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Month: March 2025

Destination Imagination Regional Tournament

Destination Imagination Regional Tournament

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Have you ever wondered what will happen once earth is completely destroyed? What would happen to us humans? Where would we go? 

That is a question I was aiming to answer while floating around space on a random Saturday in March.  

If you are thinking, ‘Tyler, there is no way you were in space’. You would be correct, however, I was acting as if I was, as Conrad the astronaut, during the 2025 Destination Imagination regional tournament.

What is Destination Imagination?!

Destination Imagination (DI) is a global academic competition. Teams of all ages develop solutions to challenges and present them live at tournaments. This year we had a choice of 4 challenges, technical, fine arts, engineering, and scientific (my challenge).

Worlds Beyond – 2025 Scientific Challenge

Our Solution

Activism is a very important thing to me and during the process of educating myself about that I have learned as lot of things about colonization. My group and I came up with the idea of creating a story around colonization.

Conrad and Jerry were sent to space on a mission to ‘save human kind’. Earth was being destroyed and it was their duty to find a new planet. They start to lose hope when their space ship detects resources on a nearby planet, they land and immediately call it home. However, that was short lived, for an alien comes along excited to welcome them to their planet. Conrad and Jerry get very defensive claiming ‘this is our planet, we were here first’. The aliens throw a welcome ceremony for the aliens, they sing them a song and show them their national sport. Conrad is sure they are trying to go to war, mistaking the song for a battle call and the sports field for a battle field, but Jerry is starting to question Conrads antics. It’s only when Conrad pulls out a gun that Jerry confronts him, telling him not to do this. Conrad doesn’t listen and shoots both and Alien and then…Jerry. He breaks down, he got so lost in his own greed that he forgot his values he almost stole these kind aliens home and worst of all he almost killed his best friend and now earth is going to be destroyed with everyone on it.
How will this story end? What will happen to Conrad? Will Jerry and the Aliens forgive him? Will earth be destroyed? Find out by watching it right here, on my YouTube channel:

Team Choice Elements

Part of the requirements for our challenge was to include 2 team choice elements. Team choice elements are things that show off our team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents. This could be anything we wish, including props, music, technical gadgets, costumes, physical actions, etc.

We Love Our Orb – The Song

For our first team choice element we decided to rewrite the song ‘Earth’ as our own and sing it as well as play guitar for it. I think this was an amazing addition to our solution, it sounded amazing and really impressed the judges.

Im Zorg, just wanted to welcome you to orbitar

We’ll show you how we live on it Real orbitar style

We love our orb, it is our planet

We love our orb, it is our home

Here, we live as one

We live off the land,

Orbitar is our friend and we only want peace

Welcome, to our planet

always been here alone, but now you’ve just come

Can we be friends?

Your our first visitors, so we’ll treat you well

You’ve never been here, so we’ll show you our ways

We are very very kind, we’ll do nothing but help

Welcome to orbitar

We love our orb, it is our planet

We love our orb, it is our home

Hyperball – The Sports Game

Everyone is my group is very active and play a lot of sports. We decided to create a new game combining all of the sports we love. It was a mix of basketball, soccer, hockey, and football. 

How did I Improve From Last Year

Communication and Collaboration

This year we had way way less time to create our solutions, however, it didn’t feel as such. I was way less stressed, I didn’t feel like I had the world weighing on my shoulder. This was because of how successful my group and I were at communicating and collaborating. A huge goal I have had for many years now is to improve me communication and collaboration skills while working with peers. In the past I have struggled with trusting others in doing work that is up to my standards, which leads to me taking on all of the work in group projects. 

I have been really reflecting and working on this and I believe I showed great success in Destination Imagination this year. 

While working with my group I went out of my comfort zone and I put trust on my peers. Because of this we were able to spread the work out among all of us and no specific person did a drastic amount more than anyone else. We of course had some struggles but rather than me just immediately taking on the work, we had a team meeting and discussed our team contract. Doing this we were able to make an action plan which set us back on track.

