News
Two Schenectady teams
advance to Odyssey of the Mind State Championship March 29
Two Schenectady
City School District teams will advance to the Odyssey of the
Mind State Championships on March 29 at Binghamton University.
The Odyssey of
the Mind team
from Paige Elementary School and one of two Central Park Middle
School teams won the Region 7 Odyssey of the Mind Tournament in
each of their divisions after a day long competition on March 1
at Mohonasen High School. The teams competed against 500
students from 15 local school districts at solving problems by
taking risks and using creative and problem-solving skills.
Each team
selected one of five problems, each calling for creativity,
open-minded thinking, talent and teamwork.
The Paige team
(pictured below) took the top spot over eleven other teams,
solving the DinoStories problem which called for presentation of
a theory of what caused the dinosaurs to become extinct.
The Central
Park team championed with their presentation and solution of the
Tee Structure problem which called for the team to design and
build a balsa wood structure that will support weights that are
balanced on golf balls without touching anything else.
In addition to
performing and solving the problem, each team must also respond
well to a "spontaneous problem," where members solve a similar
problem on the spot.
Team members
and their coaches have spent months working on the problems,
designing their costumes and the perfect props.
Both teams
advance to the state championships at the end of the month.
Paige
Student Design on OM Pin
 Congratulations
also to Paige fifth grader Andrew Butryn, whose pin
design was on sale at the regional competition.
In late January Butryn was named winner of the Odyssey of the Mind Pin Design
Contest.
Andrew wrote:
"To me, Odyssey of the Mind means to think and be creative. I
used light bulbs that mean thinking. I used a gold star to mean
you did a good job. I used lots of colors because I wanted to
make a creative decoration. That is my pin."
Odyssey of the Mind is an
international educational program that provides creative
problem-solving opportunities for students from kindergarten
through college. Kids apply their creativity to solve problems
that range from building mechanical devices to presenting their
own interpretation of literary classics. They then bring their
solutions to competition on the local, state, and World level.
Thousands of teams from throughout the U.S. and from about 25
other countries participate in the program.
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