Destination Imagination and The Binary Number System

Hi All!

This morning I will be heading to a high school in a different city to attend Challenge Master training for Destination Imagination. What, you may ask, is Destination Imagination? Well . . .

Have you ever heard of Odyssey of the Mind? If so, Destination Imagination is sort of the same thing. If not . . . here we got.

Destination Imagination is a program designed to challenge students to use their imaginations to solve different problems. The students form teams which are "managed" by an adult. The teams then chose from one of five or six long term challenges. They have several months to work on their solutions and must keep track of expenses, safety, etc. The region they are in holds a regional tournament where the teams present their solutions (often in a skit form) and compete against other teams to go to the next step in the tournament program - state. There are Nationals and even International competitions.

Along with this long term challenge, each team also has to perform an "instant challenge." This is a problem they are given along with supplies to use in solving the problem on the day of the tournament. They have anywhere from 8 to 15 minutes to think of a solution and then additional time to present their solution. Scores from this instant challenge are added to their long term challenge scores to determine their overall score.

Anyway - the students really enjoy it and so do the adults involved in managing teams and those who appraise the solutions presented. It is just a fun time.

I am in charge of our region's Instant Challenge. That means that I gather all of the supplies, train all of the appraisers, chose the problems, etc. I have done this for the past few years and have even conned Hubby into helping out. Each year the Challenge Masters (those in charge of challenges) have to get trained. Today is the day that we all get trained. Fun.

If any of you are interested in this kind of thing - check out the schools in your area to see if they hold Destination Imagination tournaments and volunteer. It is a blast!

In other news, I have officially become geekier! I learned how to navigate the binary number system! How geeky is that???

My whole binary curiosity began when Hubby's nephew and his girlfriend/fiance were talking about getting married on 10-10-10, which is 42 in binary. For those of you not quite geeky enough to know, the number 42 is from the Hitch hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. I am just geeky enough to recognize that which made me start to wonder just how in the world binary works. Well, I finally looked it up last night on the internet and it turns out to be quite easy!

I won't explain it here but this is the site I went to to figure it out. Hubby was a bit mystified that I actually understand the whole thing but was a good sport and gave me numbers to convert into binary. Of course, he found a tool on the internet which automatically converts numbers into binary so he could check my work!

I love learning new things!

Trisha

Voice Update: I did yet another day of massage and exercises! Kudos to me! My voice is doing really well. Thank you, God!