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Technical Challenge - Win It Big

TECHNICAL CHALLENGE

Prompts students to complete tasks by using engineering, research, strategic planning, and related skills.

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WIN IT BIG:
Use your technical skills to design and create your very own game show, complete with a gimmick, a reveal, and an effect meant to dazzle the senses. What challenges might you face, and what prizes are waiting to be won?
  • Create and present a game show.
  • Include a host character and at least one contestant.
  • Build tension with a raising-the-stakes event.
  • Design and create a gimmick, a reveal, and a razzle-dazzle effect for your game show.
  • Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.

Contact Your Challenge Masters:

Amber Hudson

Justin Willson

Tristan Binkley-Jones

 

Team Manager Training

Training Webinar – coming soon

Team Manager Workbook – coming soon

Training Slides – coming soon

Scientific Challenge - Unforgettable

SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGE

Blends the curiosity of scientific research with the creative expression of performance art.

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SCIENTIFIC CHALLENGE- Unforgettable:Did you see that!? Are you sure? Can you trust your memory, or have your eyes been deceived? Find out in this season’s Scientific Challenge when you explore the science of human memory and misdirection. Bring a memory to life with your memory depiction, complete with a special effect. How will your team be remembered?

 

  • Create and present a story about how a character recalling a memory leads to a realization.
  • Integrate your team’s research about the science of human memory into the Presentation.
  • Create and present a memory depiction. Enhance the memory depiction with a special effect.
  • Include a misdirection in your Presentation.
  • Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.

 

Contact Your Challenge Masters:

Isaiah Thompson

Anna Morgenthaler

Riley Morgenthaler

 

Team Manager Training:

Training Webinar – coming soon

Scientific tips and tricks

Engineering Challenge - Above and Beyond

ENGINEERING CHALLENGE

Asks students to explore and apply engineering skills and tools to design and build solutions to specific applications.

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Above and Beyond: you’ll tell a story that starts with an in medias res scene. Make sure to include something important that expands, extends, or goes above and beyond. Defy gravity as you load up your structure with weights placed as far away from the base as possible. We can’t wait to see how you’ll go above and beyond!
  • Test how much weight a team-created structure can hold by placing weights onto the Structure as far from the center as possible.
  • Create and present a story in which something important expands, extends, or goes above and beyond.
  • Begin the Presentation with an in medias res scene.
  • Include an expansion effect.
  • Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.
Contact your Challenge Masters:

Colton Tapler

Kevin Cogswell

Luaan Buist

 

Team Manager Training:

Training Webinar – coming soon

 

Fine Arts Challenge - Becoming Super

FINE ARTS

Helps students develop acting and creative skills through artistic media, theater arts, scriptwriting, and prop design.

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Becoming Super: You’ll have the chance to show how one hard choice can set two characters on two different courses, as one becomes a superhero and the other becomes a supervillain. Use stage makeup and a technical costume to enhance some of your Presentation. It’s time to decide your fate!

  • Create and present an origin story that shows how one character becomes a Superhero and a different character becomes a Supervillain.
  • Use theatrical methods to portray a difficult decision, situation, and/or event.
  • Use stage makeup on at least one team member.
  • Design and create one technical costume.
  • Create and present two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.

Contact your Challenge Masters:

Connie Jones

Emma Gollob

Jessica Bobbs

 

Team Manager Training:

Training Video – coming soon

Improvisational Challenge - Casting Shadows

IMPROVISATIONAL

Is all about research, spontaneity, and storytelling. Teams receive topics and quickly produce skits.

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Casting Shadows: The world is full of opposites. Explore opposing themes while telling a story based on an inciting incident. Include a resolution trope and a random setting. Don’t get lost in darkness as you use a shadow screen and shadows to enhance your story!  Get ready to step out of the shadows and into the spotlight in this season’s Improvisational Challenge!

  • Create and present an improvisational skit based on an inciting incident.
  • Research pairs of opposing themes and incorporate a pair into the skit.
  • Include a randomly selected setting.
  • Research resolution tropes and incorporate one of them into the skit.
  • Use a shadow screen and a box of materials to enhance the skit.

Contact your Challenge Masters:

Ally Hayden 

Caroline Kuharski

Ellie Svoboda

 

Team Manager Training:

Webinar Training Video – coming soon

2024 2025 Improv training presentation

2024_2025 Improv training

Service Learning Challenge - Give and Take

SERVICE LEARNING

Our Service Learning Challenge is designed to engage students in public service that addresses real-life community issues.

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Give and Take: In this Challenge, your team will take on a service
project that addresses a real community need. Then, you’ll tell a story about what happens when two
characters team up to resolve a dispute. How will a misunderstanding throw a wrench into the situation?
It’s time to flex your negotiation skills when you take on this season’s Service Learning Challenge!

• Identify, design, carry out, and evaluate a project that addresses a need in a real
community.
• Create and present a story about at least two conflicting characters who have to work
together to address or resolve a dispute.
• Include a misunderstanding and at least two different viewpoints.
• Enhance your Presentation with a dispute depiction.
• Two Team Choice Elements that show off the team’s interests and skills

Contact your Challenge Masters:

Jennifer Zakotnik

Yvonne Kellar Guenther

 

Team Manager Training:

Training Webinar – coming soon

Rising Stars Challenge - Helping Hands

EARLY LEARNING

Our Rising Stars for Early Learners Challenge offers simple experiences with the creative process, and it gives young kids (preschool through 2nd grade) a place to work together and make new friends.

 

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Teachers, firefighters, librarians, nurses, pet adoption coordinators, food bank workers, and many other community helpers spend their days working to make our world a better place. It’s time to learn about how you can help too! Every day is a great day to lend a helping hand in this season’s Early Learning Challenge!

  • Research different kinds of community helpers.
  • Create and present a play about community helpers working together to solve a problem.
  • Design and create a set that shows where at least one of the community helpers works. 
  • Create and present a song about helping.
  • Create and present one Team Choice Element that shows off the team’s interests, skills, areas of strength, and talents.

 

Contact your Challenge Master:

Susan Dalgleish

 

Team Manager Training:

Training Webinar – coming soon

DI Early Learners TM Training 2024-2025

Resources for Rising Stars Team Managers 2024-2025

Instant Challenge

INSTANT CHALLENGE

All teams will have the opportunity to solve an Instant Challenge. These challenges require teams to engage in quick, creative and critical thinking.

In a world with growing cultural connections, increased levels and types of communication, and a new need for real-time teamwork and problem-solving, the ability to solve problems quickly is becoming increasingly critical.

Each team will be asked to solve an Instant Challenge for their DI tournament. The team must think on their feet by applying appropriate skills to produce a solution in a short period of time.

Instant Challenges are performance-based, task-based, or a combination of the two. Although each Instant Challenge has different requirements, all Instant Challenges reward teams for their teamwork. Instant Challenges are kept confidential until it is time for teams to solve them.

 

Contact your Challenge Masters:

Bonnie Deford

Claire Hamilton

Sara Heisdorffer

Webinar Recording

Instant Challenge 101

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