Bartle team's creativity shines in Odyssey of the Mind

Ekaterina Vorobiev
H.P. Mirror staff

On June 3, a team of third and fourth grade students from Bartle Elementary School placed second in the world finals in a very interesting competition held at College Park, Maryland. The purpose of the competition is not to test the knowledge but to reward out-of-the-box thinking and ways to tackle a problem creatively. This was the 2008 Odyssey of the Mind.

The competition has two parts: Long term problem solving, which involves extensive preparation in advance with limited help from coaches; and the Spontaneous problem in which the team is presented with a problem and the team has three minutes to discuss and prepare an answer, and then four minutes to present in front of a panel of judges.

The Bartle team's long-term challenge was to to build a vehicle that was man-powered and that related to different sport events like launching a soccer ball a certain given distance with a pendulum etc. While executing the vehicle presentation, they donned homemade costumes and acted out their own original skit that explained the purpose and functions of the vehicle. Their presentation was graded according to the originality and performance of both their vehicle and their skit.

The teams had been preparing for this event for a year and have been presenting in competitions throughout spring. The kids had to place in top three or win a Renatra Fusca award for outstanding creativity to qualify for the World Finals. Not only did the team place second in the regional competition -- they also won the rarely awarded Renetra Fusca award for Extraordinary Creativity. At the world finals, they competed with teams from countries around the world, including Canada, China, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Malaysia, Poland, Singapore, and Uzbekistan.

Odyssey of Mind was started in 1978 and has grown into a successful worldwide program designed to help build young minds in different ways. This program is run by local non-profit organizations, for the benefit of children from kindergarten to college. To learn more about this competition, please visit www.odysseyofthemind.com.