Saturday, April 23, 2011
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
Teams from three Mahoning Valley schools have qualified to attend the Destination ImagiNation Global Finals next month in Knoxville, Tenn.
Springfield Local High School’s team will compete in “Spinning a Tale” at the senior level.
Both Howland’s North Road Middle School team and Niles Middle School’s team will compete in “Mythology Mission” at the middle level.
Global Finals, May 25-28, is the culminating event of every Destination ImagiNation season. Each year, hundreds of teams gather at Global Finals to showcase their challenge solutions.
Eighteen Region 1 teams were among the 1,000 students on 175 teams who traveled to Mount Vernon High School in central Ohio to showcase their problem-solving skills to the assembled appraisers, parents, family and friends to earn one of Ohio’s 50 slots to attend global finals.
Region 1 includes Mahoning, Columbiana, Trumbull, Ashtabula and Stark counties.
Destination ImagiNation reaches students across the United States and in more than 30 countries.
Its main program is a team tournament where student teams from all over the world solve mind- bending challenges. Teams are tested to think on their feet, work together and devise original solutions that satisfy the requirements of the challenges.
In spinning a tale, teams develop and present an original three-act circular story that demonstrates knowledge about one energy cycle of the team’s choice.
They create a “dicycler” that changes as the story progresses and the acts change. The finale must use the “dicycler” to signal the end of a team’s presentation.
In mythology mission, teams create a five-minute improvisational skit about a mission involving a mythical creature.
The skit must incorporate research about a culture from a country, three souvenirs randomly selected from the list of items and combined to create a master prop, and an unexpected problem that is discovered on stage.