Everyone has “that kid” in one of their classes that has become the unofficial technology guru. This kid is usually found either on a computer, talking about computers, or helping someone with theirs. Chances are that they have often helped you out with multiple technology related problems. So why not pay them back, or better yet, let Google pay them for you. How?

Google is currently holding a contest for high school students that offers cash and trip prizes to the ones that are willing work on cutting edge tasks dealing with 10 popular software companies. The contest will last from November 27th until February 3rd. Here is what their official site says about the contest:

The Google Highly Open Participation Contest (the “Contest”) is designed to (1) encourage and inspire pre-university students to begin participating in open source development, (2) help open source projects identify and bring in new contributors, and (3) provide pre-university students interested in computer science and other fields with exposure to real-world software development, including coding work, localization, documentation and open source community involvement. Google will work with various Open Source Organizations to develop a list of Tasks that Participants can attempt to complete. Judges will choose winning entries in accordance with these Official Rules and prizes will be awarded to eligible winning Participants.

What tasks are open in the composition?

1. Code: Tasks related to writing or refactoring code
2. Documenation: Tasks related to creating/editing documents
3. Outreach: Tasks related to community management and outreach/marketing
4. Quality Assurance: Tasks related to testing and ensuring code is of high quality
5. Research: Tasks related to studying a problem and recommending solutions
6. Training: Tasks related to helping others learn more
7. Translation: Tasks related to localization
8. User Interface: Tasks related to user experience research or user interface design and interaction

Maybe the student isn’t so much hands on into tech, but they are incredible teachers, translators, researchers, or marketers. Whichever, this contest seems like it could find it’s way into multiple classroom settings.