€10,000 grant for winner's school

A FOURTH-YEAR student from Co Donegal has won top prize in Google’s doodle competition.

Ruth Deeney from Loreto Community School in Milford will see her doodle appear on the Google.ie home page tomorrow.

A total of 1,600 students from 600 schools entered the Doodle 4 Google competition which had “My future” as the theme.

Ruth’s doodle features a fortune teller, a robot, a space ship, an elevator with Pluto as its destination and a dancer. She said of her doodle: “My future begins at the centre of Google, with myself as a fortune teller foreseeing everything. The future [is] squeaky clean, shiny and painted chrome, not by humans of course! We won’t have to lift a finger with our advanced technology.”

Ruth and her teacher Ann Marie Finn will receive a €10,000 technology grant for their school and a laptop computer each.

The prize was presented by Michael Lopez, Google’s master doodler, at the company’s European headquarters in Dublin yesterday.

Another Loreto Community School student, Ciara Hayley, won the national category for Junior-cycle students. She won a laptop, as did primary school students Ellen Hayden from Ballyboy, Co Offaly, and Savannah Bergin from Galway.

All 80 regional winners attended a prize-giving event, where they took part in creative art and doodle classes.

The head of Google Ireland’s operation, John Herlihy, said the overall winner had been one of the youngest to win the national category. He said the doodles submitted reflected the concerns of Irish students, particularly in relation to their careers and global warming.

In late January members of the public were asked to vote online for their favourite doodle in each of four age categories. A total of 75,000 votes were registered.