HOLLY HALBERG, a freshman at Battle Ground High School, learned at a surprise school assembly that she is the Washington state winner of the Doodle 4 Google contest. She accepted the award from the Google team with her little sister and her art teacher.
THIS IS THE DOODLE that won Battle Ground High School Freshman Holly Halberg the honor of Washington state winner of the Doodle 4 Google contest with her silhouette design.
BATTLE GROUND – Battle Ground High School freshman Holly Halberg learned at a surprise school assembly the morning of Feb. 5 that she is the Washington state winner of the Doodle 4 Google contest.
Halberg has advanced to the public voting round of the K-12 competition to create a Doodle that will be on the Google homepage for a day.
The public can vote through Feb. 22 for a finalist in each grade category at http://www.google.com/doodle4google. Four national finalists will each receive a $5,000 college scholarship, and the national winner will get a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 Google for Education grant for his or her school. The national winner’s Doodle will be on Google.com for a day.
Halberg created a silhouette that tells the world “What makes me...me,” the theme for this year’s competition. She took inspiration from the things she enjoys in her life, from her little sister and living in the Pacific Northwest to reading and photography. She entered the competition after Alder Suttles, her art teacher at BGHS last semester, asked students to create a Doodle as a class assignment.
More than 25 students from her classes entered their Doodles into Google’s competition, Suttles said, which for the first time could be created by most any medium the student favored. Halberg said she chose a silhouette because she loves incorporating them into her photography. It took her a couple of weeks to develop the idea, compose it and then create the final project using an exacto knife to cut the silhouettes out of black paper and adhere them to paper cut from a book with blades of grass and the word Google written in black marker behind the silhouettes.
“She’s very careful, and thoughtful and so talented,” Suttles said. “It was an assignment we could have finished in class, but she took the materials home for extra time.”
Suttles added that while scanning the Doodles into a computer in preparation for entry into the competition, she stopped when she came to Halberg’s Doodle. “It was obvious to me it was special,” she said.
Google held a surprise assembly at the high school on Friday to announce that Halberg is the Washington state winner and to share technological innovations that Google is working on, including self-driving cars. Halberg said that while sitting in the assembly amongst her classmates, and knowing that many had entered the competition, it didn’t occur to her that she had won. As the state winner, she received a tablet and T-shirts with her Doodle printed on them. Battle Ground High School received $2,500 for art supplies, which will be used to purchase a pottery wheel and easels for art classes.
Halberg has taken many art classes while attending Battle Ground Public Schools. At Amboy Middle School, she took art from Rebecca Broyles, a National Board Certified Teacher who now teaches visual arts at River HomeLink.
