Hi! We’re the Tongue-Twisting Turquoise Toucans! We’re so excited, and honored, to go to Global Finals again this year.
This year’s Technical Challenge is very difficult… and well… challenging. It is a fun challenge to tackle, and took a lot of work!
But, it was all worth it… Out of 68 teams that participated in the Destination Imagination State Tournament, we are honored to be one of the 17 teams representing Oregon at the 2015 Global Finals!
Along the way, we also won special Renaissance Award, in recognition of engineering design.
However, our team needs to raise $8,600 soon to compete in this amazing international academic tournament. Every penny donated can help us reach our goal! This cost will cover our registration fees, air transportation and transfers, shipping costs, and on-campus housing and meals.
Destination Imagination… is an amazing program that prepares kids for future careers by teaching them the creative process, project management, teamwork, and critical thinking using STEM {Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics}.
Teams must only use ideas their team originated and must implement these ideas themselves. For instance, we can ask someone to teach us to solder or sew or rebuild a circuit board, but if we want to use it in our solution, we have to do the work ourselves.
Our team competed in the Technical Challenge – Creature Feature: we imagined, designed and built a world, a creature that did specific creature actions and a story of adventure.
In our story, Mr. DeMarcus’ submarines are disappearing off of the radar. He hires a team to construct CUB, an ROV submarine, to rescue the subs. While CUB is retrieving the missing subs, it is attacked, however, the team manages to get CUB back to the surface proving that teamwork is the best way to solve any crisis.
We also created a background scene change which applies the laws of physics and a control panel designed using recycled parts, a parallel circuit and magnetism. We also made an awesome antenna for the control panel, powered by a part from an old printer. We DI kids love to reuse things in creative and innovative ways!
We incorporated a puppet show that allows the audience to see what the engineers in the lab are seeing on their laptop monitor: CUB’s video of its deep sea dive and the creatures it encounters while rescuing the missing subs. The puppets were hand sewn and created to look like actual deep sea creatures we researched. We even made our own patterns for the creatures!
We can’t wait for GLOBAL FINALS!
However, as we mentioned before, our team needs to raise $8,600 to compete in this amazing international academic tournament.
If you, or your company, can help us achieve our goal, please use this link to donate:
To learn more about Destination Imagination® & Global Finals, visit:
Thank you for considering to help us reach OUR destination,
2015 Destination Imagination Global Finals!
Sincerely, The Tongue-Twisting Turquoise Toucans
And a HUGE Thank You to all our sponsors and donors for our raffle!
Just put in my donation!! So excited to see you here in Knoxville again this year! LOVE YOU! Hugs to the family.
Noelle
Thank you so much, Noelle!!! Love you so much, too! Thank you for all you have done/are doing to support us!!
How cool! I can’t believe I’ve never heard of Destination Imagination before. Congratulations, and good luck at finals!
It’s a truly incredible organization. After each team’s performance the aPRAISErs ask lots of questions about how they came up with ideas and implemented the ideas. They listen, they praise, they point out the great things the kids did. The only negative feedback the kids get is in the form of their scores. It’s a complete safe place to push outside the box and try to create innovative solutions.
Sounds like a really wonderful program, great ideas and detail on the Creature Feature project that celebrates science and the arts! wishing the team the best of luck on the finals!
Thank you, Pech!
What a fantastic opportunity. Good luck on your goals. Never too early to SCIENCE!
Thank you, Geoff! I agree… good training (especially in the midst of fun) needs to start early!!
How exciting! Best of luck at Global Finals!
Thank you, Heather!
Congrats on your work towards the finals! What an amazing accomplishment so far. Good luck in your fundraising efforts and at finals!
Thank you!!!
Hello Toucans! How fun and exciting to be competing globally. I wish you all the best in your endeavors and adventures!
Thank you, Lynn!!! Love you!!
How cool! I can imagine how much I would have loved this as a kid! Way to go!
Thank you! DI is such an incredible experience.