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Elementary students enter Doogle for Google contest

Lead Summary
,
By
Mavis Fodness

Every day a different doodle is featured on the home page of the internet search engine Google.com incorporating the letters G-O-O-G-L-E.
Thanks to the company’s annual “Doodles for Google” contest, a Luverne student could have his or her doodle selected for display on the company’s next home page.
Susan Beers, technology integration specialist for Luverne Public Schools, organized the local elementary school submissions by the March 19 deadline.
The nationwide contest was open to all K-12 students.
“We had about 100 entries,” Beers said.
She randomly shared a couple of doodles with the Star Herald.
According to contest rules, the doodles are meant to “surprise and delight people” when they visit Google.com.
Past doodles celebrated historical figures or events. Some doodles depicted holidays or celebrities.
For this year’s contest, students designed their doodles around the question, “When I grow up, I hope …”
Fourth-grader Macie Edstrom titled her doodle “To Teach is to Inspire.”
“When I grow up, I hope to be a teacher,” she wrote on the entry form. “I want to be a teacher because I can help people learn a lot.”
Edstrom doodled items she saw in her teacher Lori Oechsle’s classroom.
White board messages of missing homework assignments and schedules for the day are included along with the tops of students’ desks.
The teacher’s desk features a computer whose mouse forms the second “g” in the word Google.
Edstrom used a mathematical problem inside the letter “G,” turned the two “o”s into owl-like glasses, drew a pencil to represent the “l” and for the “e” she sketched an apple around the letter and turned the “e” into a worm.
Classmate Marlee Nelson in Jennifer Engesser’s room titled her doodle, “Cooking in the Kitchen.”
“I hope to be able to cook when I’m older and use all the utensils, bake things and just be a pro at cooking because I love to make food,” Nelson wrote on the entry form.
Her doodle featured a kitchen scene with a pepperoni pizza with a slice missing to form the “G” with a fry pan on a burner and a donut for the “o”s, a mixer with its beaters reaching into a bowl for the “g,” a knife for the “l” and finished with an oven mitt forming the letter “e.”
Beers said she’s had to curb the students’ excitement about a possible local winner.
“We won’t know for a while and I think some of the younger kids have a hard time grasping how large this contest is,” she said. “I’ve tried to explain the odds of somebody from Luverne winning were quite low due to the sheer number of entries.”
According to the contest rules, all submissions are grouped into five grade levels.
The contest, organized in 2008, starts with the naming of 53 state and territory winners. One finalist is selected from each grade level with one of the five finalists selected as a national winner.
The winner’s doodle is featured on Google.com and he or she receives a $50,000 scholarship.
The winner is announced in June.
“Who knows? We may just have a winner from Luverne,” Beers said. “Anything is possible.”

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