Destination Imagination inspires 21st Century learners

​-All photos courtesy of École River Heights School

When it comes to helping students develop the "four Cs" that are considered essential for lifelong learners—critical thinking, creative thinking, communication and collaboration—Destination Imagination offers an exciting and dynamic arena to practise those skills.

Destination Imagination tournaments sees teams of students tackling collaborative, problem-solving challenges. The challenges combine STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) concepts with creative components such as costumes, acting and storytelling. Challenge categories include technical, scientific, engineering, fine arts, improvisational, service learning and "instant challenges" that test students' thinking on-the-fly.

"DI is really about setting the stage for students to build those 21st Century learning skills," said Shauna Cornwell, WSD program lead and Destination Imagination Affiliate Director. "When you're looking at these STEM-based challenges, you have to use creativity, project management, critical thinking and be able to overcome obstacles and problem solve. You have to be able to think in really divergent, flexible ways."

School-based DI teams compete in regional tournaments in February and March, with the goal of trying to reach global finals in May.

WSD's École River Heights School hosted the 2019 Destination Imagination provincial tournament in March, with a total of 34 teams from 16 schools participating. That number was double of the previous turnout for 2018 provincials.

While River Heights is just entering its second year of participating in Destination Imagination, the school has embraced the concept wholeheartedly. The school's Grade 7 students all participated in Destination Imagination preparations and challenges in their design classes in 2018-19.

The school ultimately sent a team to the Destination Imagination global finals in Kansas City in May. Students CJ Adams, Mateo Cardona, Noah Hemmerling, Sam Ormiston, Andrew Saranchuk and teachers Adam Charbonneau and Douglas Hemmerling represented Team Manitoba at the globals.

"We were really excited to find out we were going to globals, knowing that we'd be on a world stage," Sam said.

For both the provincial and global tournaments, the River Heights team participated in the fine arts challenge.

"The fine arts challenge was called 'Game On'—we had to create a story based around a game of our choice," CJ said. "We chose to do Super Mario 64 (the Nintendo video game). We also had to have a technical element, some sort of machine, in our story."

To meet this technical requirement, the team created a pressure-plate device that released a gold coin (a key piece of the Super Mario Bros. mythology).

The global event in Kansas City offered the River Heights students a chance to meet DI teams from all over the world.

"There were people from all over the place, so it was fun to meet them. We did pin-trading so we got to meet lots of people from other countries and continents," Sam said.

The River Heights team also had the opportunity to watch other DI teams in action.

"We were able to go around and watch other students doing different challenges, so we were able to learn more and get some ideas about what we might want to do this year in Destination Imagination," Noah said.

Along with performing the team challenge—which students spend months preparing for—teams also participate in an instant challenge at competitions. Teams are given five minutes to accomplish a challenge with no advance preparation.

"Instant challenges have become so prolific in Winnipeg School Division, you look on Twitter and every day it seems you'll see staff taking on an instant challenge, or a group of students," Ms. Cornwell said. "The whole idea is to bring students together in that short time frame to say, for example, build a structure or bridge, or design a new soft drink that's healthy…the kids are embracing it. Some people may be leery of the time-limit, but the reality is that in life we have to catch the bus or get to work on time, or meet deadlines. Instant challenges teach us lots of skills that help us in life."

For the instant challenge at globals, students had to assemble a tower out of crude building materials and balance a CD at the top of the structure.

"The students really had to work together to figure out how to use as many of the materials as possible. Part of their score was based on that, as well as how they collaborated and accomplished the task," Mr. Charbonneau said.

While the team didn't place in the top three finalists, the River Heights students performed remarkably well for their first time at globals.

"As a first-time experience at the event for both the students and myself, I think we came out and had a really good first outing," Mr. Charbonneau said. "Now it will be interesting to start in September and build all the way towards March and hopefully get back to the globals."

The challenges for the upcoming 2019-20 school year are already online at www.destinationimagination.org .

"Destination Imagination is a great of example of what education should be, when kids get together and they're excited to create and learn," Mr. Charbonneau said.

Ultimately, Destination Imagination assists students in developing what is known in education circles as a growth mindset—having the confidence and freedom to take risks when tackling learning challenges, and learning to regard mistakes as part of the path to understanding and solving problems.

"When you're tackling these challenges, if you have an epic fail, so be it," Ms. Cornwell said. "You learn to have that resilience to come back and try something again from a different approach."