doodle4google!

Last week we looked at the doodle4google competition, a fantastic opportunity for U.S. K-12 students to "mod out" the Google logo and win a $10,000 college scholarship. All the details are here at the program website. The theme? The wide-open "What if...?"

Each registered school in the nation may submit only 6 entries in the competition, and those must be sent in by April 12. After that, the selection process pace quickens (through state, regional, and finalist levels--somewhat like American Idol runs down to its final contestants: there'll actually be a 3 day period of public voting) until its culmination on May 22, when the national winning doodle will be featured as Google's website logo for a period of 24 hours. Regional and finalist contestants will win a trip to the Googleplex, a sprawling headquarters of the corporation, to be in attendance for the award ceremonies the day before.

At USN, we'll be accepting googledoodles in any medium (the final 6 must be physically mailed via "snailmail" bearing the alphanumeric keys issued by Google) until March 31 at 3 pm. Then an independent jury will choose the USN entries. Since there are four levels--K-3, 4-6, 7-9, and 10-12--from which the final four national finalists will be chosen, it makes sense to send at least one entry from each of the grade level groups, then the other two will be selected across the board from the ones the jury feels have the best chance of winning. it should be fun!

If you want to download the templates to print out for your child to sketch or complete, visit the "Forms" page at Google.