Destination ImagiNation: Dover, NH Students to Compete in Global Finals
Some very talented, smart and fun-loving Dover, New Hampshire students have made it to the Global Finals of Destination ImagiNation and are well on their way to winning it all!
You can hear our Reporter's File interview with the students and Team Leader this Sunday, April 28th on WOKQ 97.5 and The Shark 102.1 and 105.3 at 6am.
For many years, Dover students have been participating in Destination Imagination Since 2010, those involved have seen wonderful successes learning to problem solve and work on teams.
According to Team Leader Reg Fitzerald...Destination ImagiNation is a nonprofit educational organization focusing on developing student creativity, problem solving, team work, collaboration and leadership skills.
Every September Destination Imagination introduces 7 new challenges for teams to solve. These challenges are Fine Arts, Scientific, Engineering, Technical, Improv, Service Learning (community Service) and Rising Stars (noncompetitive for K-3). Teams are made up of 7 or less students and compete at levels due to age of the oldest student. The levels are elementary, Middle, secondary (high school) and University level. The team pick a challenge and work on this for 6 months until they present their solution at a regional tournament. At the tournaments, the team is also given an “on-the-spot” challenge to solve (in 8 minutes!) that tests their thinking skills and teamwork under pressure.
This year, the Dover team (Team Name: Long Distance), is made up of students from Garrison Elementary School, Dover Middle School and Dover High School as well as a teammate who lives in India. The team participated in the engineering challenge where the team had to design and build a free-standing structure that could support weight without breaking and test this structure at a tournament by placing weights on it. In addition, the team had to create and present a story in which the sudden appearance of a monster had surprising results. The team also had to design and create a special effect to enhance the sudden appearance of the monster and/or the events surrounding the monster in the story. The team created all their props, scenery and costumes staying within a $150.00 budget. Only team members can contribute to the solution. That mean no help from anyone outside the team including the Team Manager. At the tournament the team has to sign a document called a Declaration of Independence stating that only team members worked on the solution. Teams are disqualified if they had any help out side of the team. At the tournament the play and structure testing all had to be complete in 8 minutes. (See attached for the challenge they chose).
After seven months of working on their team challenge, the Dover High School team presented and placed first at the NH Destination Imagination Regional Tournament and were given the Renaissance Award for outstanding design, engineering, execution, performance. The team then moved on to the Destination Imagination NH State tournament where they again placed first.
Due to the team’s first place finish, the team was invited to compete at the Destination Imagination Global Finals Tournament in Kansas City Missouri May22-25. At the Global Finals Tournament our team will be competing against the top high school teams from United States and 20 other countries.
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