F.A.I.L (First Attempts in Learning)

Instant Challenge 

We had an insanely successful DI solution this year, If I were to do anything different I would change how we did during the instant challenge. Last year we were very prepared for our instant challenge, this year we didn’t practice once. During the challenge, we lost track of time, and forgot many key elements. Going forwards we are going to practice a lot before provincials and we are going to assign eachother roles (point manager, time manager, etc) so we can be prepared and get a high score.

Thanks for Reading!

Make sure to come back in April to read about my experience in provincials.  Also, hear my group members perspectives of regionals by reading their blogs here:

Sydnee G

Kennedy L

Charlie B

Siena J

Frankenstuffies 🧸

Frankenstuffies 🧸

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You are a famous toy maker living in the Industrial Revolution, drowning in an overwhelming flood of work. From dawn till dusk everyday, you work away in your workshop, struggling to keep up with the endless demands. One late night, exhausted and yearning for a stress free life, you craft a particularly beautiful toy. As you sigh wishing life was easier,  the impossible happens,  the toy springs to life ready to assist you in bringing your overwhelming workload under control…

This is obviously not your life, but it is the life of John Spinsbury in my story ‘Fading’.

The Project

I have been working long and hard on growing my knowledge and skills in order to complete the project, ‘Frankenstuffies’. Through Frankenstuffies I was constantly doing things that helped me answer the driving question, How can we, as writers, weave historical details into our creative storytelling to convey a clear and impactful message? Within this project I learned about the Industrial Revolution, learned how to tell and create a successful story, I sewed together a character from old stuffed animal pieces, which all lead up to the final assignment when I created a short film staring my character and the Industrial Revolution.

Here is my short film: 

My Answer to the Driving Question

The past has a huge impact on how the world is now. It has created the foundation for our society that allows us to continue building knowledge and improving how and where we live. In order to learn about the past, people must spread the word, a very effective way of communication is storytelling. Storytelling provides an engaging way of sharing experiences. By communicating what we have learned and what happened many years ago through  an entertaining story, we can hook people in, and make an impact on the world.

How I Got There 

Learning About the Revolution

Documentary + Doodle notes

In order to tell a story about the past, I had to learn about the past. Something that really helped me learn about the Industrial Revolution and answer the driving question was watching the Industrial Revolution documentary by Alexander Street and taking doodle notes for it. Before watching this I didn’t know a thing about the Industrial Revolution, after, I felt very confident and prepared to create my story.

Watch the documentary here

Here are my Doodle Notes:

Doodle note slider

Storytelling 

Hero’s Journey

In order to create an impactful video, i had to learn how to write and tell an interesting and engaging story. Something that helped me learn how to write a good story is learning about Hero’s journey. Hero’s journey is a story structure that leads a character through an adventure where they face challenges, grow, and return transformed. Every single Disney movie follows this structure!

My Story Structure

I improved my story idea to fit the hero’s journey template which helped me create a very impactful more entertaining tale.

Spreading the Message

Once I finished learning and writing, it was time to start creating. For the final product I was assigned with creating …

Creating the Stuffed Animal

A big step in creating my video was to create the character that was going to star in it. We had to collect old stuffies, cut them up, and then sew their parts together. I bought my stuffed animals from the thrift store and ended up making my character with a long colourful fish tail, great for swimming. The body of a fox, core muscles of steel. The head of a duck, long and proud. And Legs of a unicorn, speedy in any situation.  I had a very hard time sewing my stuffed animals together because no matter how many times I redid it, I couldn’t get it perfect. 

Creating the Video

Now it was time to turn my story into life. This was a long process of filming and editing. In order to animate the character we had to tie it to strings and use a green screen . This was very hard for me because I couldn’t get the animal to move how i wanted it leading to a sloppy looking video. After redoing it for the 5th time I made the decision to use keynote to animate the complicated parts of my story and greenscreen for the other. This helped me a lot in creating something that I was proud of. Once the filming was done I edited the clips together added the captions and the sound, and did the voice overs. 

