By Anne Marie Amacher
The Catholic Messenger
DAVENPORT — Junior high students at All Saints Catholic School used their artistic talents in a contest to express “What Inspires Me.”
Teacher Kelli Rolfs assigned all junior high students to complete artwork for the Doodle 4 Google contest. The contest is open to students in grades K-12. She found the contest by “googling” ideas for art class.
All Saints Catholic School eighth-grader Ellen Jardine submitted this artwork to the Doodle 4 Google contest.
Students were permitted to use a variety of media for the contest —from clay and graphic design to crayons and food. Rolfs said her students stuck to more traditional forms of media such as crayons, markers and colored pencils. All doodles had to incorporate the letters G-o-o-g-l-e, based on the well-known search engine “Google,” which sponsors the contest.
Every All Saints entry was submitted to Google by the March 2 deadline. But Rolfs chose 11 art pieces for teachers and staff to judge at the school level. Eighth-graders Ally Kersten and Ellen Jardine and seventh-grader Serena Pham tied for first place. Their prize for winning the All Saints Google competition was a lunch of Chick-fil-a and Whitey’s Ice Cream.
Describing her art, Serena said, “Traveling inspires me to live my life freely and (to) always appreciate all the opportunities that it gives. There’s so much going on in the world right now and traveling just makes me forget about everything and gives me the chance to experience new cultures.”
For her doodle, Ellen “drew different people coming together to make the world a better place. It inspires me because whenever there is a disaster, people come together to help each other out. When people come together, they forget who they are and their differences to help each other.”
“What inspires me is my mom,” Ally said. “My mom has breast cancer and she is fighting. The G (in G-o-o-g-l- e) is a figure of me and my mom. Then the two ‘o’s show me and my mom putting our hands together to make a heart.”
Google will select one winner from each state and from Puerto Rico and Guam. One national winner will be chosen. That winner will receive a $30,000 college scholarship, a $50,000 technology package for his/her school or non-profit organization, and a behind-the-scenes experience with the Doodle team to transform their doodle into an interactive experience. The doodle will appear on Google.
