whowhatwhenwherewhy?

If you could spend a day with anyone alive or dead, real, fictional or imaginary…

Who would you pick?
What would you do with them?
When would you meet: in the past, present or future?
Where would you meet them?
Why would you pick them?

Tell us in 100 words or less, and you may win $100 in our second 100-word essay contest. TeenTribune.com and TweenTribune.com will distribute $1,000 in cash prizes. Entries will be judged in ten categories, with separate categories for each grade, 3rd through 12th.

Previous winners: To see the winners in our first essay contest about technology, click here.

Students & teachers: Share on Facebook and Email to your friends and colleagues.

Teachers: Click for Step-by-step instructions

One hundred words may not seem like enough, but as Mark Twain said, "I didn't have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one." He meant that it takes more time and effort to write concisely than to merely fill a page with words. Famous writers conveyed powerful ideas beautifully and succinctly. Students in grades 3-12 created 100-word essays to explain "How technology makes the world a better place." These examples from famous writers and students are provided for classroom discussion.

Prizes: There will be 1 prize of $100 in each grade, 3-12, for a total of 10 prizes. Winning entries will be published on a special page at TeenTribune.com and TweenTribune.com.

No computers? No time? No problem! If your classroom does not have a computer for every student or if there isn't enough time during the school day to enter, then students should submit their entries from home, from a public library, after school or as homework. Entries can be submitted 24/7.

How to enter: Entries must be submitted online to TweenTribune and TeenTribune. No entries will be accepted via email or snail mail. To enter, students must be registered as members of a teacher's classroom by signing up for that classroom. Then students log in, click “Create entry” from the “For Student Links” on the right side of the homepage, then submit their entries for their teachers to judge. Parents may not publish entries of their children. Students cannot publish entries – only registered teachers can publish entries.

Be creative: Entries may contain an introduction, topic sentences, supporting details or conclusion – but they aren't necessary. Instead, an entry may consists of one long sentence, like William Faulkner, or many short sentences like Ernest Hemingway, or silly sentences like Dr. Seuss or no sentences at all like Billy Joel's “We Didn't Start The Fire.”

But remember, a true artist learns the rules, follows the rules and thinks twice before breaking them.

Entries can't exceed 100 words. A “word” is any character or group of characters separated on either side by spaces. A contraction counts as 2 words. The entry form will alert you if you exceed the 100-word limit.

Judging by teachers: Teachers will judge the work of their students, then publish three entries from each of their classrooms. Teachers may only submit three entries per classroom. Entries will be sorted by grade for voting by students. Teachers should choose entries that display passion (think Dr. King) and originality (think Dr. Seuss). That's the rubric.

Voting by teachers and students: Only registered teachers and the students who signed up for their classrooms may vote. If you are not registered, you may not vote. Students, if your teacher is not registered, ask your teacher to register now so you can register for their classroom, then vote, before the contest ends. Students and teachers may vote for one entry in each grade, 3-12. Student and teachers may not vote for more than one entry in any one grade.

Final judging: The staff of TeenTribune and TweenTribune will evaluate the entries that receive the most votes, then select 1 first place winner from each grade category (Grades 3-12) for a total of 10 winners. Entries will be judged by grade, so 3rd grade entries will only be judged against other 3rd grade entries, 4th grade entries will only be judged against other 4th grade entries, etc.

To prevent the voting from becoming a mere “popularity contest” – in which larger schools have an advantage – the online voting system will prevent any entry from receiving more than 25 votes from any particular school. If an entry is truly worthy of more votes, that entry should receive more votes from students in other schools.

Eligibility: The content is open to the registered students, Grades 3-12, of all registered teachers. Students, if your teacher is not registered, ask your teacher to register now, before you register and create an entry, because only teachers can publish your entry to be voted upon. Students are not allowed to include their last names when they register or when they submit an entry. Students' names will not appear on TweenTribune.com or TeenTribune.com without parental approval. Teachers must be registered before students can register. If you are a student, ask your teacher if he or she is registered. However, students may not submit requests for registrations for their teachers. Only teachers may submit these requests.

Teachers, are you registered?

1. To be sure you are registered, log in or retrieve your username and password. If you can log in or retrieve your username, then you are registered.
2. If you have submitted a request for registration in the past, do not submit another request for registration merely if you don't know your username and password because the registration process skips over all requests from currently registered users. If you aren't sure whether you are registered, or if you don't know your username and password, click to retrieve your username and password.
3. If you aren't registered, submit a request for registration now. However, we cannot guarantee that your registration will be processed before the end of this contest because the registration process is not automated and it requires independent verification. Please note that the mere act of submitting a request for registration does not guarantee your eligibility. Also, please note that we are not responsible for errors in registration requests, such as misspellings and invalid email addresses. If you submit a request for registration, please proof it before you submit it. To prevent your school from blocking emails from us – including your login credentials – please tell your Internet network administrator and IT staff to “whitelist” this domain and IP address: tweentribune.com and 72.32.2.172

What's the deadline? The staff at TeenTribune and TweenTribune will begin evaluating entries on Monday, February 14, 2011, so teachers should publish their students' entries and students should cast their votes by Friday, February 11, 2011.

• Act now: Students may compose their entries and teachers may publish their entries now, and students may cast their votes as soon as entries are published. This will provide more time for entries to be seen and voted upon by other students.
• Act later: Students may wait to compose their entries and teachers may wait to publish their entries so that students can learn from the entries of other students that were published previously. But these entries will have less time to garner votes.

Notification of winners: All winning entries will be published by February 28, 2011. Checks will be mailed in March to teachers' winners after each winner's teacher provides the full name of the winner and the teacher's mailing address. At TeenTribune and TweenTribune, we do not collect students' full names or email addresses to protect students' identities, so the teachers of the winning entrants must identify their students in order for us to distribute prizes. Teachers that fail to provide this information will forfeit prizes for their winning students.

For teachers, step-by step:

• Make sure you are registered.
• Tell your students about this contest and share these examples.
• If your students are not registered, ask them to register for your classroom using the student sign up link at the top of the homepage. Students must be registered for your classroom before they create an entry. If students are not registered for your classroom when they submit an entry, they will need to submit their entry again after they register for your classroom.
• Publish 3 entries from each of your classrooms, as follows:

1. Log in
2. Find the link to “Entries awaiting approval” in the group of links labeled “For Teacher Links” on the right side of the homepage beneath your username which appears in orange.
3. Tick the boxes adjacent to the three entries you want to publish.
4. Select “Publish the selected entries” from the pulldown.
5. Click the “Update” button.
6. Important note: After you publish 3 entries from a classroom, you will not be able to publish any more entries from that classroom, so choose carefully.
7. See the published entries. New entries may take up to 10 minutes to appear on the page with previously published entries. You may search using the students' usernames.

Special education: Special education students are welcome to participate, but there are no special categories or allowances made for reading level vs. grade level in this contest. However, we invite Special Ed teachers to email us with alternatives to allow more special education students to participate in future contests.

And finally…We've tried to make this contest as fair and useful as possible. We began by asking thousands of teachers for input and hundreds of them responded with excellent suggestions for which we are grateful. But we recognize that there may be room for improvement, so please help us to make our next effort even better by emailing your suggestions to us.

Thank you!