Google is hosting a competition for students to customize the Google logo. As world language educators, you could have your students enter this contest, focusing on language, culture, global understanding, etc. Why should you consider this? There is great power in being able to generate meaning through visual representation – it requires critical thinking and synthesis.
Here are some details:
Welcome to Doodle 4 Google, a competition where we invite K-12 students to play around with our homepage logo and see what they come up with. This year we’re inviting U.S. kids to join in the doodling fun, around the intriguing theme “What if…?”
At Google we believe in thinking big, and dreaming big, and we can’t think of anything more important than encouraging students to do the same. So we hope you’ll gather those art supplies and some 8.5×11 landscape paper and encourage your kids to enrich us all with their creative visions of our world, as it is and as it might be.
You’ll find everything you need to get started here, including detailed lesson plans to incorporate the competition into your curricula. Registration closes on March 28th, and entries are due by April 12th. A panel of judges will select 40 finalist doodles, from which the public will help select a favorite to be featured on our homepage on May 22nd, 2008.
Google is supplying some lesson ideas, templates of the graphic, and more. Check the Google for Educators forum and check out other teacher’s experiences with the contest as well as with various Google services.
Need some more inspiration? Watch this video:
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/BIctMbYL0d4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
Google really “gets” it, don’t they? I just finished preparing a handout re: some of the key purposes of graphic design, and as I watched this video, I was struck by how well even these simple doodles accomplish those purposes:
A ctivate attention
B uild meaningful patterns for the brain
C ommunicate conceptually
D evelop ideas in layers of space
E ngage emotions, eyes, and intellect
As the Google video shows, when those principles are applied simultaneously, it becomes possible to communicate substantive ideas in small spaces with limited resources. Yet, I wonder how often we teachers consider such principles as we are preparing our lesson plans for the day?