We had a great session tonight at Gilmore, with 13 parents attending. Our presenter was Cheryl Atwater. Below are my rough notes from the session.
Notes from the Session
Cheryl commented that often adults jump in because it's faster, more than it's easy.
She said that one of the comments from a returning student in one of her teams to new team members was that it was great that the adults are assistants- and otherwise keep out.
In a nutshell:
- teams of 5-7 members
- broken into divisions
- all teams work on the same problems; just the output is different
Teams start in January, there is a 'Qualifying' round in March, then re-present in April. Then if a team wins, there is the option to go to the world final in the States. The qualifying round is not qualifying to go to the April contest, but a chance for teams to get feedback about their solution.
Q: Are practices once a week? Cheryl equated it to a soccer team- normally start with one practice per week, but as we get closer to tournaments, there are often more practices. There's no one way to do Odyssey.
Cheryl then showed us the following video about Odyssey of the Mind: http://www.odysseyofthemind.com/downloads/a_creative_experience.350.rm (Technical point: if you don't have, and don't want to install RealPlayer, you can use VLC to play it. In VLC go to file->open network location, and then paste the above address.)
Some of Cheryl's returning students said one of the highlights was - no adults!
Lee had some comments about judging (has been a judge for many years.) He has looked at numerous teams solving the same problems. The most difficult ones to judge have been the contraption type problems. Kids keep you very up and aware... so uplifting seeing kids solve problems. Seeing the kids solutions not working the way they thought it would, and seeing them working together to make it work. Seeing them really using their minds to solve these problems.
Note- the video mostly presents the long term problems- there is also a spontaneous problem. Cheryl did an example activity with parents: "What could this be?" (Cheryl handed around a pair of CDs taped together.)
Parents got a good taste for what a spontaneous problem can be.
Cheryl highlighted that such activities are good for breaking kids out of the idea of a "single correct answer" mentality that is often emphasized elsewhere.
And then Cheryl had the parents try a building problem- "battery boosters." The object was to create a structure that could hold batteries off the table surface. Several different solutions were created by the parents in attendance. A really great taste of what the kids experience in Odyssey. And here are the parent constructions:
Cheryl also told us a story of a parent at a similar meeting the previous day that was a firefighter. He had done similar problem solving exercises in his training because if all houses were the same it'd be easy. But they're not, so this kind of problem solving is essential for real world situations.
