Last Friday at NCCE Seattle we announced that our next homepage photo contest will kickoff on March 29 and this time there’s a twist. We’re asking students in the United States to submit photos to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and the winning photo will be displayed on the Bing homepage on April 22, Earth Day itself! In addition to the grand prize winner seeing their photo on Bing.com, we’ve pulled together some great prizes for both students and their schools.Winners across the four age groups (ages 5-10, 11-13, 14-17 and 18+) will win a trip for two to the Microsoft Campus to take part in a Bing editorial team meeting where we pick images for future homepages. Additionally, each winner will receive equipment from HP and Canon to help build digital photo resources at their school. Prizes for individual winners and their schools across the four age groups will total over $70,000. · 1st place prizes: Individuals receive an HP Pavilion desktop and monitor and a “Digital Photo Lab” for their school. · 2nd place prizes: Individuals receive an HP Pavilion desktop and monitor and a “Digital Photo Kit” for their school. · 3rd place prizes: Individuals receive an HP Pavilion desktop and monitor and a “Digital Photo Starter Set” for their school. And here’s the “everyone wins” part. There’s a great opportunity to help other classrooms in need during the voting stage from April 13th to the 19th. Bing will give a $5.00 GivingCard for DonorsChoose.org to the first 20,000 people who vote each day. Voters can then decide what classroom projects (like math, science, art,
Buy Office Enterprise 2007, reading) will benefit from Bing’s donation. If you do the math, we’re talking up to $100,000 a day to help schools across the country. Each day you can return to the site to cast another vote and have an opportunity to pick up another GivingCard. Bing helps students explore the world with our rich homepage imagery every day, so we’re excited to see what the country’s students think we might all want to discover. To find out more about the contest, including the submission and voting process and prizes for the finalists, visit Teachers will be able to order free posters for their classrooms in the coming days, as well as take advantage of other contest resources on the site. Liz Tassey Gerber, Bing