous, but we got there and we were proud! Now onto the embarrassing part. During our presentation, I’m not sure what happened, but the bridge wasn’t building. I wasn’t the one building it, I was distracting the audience. This lead to a interesting drumming routine by me and Jakub. (Jakub and I?) 

Research and Understand: How might I research and understand a problem, process, or challenge using different perspectives?
As usually there is a competency for this project! I am actually kind of interested on how I did with this competency. I’m not so sure if this applies to me for the bridge, but on the backdrop I really used it. The backdrop wasn’t doing what I was supposed to. To fix the problem, I had to take a step back. Obviously thinking about it from the position of a designer wasn’t working, so I decided to step into the audiences shoes, then the appraisers’. I then decided to isolate the problem, and find a way to solve it. My “journey” into appraisers’ shoes showed me that maybe I should balance out looking good, with actually working. My step into the audience’s shoes showed me that really, they’re pretty far away, so they can’t see every teensie, weensie little detail. I’m proud to say that the problem is now solved, and we have a working backdrop!!!!
Thanks for reading!
-Kate

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