Official Rules and Privacy Notice

The Pardes Day School AI for Education Challenge

Effective July 10, 2026

This page is the complete version of the rules summarized on the Challenge page. Entering the Challenge means you agree to these rules. Updates for clarity will be dated on this page.

The Challenge

The AI for Education Challenge is a global showcase of real AI work already helping Jewish education, hosted and judged by Pardes Day School, Miami Beach. It is not a hackathon: entries show something you already built that works today.

Key dates

  • Monday, July 13, 2026: submissions open.
  • Wednesday, July 29, 2026, 11:59 PM Eastern: submission deadline. No extensions. The system stops accepting entries at the deadline; a video upload already in progress at 11:59 PM gets a short grace window to finish.
  • Thursday, August 6, 2026: finalists announced and Educators' Choice voting opens.
  • Thursday, August 13, 2026: winners revealed.

Who can enter

Any Jewish educator, anywhere in the world: teachers, moros, rebbeim, administrators, specialists, and support staff in Jewish educational settings. Day schools, yeshivos, preschools, and any other Jewish educational setting all count. Entrants must be 18 or older. Enter alone or as a team of up to three people. Pardes Day School staff and their immediate families may submit for the public showcase but are not eligible for prizes.

What qualifies

Anything real you made with AI that improves something in education and works today: worksheets, videos, prompting methods, review games, generators, workflows, chatbots, apps, automations, lesson planners, dashboards, curriculum tools, and anything like them. No coding is required, and technical sophistication is not a judging criterion. There is no build-date cutoff.

What does not qualify:

  • Ideas only
  • Mockups that do not work yet
  • Generic ChatGPT use with no repeatable system
  • Anything shown with identifiable student data
  • Work you did not create
  • Content you do not have permission to share

The entry

The entry is a video of your work, never the work itself. We want to see it working. Your face never needs to appear and narration is optional, though a walkthrough in your own voice helps show it is real and yours. Most important, the work stays in your hands: you never have to send us the tool, the code, the prompts, or your files.

  • A writeup of up to 200 words: the problem, how what you made solves it, and whether it is already in use. The form enforces the 200-word limit.
  • A video of up to two minutes showing it actually working. If a video runs long, judges watch the first two minutes. Upload the file or paste a link; a pasted link must be viewable by anyone with the link.
  • Optionally, one link to the work itself (a doc, a site, a prompt library). Judges review the video first; the link is supplementary and never required. A shared link must be viewable by anyone with the link, and the no-student-data rule applies to it fully.

Entries and teams

  • Up to three entries per person or team, and only one can win a prize.
  • Teams can be up to three people. One prize per winning entry, paid as one award; how a team divides it is the team's decision.

Judging

A recusal-bound panel scores every entry. Judges recuse themselves from any entry where they have a personal or professional connection. Before winners are finalized, each finalist does a brief private walkthrough of their tool with a judge; dummy data is welcome. Scoring weights:

  • 35% how well it works, as shown in your video
  • 30% the problem it solves: does it matter
  • 20% real-world use and results
  • 15% could other educators use it

Responsible use is a requirement, not a score.

Prizes

  • First Place: $2,400 toward the AI plan or tools of your choice, plus the winner's award and a seat on next year's judging panel.
  • Second Place: $1,200 toward the AI plan or tools of your choice.
  • Third Place: $1,000 toward the AI plan or tools of your choice.
  • Educators' Choice Award: $1,000 cash, decided only by the entrants. Every entrant ranks their top three finalist videos on a private ballot, and nobody can vote for their own entry.

For the three placed prizes, winners choose the AI tools and Pardes covers them: any AI platform counts, and a prize can go to one platform or be split across several. If a chosen platform is not available in a winner's country, the credit moves to platforms the winner can use. The Educators' Choice Award is paid in cash. Details are arranged directly with each winner.

The placed prizes and the Educators' Choice Award are decided by different voters, so one entry can win both a placed prize and the Educators' Choice Award.

The Responsible AI Rule

No student names. No student faces. No student records. No grades. No private files. Use dummy data. Entries showing real student information are disqualified, regardless of quality. Protecting students is part of what this Challenge stands for.

Ownership and publication

Everything stays yours. Pardes never requires the tool itself, your code, your prompts, or your files; only the video, and you choose what to show. By entering, you give Pardes Day School permission to publish your video and writeup, with credit to you. Strong entries, winning or not, may be published in the Challenge showcase with full credit. Before a nonwinning entry is published, we email you a heads-up with a link to opt out.

Disqualification

Entries are disqualified for real student data, misrepresented ownership, or content the entrant lacks rights to.

Privacy notice

To run the Challenge, the entry form collects: your name, email, WhatsApp number, role, school, city and country, team member names if any, the name of what you made, your writeup, your video or a link to it, and how you heard about the Challenge.

  • Where it lives: entries are stored in Google Firebase (United States) and in a private Google Sheet owned by Pardes Day School.
  • Who sees it: the organizing team and the judging panel. Contact details are used only for entry, finalist, and prize communication and are never sold or shared for marketing.
  • What gets published: only what the publication permission covers: your video and writeup, with your name and the role, school, and city you entered, for winners and showcased entries. Contact details (email and WhatsApp) are never published.
  • How long: entry records are kept through the Challenge and its showcase.
  • Your choices: to ask about, correct, or request removal of your information, email ai@pardesdayschool.org.

Questions

Anything unclear? Email ai@pardesdayschool.org and a person answers.

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