Google has just announced a new competition for students - Doodle for Google offers young artists the chance to design the Google logo and perhaps have their artwork seen by people all over the world. Doodles will be judged in grade-level brackets, and teacher-created lesson plans are posted to support students in each bracket.

The theme for the U.S. competition is "What if...?" - a lot of the fun will come from helping your students decide how to interpret that open-ended phrase. Along with creating a doodle, students also need to write a title for their doodle and a supporting statement of up to 50 words explaining their "What if....?" vision. Google will select 40 finalist doodles that best depict the theme and display them online to give the public a chance to vote for their favorites. The winning doodler will receive a $10,000 college scholarship and their design will take over the Google.com homepage for a day (the winning school will also receive a $25,000 technology grant).

In order for students to participate, schools must register by March 28. Each school can submit up to six student entries. Further information, a link to register, and detailed lesson plans can be found at http://www.google.com/doodle4google.