F.A.I.L (First attempts in learning)

Something I really struggled with during this project was my perfectionism. This project was very hard for me because It had me trying new skills and experimenting with things I had never done before. When trying new things there is always a learning curve, the thing you are doing is not going to be amazing the first time you do it. This concept was very difficult for me, I spent hours and hours sewing together my character and ripping it apart, and refilming m video that I was doing 3 hours of homework a day. This lead me to be very burnt out and caused me to fall behind in a lot of my other projects.

MPOL 2025

MPOL 2025

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Here we are, march 2025 half way through the school year. So far I have had so many opportunities to grow my knowledge and grow both as a student and a person. I have done and created many things that I am very proud of, I have also done and created things that provide me with opportunities of growth.

My Learning Statement

Thank you for coming to my presentation of learning. I am the expert on my own learning. I am also responsible and accountable for my own learning. You can expect me to give an honest evaluation of my progress. We will discuss my strengths and opportunities for growth. Thank you in advance for listening and for offering feedback that I can use to improve as a learner.

Vision Mission and Values

At the beginning of the year I created my vision mission and values sheet, this was my way to set goals and have a plan for what I wanted my learning to look like this year. Reflecting on it now, half way through the year, I have noted all of the things I have done that help me stay on track to being successful, I have also noted some things I could do differently moving forwards. 

My Success in Communication and Collaboration

Destination Imagination

 A huge goal I have had for many years now is to improve me communication and collaboration skills while working with peers. In the past I have struggled with trusting others in doing work that is up to my standards, which leads to me taking on all of the work in group projects. 

I have been really reflecting and working on this and I believe I showed great success in Destination Imagination this year. 

While working with my group I went out of my comfort zone and I put trust on my peers. Because of this we were able to spread the work out among all of us and no specific person did a drastic amount more than anyone else. We of course had some struggles but rather than me just immediately taking on the work, we had a team meeting and discussed our team contract. Doing this we were able to make an action plan which set us back on track.

In result of our great group work during DI we were able to ask an amazing successful solution which I am very proud of.

Watch it here:

F.A.I.L in Time Management and Perfectionism

Frankenstuffies

Although I have had many successes so far this year, I have also had first attempts in learning. 

One of my big goals in my Vision Mission and Values this year was to focus on balancing my life and keeping the bad stress away. Unfortunately this is something I have not done a very great job at following through with.

I am always spending so much time on homework. The stress of school is constantly looming over me which causes me to be stressed all of the time. I am a perfectionist and my everlasting workload is a result of that. As much as it pains me to say I am not perfect, but nobody is,  it’s impossible to be perfect. This concept is very hard for me to digest. While doing work, me and my brain are constantly having a silent battle. I have naturally put insanely high standards for my self. This causes me to spend many many hours of everyday hyper fixating on projects until they are “perfect”.

A project where my perfectionism really came out was the Frankenstuffies project. In this project we learned about the Industrial Revolution, learned how to tell and create a successful story, we sewed together a character from old stuffed animal pieces, which all lead up to the final assignment when we created a short film staring our characters and Industrial Revolution. 

 This project was very hard for me because It had me trying new skills and experimenting with things I had never done before. I sewed for the first time and used green screen filming and editing for the first time. 

When trying new things there is always a learning curve, the thing you are doing is not going to be amazing the first time you do it.
This concept was very difficult for me, I spent hours and hours sewing together my character and then ripping it apart, and then sewing it again and ripping it apart. I spent so much valuable time trying to make my character perfect, that I fell behind and had less time work on the more important aspect, the story. Then, in a time crunch, I created a very weak story in which I am not proud of in one bit. We then moved onto creating our videos which was a very hard process because I found working with a green screen and iMovie very hard. No matter how many times I re-filmed and re-edited I could not get my video as perfect as I wanted it to be. I spent so much time trying to get my video to my impossible standards that I was doing several hours of homework a day and grew very burnt out. 

 

Now that I have had time to reflect on this project I have learned how my perfectionism is only providing me with struggle, I haven made a game plan for the future.

Game Plan

Going forwards in the year, I am going to focus on getting what’s expected of me done first and then, if I have time, going in after and adding extra details and effort. This will allow me to lower my stress levels all while still allowing me to create high quality work. Also, my plan is to continue improving my communication and collaboration trusting my peers when doing group projects.

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