MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Do Google’s doodles catch your attention? They do for a Monongalia County grade school girl, and that has drawn the web giant’s attention to Morgantown.
The search engine’s landing page features brightly colored letters simply spelling the company name. On occasion, the Google doodle changes. It commemorates anniversaries of historical events, is sometimes holiday themed or can be a reference to top news at the time.
Soon, the Google doodle will be the work of a school student who designed an image as part of an annual contest called Doodle 4 Google.
North Elementary School’s Tarannom Rajaee, a second grader, learned Thursday, Feb. 23, she is among 53 winners who entered the competition to share their interpretations of “What I See for the Future”, the contest theme this year.
Natalie Webb, the principal at North, said they’ve known for about a month Rajaee would represent the entire state in the contest.
“So we have kept this secret now, my assistant principal and I, for almost a month. Today was the day we were able to recognize our student. She was so delightful and so surprised and so humble. It was just darling,” described Webb.
Rajaee’s doodle depicts a Martian landscape and a curious astronaut. The image is named “Living on Mars”.
“Her drawing was incredible. She drew herself as an astronaut with her little pig tails coming out of the astronaut helmet. Her vision was that we would live on Mars,” added the educator.
Rajaee’s design was chosen as a finalist in the competition from 100,000 entries.
At a school assembly Thursday, students, staff, family and Senator Shelley Moore Capito celebrated Rajaee’s progress in the contest.
But, anticipation continues to build. Rajaee’s design has to make it through online voting through March 5.
Click to see the full list of state winners and vote online.
You’re allowed to vote once a day on every device you own. I will be voting on my phone, my tablet, my computer, my home computer, my work computer. I’ll be voting about 6 times a day,” chuckled Webb.
The top five vote Google doodle finalists will be announced March 31 when the national winner will be chosen.
Should the North Elementary student find herself to be the number one doodler for Google she will receive a $30,000 college scholarship and the school will be given a $50,000 Google for Education grant to be used to improve school technology programs.