Meridian Stories Annual Digital Storytelling Competition
2024-2025

Welcome to our annual digital storytelling competitions where students are challenged to create short video and audio stories around topics in Language Arts, History, and STEAM.

Scene from Days in the Sun from Shakespearean Soliloquy Shake Up Challenge

Meridian Stories Competitions

From the creation of a new dystopia, to an investigative report about water corruption; from a rap about immigration, to a police drama that is resolved through trigonometry, the Digital Storytelling Competitions for Grades 5-12 (middle school through high school) begin with engagement, journey through curricular exploration and story creation, and end in media production. To see last year’s Challenges, scroll down. 

This year’s Competitive Submissions are due on April 4, 2025.

Everything You Need to Know about the Competitions

Meridian Stories School Competitions FAQs

Q: What does the per school annual fee cover?
A: The fee — $250 — covers access for the entire school to create digital stories in any or all of the annual 15 Challenges. The fee includes the submission of up to three entries into the Competitions, per Challenge. In other words, while an entire class or grade can create a slate of digital stories in response to a Challenge, only three can be submitted into the Competition.
Q: How long can the digital stories be?
A: Competition submissions must be under 4 minutes, unless otherwise stated in the Challenge itself.
Q: Is there support from Meridian Stories?
A: Meridian Stories supports in two ways:

  1. via the Digital Resources Learning Center
  2. via direct contact with the staff at Meridian Stories

Questions? Please contact us.

Q: What are the rights issues surrounding the publication of student work on the Meridian Stories website?

A: Each submission to the Competitions must be slated with the title of the piece, the submitting school, and the words, ‘Permission Granted.’ Those two words give Meridian Stories the rights to publish and feature the student work on the site and in related education-only contexts — such as a Newsletter. Regarding overall digital rights concerning the use of imagery, music and sound, it is expected that the teachers will supervise the rules and necessary citations that govern the use of digital content in their students’ stories. To assist, there is a Digital Rules area – including information on Public Domain, Creative Commons Licenses, and the Doctrine of Fair Use – in the Digital Resources Learning Center.

Q: How are these submissions evaluated?
A: Mentors — professionals from the field of media, education, and related subject areas — volunteer their time to evaluate the student submissions. The criterion are articulated in the Evaluation Rubrics that are integrated into the Challenge itself. These criteria focus on Content Command, Storytelling Command, and Media Command. The Mentors score the submissions based on the Evaluation Rubric and then write productive commentary for every entry. There are two Mentors assigned to review each student submission.
Q: What is this Badging system? Do students win anything?
A: First, second, and third place are awarded to the submissions with the most points and those results are posted on the website. There are no material prizes. The Badges are an informal micro-credentialing system designed to reward students for their efforts in the areas of Content Command, Storytelling Command, and Media Command. The Badges are delivered digitally and can be used by the student as part of their own digital portfolio, to assist with school or job applications.
Q: How many entries can my school submit?
A: Each school can submit up to three projects per Competition (so while the entire class can participate in the Challenge, up to three can be submitted to Meridian Stories for Mentor review and scoring).

Contact Us

If your questions weren’t answered above, contact us and we’ll be sure to get your question answered.