Erica Redmond and her winning Doodle. Image: Conor McCabe Photography
The Irish winner of this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition has been named as Dublin’s Erica Redmond for her adorable drawing, ‘My Happy Robot Tom’.
Each year, thousands of creative students across Ireland of various ages put their thinking caps on to come up with a drawing for the annual Doodle 4 Google competition, in the hope that it will appear on every Google page in the country.
This year was no exception, with 4,000 students submitting entries on the theme, ‘If I could create anything it would be …’, allowing students to use their imagination to create their Doodle.
After an anxious few weeks for the finalists, the overall winner has been announced as Erica Redmond (6) from Scoil Carmel Junior School in Firhouse, Dublin, for her entry, ‘My Happy Robot Tom’.
“I designed a happy robot called Tom to help with my chores and be my friend,” Redmond said.
“Tom is always happy and loves to play games with me. I gave him multicoloured legs because I love rainbows. I used all the letters from Google as parts of my robot: the Gs are ears, the Os are eyes and the L and E are my robot’s power switches, connected with curly cables.”
Erica Redmond’s winning Doodle. Image: Erica Redmond/Google
Other group winners
As part of her prize, Google will offer a €5,000 scholarship towards Redmond’s third-level studies and a Chromebook, while her school will also receive a €10,000 technology grant and a Chromebook for her teacher, Ms Lea.
Almost half a million votes were cast in this year’s competition, with the highest number in each category making it through to the overall final round.
Other category winners included:
- Group 2 – Chloe McCarthy (8), Scoil Eoin, Innishannon, Co Cork
Image: Chloe McCarthy/Google
- Group 3 – Gabriela León (12), Our Lady of Good Counsel Girls’ National School, Co Dublin
Image: Gabriela Léon/Google
- Group 4 – Yuting Chen (14), Sancta Maria College, Dublin 16
Image: Yuting Chen/Google
- Group 5 – Peter Furey (16), Ardscoil Rís, North Circular Road, Co Limerick
Image: Peter Furey/Google
Speaking at the grand final, Fionnuala Meehan, VP and head of Google Ireland, said: “It’s been a fantastic year for our Doodle 4 Google competition, which continues to grow every year.
“We’re always blown away by the standard of entries we receive and this year was no exception. It was great to see such creativity and innovation in the entries … which made it very difficult for our judges and for the public who vote for our group winners.”
The Doodle will go live for Irish Google users on Friday 7 April.
