Marianne Liu, a first-grader at Peruvian Park Elementary, was cheered by her classmates on Wednesday, May 2, 2012 when she was announced as the state winner in the Doodle 4 Google contest, a competition open to all K-12 students in the United States.
Click here to see a video of the announcement.
As the state winner for Utah, Liu has the chance to win a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 technology grant for her school. Later this month, she will fly with her family to New York City for the national awards ceremony.
The overall winner, to be determined by online voting, will win the scholarship from Google and have his or her doodle featured on Google for a day in May.
Also, Crayola will put the winning doodle on a special edition of a Crayola Crayons box.
Two representatives from Google who both graduated from Brigham Young University in Provo visited the Sandy school to announce Liu’s win and show the students the various ways they could use Google products in their school work.
During an assembly, P.J. Andersen and Jordan Cushman, who are based out of Google’s California offices, took students on virtual tours of the Eiffel Tower and the White House, and found slam-dunk action photos of the Utah Jazz. For the event, the folks from Google supplied T-shirts to all students, faculty and staff.
“Google’s mission,” Cushman told the students, “is to provide information” to everyone who is seeking it. And that, to be sure, includes teachers who are putting together lesson plans and students seeking information to complete assignments.
This year, Google received 114,000 entries for the Doodle 4 Google contest. Liu’s picture of several dinosaurs, cleverly drawn in letters to form the word “Google,” won her the top spot for Utah. It was drawn, she says, because she loves dinosaurs and would love to see them in person. That fit well with the theme of this year’s doodle contest, “If I could travel in time, I’d visit …”
Click here to see the submissions by the state finalists and to vote.
Principal Ruth Peters encourages the District and state, not just the Peruvian Park school community, to support Liu.
The voting site will allow one vote per browser. So Peters encourages Utahns to launch browser after browser to vote for her darling first-grader.
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