HELENA — On Saturday, February 24, at Bryant Elementary the Montana State Destination Imagination Tournament took place.
“It was founded in 1999 and it includes age ranges from Pre-K all the way up to university level,” said Alyce Lachney, the Montana Destination Imagination Affiliate Director.
Destination Imagination is a STEAM competition. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and math.
The students work to develop solutions to challenges in two different formats.
There are team challenges, that focus on technical and engineering skills, and instant challenges that must be completed in the moment with everyday items.
“Every year the challenges are different. So, this year the engineering challenge, they had to build a catapult. The technical challenge they had to build a pinball machine that a soccer ball would travel though. The early learning, it was called Making a Splash, it had to do with water,” Lachney said.
Teams can pick one of six challenges, with a special one set aside for Pre-K to second graders, and will also complete one instant challenge on tournament day.
These students have been working on their team challenge from September up until the challenge day.
They will be judged on a number of different aspects of their presentation.
“The story has a certain amount of points. Whatever type of challenge or mechanism they needed to build has a certain amount of points and so there’s points associated with how creative it is and also there is points on the technical methods they used,” said Lachney.
This year eight teams for around Montana competed in the state competition.
The top group in each challenge will move on to the global tournament.
