Your creative writing piece can be handwritten or typed. We want you, our contestants, to be as creative as you feel with these entries. Therefore, you can include audio and/or visual elements with your entry in addition to your written response. In fact, we would be thrilled to hear or see you reading, performing, interviewing, podcasting, or artistically interpreting your piece! We just ask that the format you send be a .doc, .jpg, .png, .pdf, .mp3, .mp4, or .mov file and that you remain respectful of potential viewing/listening audiences (see section 3 of the entry form for more details).

We welcome your creativity. Please feel free to interview friends, family, teachers, and other experts on the subject, or to submit drawings/blueprints of your redesigned school. If you choose to include more than a written essay, you would submit the artwork/audio/video with your writing. For example, a podcast outline with the podcast audio, written interview questions with the recording, an essay with a video of your dramatic reading, the audio recording of your song with the song lyrics, or a picture of your art to accompany the written idea behind your design. We just ask that you include your full name in the file title(s).

For the purpose of this contest, it might be helpful to better understand the differences between school, education, and learning. Therefore, we've included definitions as defined by Ken Robinson, Ph.D., in his book, Creative Schools.

Definitions:

• Schools - any community of people that comes together to learn with each other. [This] includes homeschooling, unschooling, and informal gatherings both in person and online from kindergarten to college and beyond.
• Education - organized programs of learning.
• Learning - the process of acquiring new knowledge and skills.