Odyssey!
This weekend we were judges at the Vermont state 'Odyssey of the Mind' tournament. It was totally fun. Has anyone else out there participated in this program in anyway? What did they think of it? Just curious.
posted by Joshua @ 11:41 AM
4 Comments:
Did I mention that Boudicca and I got to march in the parade? That was totally cool!
I actually did OM in middle school when I was living in England (albeit attending an american school). From what I remember it was quite a lot of fun since we were effectively given an open ended problem with a few restrictions and were then told to have at it. In our case we had to design a vehicle that would run a course (over a ramp I beleive) and hit and pop a stationary balloon. The most entertaining part were the various failed experiments leading up to our final solution. We tried a "ground rocket" which was essentially a big soda bottle on wheels with baking soda inside, into which we poured vinegar before placing a nozzled cap on the end.
I believe there was another year where we had to build a structure out of certain materials with the aim of protecting a pingpong ball from an ever increasing stack of weights. I think there was also a sort of a dramtic element to it, since I seem to remember some of the people on one of our teams painting their ball like Earth and pretending to be super-villains bend on world destruction.
The main problem was lack of other teams (since there were relatively few US expatriate schools around). I think there would have been more incentive to work at it had there been a bigger tournament to look forward to.
I think OM is a great example of the sort of education that is lacking in a lot of our schools today. As many have said before on this blog, education involves much more than memorizing a large body of knowledge (but this portion, sadly, is what is stressed by standardized tests). It involves training minds to be curious and agile problem solvers. The term critical thinking gets used to death, but it is a good one. Open ended team projects like the ones in OM (or at least, OM as I remember it from 7th grade) are simultaneously excellent for developing these sorts of skills and a hell of a lot of fun for kids.
The kids I judged certainly had a blast trying to make the longest ramp possible from an 8 inch piece of wood, 10 q-tips, 6 rubber bands, 8 mailing labels, 2 lumps of clay, 25 pieces of spaghetti, 2 disposable cups, a screwdriver, and a wrench that would get ping pong, golf, and tennis balls into various containers. They had 6 minutes for think-time and construction and then 2 minutes to get in as many balls as possible.
(Can you tell how many times I heard those directions read over the course of the day?)
It's a shame I didn't see what these kids put forth for their long-term problem solutions.
Science Olympiad is really big in Fayette County, GA, where I grew up, and having seen both, I think OM is far more fun!
I certainly feel like I missed out as a kid! I think I would have had a great deal of fun with the spontaneous verbal problems...
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